Week Three

We are all very tired after a very busy day. As many of you know I feed my dogs a raw diet which is also called B.A.R.F. The main protein source is chicken backs and today we ground 120 pounds of chicken backs and packaged it in 2 pound tubes. We also grind a large assortment of veggies and fruit. This is very time comsuming so after a long day at work and making dog food I didn't have time to get pictures before I tired them all out by clipping toenails, weighing them and individual sound/food test. I am about 95% sure all can hear in at least one ear! I am also certain many of them can hear in both ears. I will continue to condition them to the psst sound until I am sure about every ear. Then I will see how right I am on May 20th when they have their BAER test. I also wormed them today. They are all still growing relatively uniformly the smallest weighed 2 lb 5 oz and the largest was 2 lb 15 oz. That is all for tonight but I have a big surprise for tomorrow!

Day Twenty

Since the puppies are starting to interact with each other I decided it was time for some toys. I am getting more hearing responses today. I feel that week three is a very scary time because this upcoming is the week that I will get a good idea if any are deaf. It is a little to early to tell if any are uni but it is always a relieve when all can hear.

Pictured above is Burdock, Brier and Daffodil.
Daffodil
Daffodil and Magnolia
Dahlia and the boys

Here are the only two chicks we got from the 11 eggs that we incubated. There were 4 fertile but the other two didn't make it. To give you an idea of how tiny they are...they are sitting in the palm of my hubby's hand.

Day Nineteen

It is particularly crazy at my house right now. Bizzi is in full blown heat and Garrett is a wreck. He won't eat and and all he does is whine. I feel really bad for the poor dog. I suppose I should get him neutered since I can carry on with his daughter Bizzi. I am already keeping my eye open for the perfect NUA boy for Bizzi when she finishes her AKC championship.

I noticed today the puppies are cutting their puppy teeth. It will soon be time to take over some of the work that Gambit has been doing. She seems to be producing plenty of milk though. The sound/food conditioning is paying off as I have a number of the puppies awaken when I make the noise now. Burdock was the first to respond and Magnolia and Daffodil are responding too! The others haven't ever been the first to jump up yet so I don't know about them. Today's pictures are of them interacting with one another. Enjoy!

Day Eighteen

In this picture of Dahlia and Daffodil you can see the color difference on their noses. Dahlia is black and Daffodil is liver. Here is Dahlia trying to climb out.
Chow time!

Lilac, Iris and Daffodil

NUA???

Day Seventeen

Our newest baby!As many of you know we also have chickens. We have been incubating 11 Bantam eggs and today the first one hatched! I hope he isn't the only one to hatch or he will be very lonesome.
The puppies are getting more alert everyday. Above is Tulip and pictured below is Lilac.

Day Sixteen

Today was a very beautiful day so we went for a hike in the woods picking wild mushrooms. It was great to get to enjoy spring! Not much can top a breakfast of wild morel mushrooms and fresh eggs..... supplied by my very own hens!

Day 16 is when the puppy stimulation exercised ends but we are only on day two of the sound/food hearing response conditioning.

Pictured below is Daffodil (liver) and if she is NUA and bilateral I may not be able to part with her!

Gambit continues to be an excellent Mom and she is eating at least twice what she was eating. She is getting 3 meals a day plus snacks in between. I am a raw feeder and in addition to her veggies and chicken she is getting goat milk, eggs, cottage cheese, different oils, fish a couple times a week and turkey necks. I am lucky because my sister in law has a milk goat so I can get fresh goat milk and I have chickens so I have an endless supply of fresh eggs.

As you can see in the next two pictures they are starting to interact with each other.

Below is Magnolia (liver) trying to climb out which she did succeed. If she is a bilateral hearing NUA too I will have a hard decision to make!

Day Fifteen

GRAND CHAMPION STOCKLORE TOP SPOT Since you have seen lots of pictures of Gambit I thought you may like to see some pictures of Topper. These pictures were taken by my friend Holly while Topper was here on vacation courting Gambit. He is nearly 11 years old in these pictures and still a very handsome dog.
Today I began the sound/food conditioning. I will explain what this is and why I do it. As everyone knows deafness is one of the health issues we have in the Dalmatian breed. So in order to tell the hearing status of each puppy as early as possible I condition then to a sound which means food is coming. What I use for the sound is psst. Just like I was trying to get their attention. As I say psst I pop a tiny ball of raw ground beef in the puppy's mouth. They absolutely love the taste of it from the first time. I will do this once a day for the first day. Then twice a day. I increase it to three times a day. I also make the sound every time Gambit goes in to feed them. With consistency it doesn't take them long to jump up from a sound sleep when they hear the psst sound. If there is a puppy that never jumps up he is most likely deaf. If a puppy only jumps up some of the time he may be a unilateral hearing puppy. I will be able to tell at a very early age the hearing status of each puppy.
Pictured above is Viola, one of the liver girls, having a nap.
It looks like puppy kisses but actually they were licking the ground beef from each other.