Raising These Pups

The puppies have finally become mobile, running, hopping, biting, attacking, climbing out of their box, ganging up on one another, and causing problems all along. I can really only get them to stay in their box for nap time, otherwise they want to be out and about like their mama, but this causes so many accidents. They seem to use their pee pads less when they have freedom.

The puppies are big enough now that I can tell what size they will be at adulthood. There is one fatty, a boy, and then a medium sized girl, and then a small boy and a tiny girl. The small boy and tiny girl already have their ears standing up! They look so darling. The other two look nice too, it appears that their adult coat is starting to come in, mostly around their eyes.
 
They also really enjoy the non-mushy version of their food,  Blue Buffalo, although occasionally the tiny one will throw it back up and it appears to be solid like it was swallowed whole. The pups are at that age where they get into trouble and hurt themselves often, so I am keeping a close eye on them when they get out of the box. There are only 8 more days until I start sending them home. I really want to keep the tiny girl for an extra week or two so she can stay with her mom and get all the breast milk and socialization that she needs.

I still haven't de-wormed them or given them vaccinations. I guess I'm putting off the inevitable, but I get lost in my thoughts as I stare at them, jumping around and hopping on each other. I invite friends over to play with them, to make sure they are well-socialized with humans, and my friends don't know how I ever get anything done with four pups this cute running around. I tell them, I don't get anything done, the pups start crying every time I sit down to work on something!

I got their AKC registration papers in the mail. I guess they'll really be leaving soon. I still haven't sold the boys yet, and Matt has a lot of phone calls to return. I'm not looking forward to meeting with more people, I hate having to clean the house every time a visitor comes by to see them, plus I've got to look nice and seem happy when I'm really worried about missing deadlines with my schoolwork. But it's worth it at the end. Matt has ordered a nice big television to put in our nice big bedroom, which will be here Wednesday. Matt gets to keep most of the puppy money so long as he takes all the phone calls and does the hard stuff. I told him I had too much school work to worry about to raising these puppies all alone.

I'll be sad to see them go, but I know their new forever homes will be fantastic! Plus I haven't had time to take care of Simon and Layla as much.... I need to give them baths and trim their nails. Its hard to get everything done with six dogs running around. Matt thinks he is helpful but he mostly takes phone calls, and sometimes he doesn't even do that!

Raising pups is a challenge. You have to change the pee pads in their box every day, and try to keep their linens generally free of pee smell. You have to feed them and water them, give them something to teethe on if you value your stuff, shut them up by letting them roam free... Make sure what they are chewing isn't poisonous...

Next week we give the pups their first shots and first groom. The bigger pups usually don’t notice the shots but the little ones hate it. It isn’t the puncture that bothers them; the icy cold liquid rushing through their body is what freaks them out. They squeal like little pigs for a minute or two as I try to comfort them. Poor pups, we’re doing this for your own good.

Grooming is one of the most important parts of caring for your Yorkie. Most Yorkie coats will become matted if not cared for properly or if the dogs spend a lot of time outside. I would send Layla to the groomer every four months for a haircut because she has a “soft coat” – a softer, less shiny coat with somewhat of an undercoat that becomes easily matted behind the ears, on the legs, etc.

I like to groom Simon myself. He has a long, silky coat that requires daily brushing, just like human hair. If I neglect to brush Simon, sometimes his claws will become entangled in his fur and he is rendered unable to move. He will make little noises with his breathing, not with his vocal cords, to tell me he is stuck. I just walk up to him and untangle his claws, usually remembering to brush him shortly thereafter. This happens to Layla too, but it is rare. She will actually bark out loud at you until you come un-stick her.

Because Yorkie fur mats so easily, they must be blown dry and brushed out after a bath. This helps locate matted fur that needs to be removed, and drying against the direction of the hair growth prevents further matting in vulnerable areas.

Apparently Yorkies have notoriously bad teeth, although I am pretty sure Layla and Simon have perfectly healthy teeth. I bought a canine toothbrush that slips onto the finger and chicken-flavored toothpaste, but I haven’t tried it out yet. I prefer to give them rawhide chews, and the dogs love them, although they do not help Simon’s terrible breath.

I bought a hand-held cordless Dremel tool for upkeep of their claws; I got the idea from reading reviews for the Pedi-Paws on Amazon.com. People seemed way happier with the Dremel and I like it as well. I don’t feel comfortable clipping their nails because I’m afraid I will hurt them, but with the Dremel, you just file it down a little at a time.

The hair on the ears grows heavy and weighs their ears down; this can be seen in Layla’s ear as it flops up and down while she runs through the yard. In order to make them cute and perky again, I just shave the tops with my Peanut trimmer in a diamond shape. This frees up the top of the ear from the heavy hair while leaving hair on the sides. It kind of makes Layla look like a lion.

Yorkie eyes need a lot of upkeep; they get all sorts of goop in there. To get them clean you just need to shampoo the area with tear-free shampoo, them comb the face hair with a fine-tooth comb, and then trim down the eye hair with some haircutting scissors. You must form a relationship of deep trust and mutual respect with the dog before you go cutting the hair around his eyes.

I already had a lot of the supplies I needed for grooming from my Cosmetology kit that I purchased while attending beauty school. This was good; Yorkies don’t shed and thus, require a lot of hair removal. I try to give them a sanitary clip every four months or so; that’s where you shave their bellies and genital area with a trimmer to keep it nice and clean.

I started making doggie hair clips to go in their hair and keep the top knot out of their faces. So far I like the designs I have tried, I mostly just watch YouTube videos and practice with ribbon and glue. Someone saw my bows and bought one from me --- I got three dollars for it! It is a lot of fun to create your own accessories for your pet. I want to utilize a Velcro component so that the charms on the bows can be interchangeable to match the outfit or occasion.

I have always loved dressing up my Yorkies – they have clothes from summer dresses to winter jackets. I often find some of Layla’s puppy clothes and include the hand-me-downs in my “puppy kit” that comes with a pup. Now I can make any accessory I want to match Layla’s entire wardrobe! And she looks so darling with her hair up in a bow! I wish she wouldn’t shake them out as soon as I turn away.

Teething Terrors

I finally put my ad in the paper! Matt will be taking many calls every day, repeating the same information about puppies again and again, answering the most standard to the most random of questions. This is why I make him do the talking, plus he is a really good salesman and has an extremely polite and pleasing phone voice.

We actually already got a deposit on one of the puppies before we even advertised, when they were barely four weeks old. The dog groomer that I have been using since Layla was six months old will occasionally give people my phone number if they ask about yorkie breeders in the area. I live about half a mile away from her shop, so it’s pretty close by. She breeds Shih-Tzus and has eight of them! I would definitely need my own dog salon if I had eight Yorkies.

So this woman called and talked to Matt, and he said she asked if there was a runt, and he said yes, and she asked if it was a female, and he said yes, and she wanted to come over as soon as possible to put down a deposit. When she came the next day, she told me stories about her Yorkies who lived to be 16 and 17 years old.

My ad has been in the paper since Thursday, and it is only Saturday and already we have had many calls and several people stop by. One woman wanted a girl but didn’t want the big one, one couple wanted a boy but didn’t want to put down a non-refundable deposit; and one family came and put down a deposit on the other girl! So now I have two little girls who will be leaving December 15^th, and two handsome boys who still need to find their forever families. I’m sure it will be no problem! Sometimes I wish I could sell them in pairs so they never have to be alone.

I expanded their cardboard box using another large box and a door cutout so they can pass between the two. One is lined with puppy pads, the other has their blankets and food and water dishes in it, so they have plenty of room to run around and play and can still eliminate away from their bed area. Layla enters the box from the brick hearth; she can jump up onto it and then down into their box.

They are becoming super clever now. Unfortunately the puppies have discovered the magical art of climbing, and can get out of their box when they want to. Layla doesn’t like to go in there as much to feed them so they are often climbing out or whining to be picked up when they are awake. This can be really annoying when I’m trying to meet deadlines, but it is easy to get them to shut up; I just have to get someone to sit with them. They just want some interaction from a human or another dog, really.

I don’t like that they can get out of their box because I don’t know what they’ll try to get into while I’m in school or something. Luckily the semester is ending because these pups should all be named Trouble. In the first litter we had, we came back from grocery shopping to discover Gus, the giant puppy that was bigger than his dad at 10 weeks of age and we’re pretty sure is some kind of genetic anomaly, had somehow busted past the puppy gate and went digging in the bottom of the closet for something to chew on. When we walked in he was crying because his claw was stuck in a water shoe that Matt wears when he floats the Broad River. It took us almost an hour to remove his claw from that shoe, but the experience taught me the importance of constant supervision.

I feel bad thinking about this already, but I can’t wait to steam clean everything once they’re gone, get rid of those pee pads and the pee smell that comes with them, not worry about picking up tiny poops and putting them in the wastepaper basket. The puppies are so adorable and it is hard to let them go but I am a clean freak. I do not like urine or poop smell. I do not like having to light candles every day. I do not it when sneaky puppies go poop somewhere not on their pad. I do not like that every puppy thinks that playing with their poop is the most fun activity ever. I miss when the puppies didn’t poop, before I would give them their puppy mush and they were only breastfed. They really love their puppy mush, but I think their teeth have come in enough where they can eat the real stuff now.

The Perfect Age

For the first four weeks of their life, the pups are relatively quiet except for the occasional squeak. Layla is very protective of them, not leaving their side for the first few days except to go outside, and running back into the house as quickly as she can to check on her puppies. In the first week, it is very important to separate Layla from any other dogs because she sees them as a threat and will attack, sometimes prompting an aggressive response from the other dog.

 I discovered this with her first litter when she would randomly attack Simon if she thought he was too near her whelping area. He was scared to enter the room for a while! But I have developed a system of baby gates to keep them separated or only near each other in neutral territory, such as the back yard. Luckily Layla has gotten accustomed to Simon being around, and she only snapped at him once or twice in recent memory.

Although I live in my own apartment, it is an addition to a house, so I’ve always had housemates, some of which have their own dogs. It is usually not a problem after the first day or two, but of course Layla thinks she is the Queen of Pineview and so she always lets the others know who is boss. Currently, two of the housemates each have a Chihuahua mix, so in total there are four dogs less than ten pounds. Our dogs would make a cute Christmas card.

Having a large house with many partitions and doors makes it easy to keep all the dogs separate from one another; Layla feels safe and secure in the back corner of the studio apartment when there are four or five doors between her and any other dogs. Her puppies are so small and quiet that none of the other dogs would even notice their existence if they were to come in somehow.

While the pups are still small, I start to shave their little ears with a Peanut trimmer to remove some weight from them and encourage them to stand up. Their ears are tiny and floppy now, but soon they will grow and start to become erect. If I don’t keep up with the ear trimming, they might end up with a permanently floppy ear. When they are about three weeks I get a large cardboard box and line it with pee pads, with a warm, cozy blanket in one corner. That way they start making a conscious decision to eliminate away from their sleeping area, and onto the pee pads.

Around 3-4 weeks I put a little bowl of water in their box, although they won’t want to drink it at first. Puppies are usually scared of water the first time they touch it; they will fall into the bowl, or step in it, and the feeling is unpleasant because the water is cold, and they hate anything cold because they can’t regulate their body temperature yet. But then one day I’ll see a puppy lapping up the water, and I’m so proud that they finally figured out what the water dish is for! Until I have to clean up the subsequent pee, of course.

At this point in their development, they still sleep most of the day but have opened their eyes. They seem fearful of most of the things they see, like the camera when I try to take a picture or video. They still mostly squeak, although I hear the occasional gurgling sound which is their tiny newborn growl. It is very cute, it sounds like a purr and a gurgle coming out of an ewok. The other day I took a video of a sleeping puppy and captured the tiniest sneeze ever! It is a great vid and if I put it on YouTube, I’m sure it will go viral like the laughing Panda did.

Around four weeks is when I introduce the puppies to the concept of stairs; I have some little Yorkie-sized stairs that Layla has been refusing to use for almost her entire life. She is forced to use them during her last days of pregnancy, as she slightly loses the ability to jump onto the furniture. Puppies love to climb up the stairs because their little claws are becoming long and sharp; they snag every fabric possible and will for the next few months. But pups are not as good as getting back down the stairs once they have reached the top. They do know that if they are scared, they can whine, and somebody will pick them up and place them back into safety.

They are at the perfect age right now; their only interests are eating, sleeping, and learning to socialize with each other. Soon they’ll be teething on the furniture, pooping everywhere, and whining all day long until I let them out of their box or until they find a way out. They’re very clever, and when they work together, it is hard to thwart the will of a yorkie puppy.

Transitions

In the previous entry I described how I came to find Simon, my male dog, but never elaborated on the difficulties of bringing an old dog into a new, occasionally chaotic, home environment. When I picked him up that day, I could tell he was scared and nervous to be going away from his old home. I tried to make him feel better with treats, wet food, and affection, but he was intimidated by new people and other dogs for the first few months he lived with us.

On the first day, he kept scratching at his ears and whimpering. I was so scared that he had an infection or something. We went out the next day to find something to relieve the uncomfortable feeling in his ears, and found some peroxide-based gel that would dry out the water. Unfortunately it made the fur around his ears look all greasy and dirty, but it seemed to calm down the scratching after Simon’s initial freak-out about the new substance in his ear.

He wasn’t good at communicating when he needed to use the bathroom, so for the first few weeks I was under a lot of stress because he would just start defecating in the room at random times, not to mention marking his territory all over the furniture; all this is stressful enough without Matt thinking that he needed to be punished. He ended up scaring Simon even more than he already was and complicating the transition process. Obviously Simon knew to go outside, he just didn’t know how to tell us he needed to.

Simon is much smaller than Layla and a lot more delicate. He can get hurt easily; sometimes he falls of the bed, jumps from the couch to the bed but doesn’t make it, gets up under your feet, tries to run out of a door as its being closed, gets his claws caught in his fur and gets stuck, and many more situations where he needs to be helped. Sometimes when he falls, he’ll start shaking violently and I have to calm him down with some cuddling or wet food. Sometimes he’ll have a really bad day, but if I cuddle him and rub his belly all night long, he seems much better the next day.

When I first got Simon I was so enamored by him, I wanted to know everything about his parents and so I looked for information on his previous owners. I was confused because the paperwork that he came with had three different women’s names on it. Over the years, he had been registered to Cathie Baylock, Mindy Pressley, and Elizabeth Edwin. Who are all these women? Are they Simon’s old mommies? I had to find out, so I did an internet search to see what I could come up with.

Obviously I knew Elizabeth Edwin, I had bought Simon from her, but how did she come to be the third woman to own him?

The first thing I discovered was that Cathie Baylock was deceased. I found her obituary and Facebook Memorial Page, as well as her website. Her kennel name was Avalon Rock Yorkies. This explained Simon’s name; Simon must have been her stud before she died.

I e-mailed Mindy Pressley of Magical Yorkies to find out more about Simon’s parents and his multiple owners throughout his five years of life. Mindy thanked me for e-mailing her and explained that she and Elizabeth used to be close friends, but now they hardly speak. Mindy was Simon’s original owner; she owned the parents that he was born to. She sold him to her friend and fellow yorkie breeder Cathryn, who later decided to scale back her yorkie business (I assume as her health started to worsen).  Mindy wanted to take Simon back, but the timing was not right for her and she allowed him to be sold to Elizabeth. Mindy did not want Elizabeth to sell Simon with breeding rights; she wanted him back for herself but wasn’t willing to pay what Elizabeth was asking.

When Elizabeth sold Simon to me, she refused to tell Mindy where he ended up and this hurt Mindy’s feelings. I can tell she really cares about the dogs that she breeds and their welfare. She definitely does not want any of her dogs ending up in a shelter or puppy mill, and happily offers to take in her dogs if their new owners become unable to care for them.

Mindy informed me about Simon’s parents. His father has fifteen champions in his five generation pedigree! Out of every litter I have, I always end up with one puppy that is much tinier than the rest; they grow up to look just like Simon! Silver, glossy coat, pointy ears, usually between three and four pounds! They are delicate little pups, but they are so sweet.

Mindy added me to her yahoo group, so now I get daily updates from her about the world of yorkies, and other people’s yorkies, too. A few weeks ago, Simon’s half-sister won a championship in Charlotte, N.C.! She was a beautiful champion. One day I would like to show Yorkies. I already do the grooming part, which is a pretty hard process if you’re not used to it. Bathing, conditioning, brushing, blow drying --- I even make the hair bows for the top knot!