Day 50: A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag July 15, 2020

A puppy was crying at 4 a.m.

I can tell the difference between “HELP! My mouth is stuck on the x-pen” and “I want breakfast.”

I do not leap up for complaints about the late hour of breakfast (which is about 5:15 a.m. FYI) but it is hard to sleep once the Montana Puppy Choir starts morning rehearsals.

This explains why I got even less sleep than normal last night.

This is a tender time in the life of a breeder. Exhaustion and impending losses with associated anticipatory grieving on top of so many things to do in preparation for sending puppies to new homes — it is just a lot.

If my goal is to educate and inform about the Life and Times of Puppy Central — and it is — then I need to also share that kind of stuff. I am not complaining — these puppies are worth every downed Little Soldier and this is temporary, after all.

But yes, this is one of the peak challenging times here at Puppy Central.

My water cup…

The puppies’ water bowl…

Both are true — for all of us.

Renee sent along this great resource/product for bully sticks, and the company appears to have good quality products. I have ordered a medium Starter Kit for the puppy who will be staying here with us. Thanks, Renee!!!

We have such a fabulous community around these puppies — so much gratitude to every single one of you.

Morning video HERE — it includes seeing the puppies react to new people.

EVENING: A FEW PHOTOS FROM THE DAY

The puppies continued to demonstrate excellent people skills today — they met five new people.

They did not, however, appreciate the giant UPS truck and all ran for cover when that came noisily up the driveway. Understandable and good info. Beware of noisy trucks.

The storytelling dragon was a gift from Grandma Toby — it is beyond fun and adorable. Thank you, Toby!

It is a warm evening and so I moved the splash pad and added a few things to it — and turned it up.

Buttercup stayed nice and cool.

Carol calls those freckles Zimmer Spots — those who know Zimmer will understand.

As I previously mentioned (see the post for Day 30), my veterinarian supported a plan to avoid worming puppies without evidence of need.

Step One was a stool sample from Daisy at four weeks — it was negative, and so we did not worm the puppies.

Step Two was stool samples from five random puppies checked both in-house and sent out to another lab as well. All five tested puppies share these negative results…

We are confident the results represent the entire litter. Step Three will be a follow-up puppy stool sample at 15 - 16 weeks.

Yes, all this is more expensive than just worming them every three weeks — but why would I unnecessarily treat for a problem a puppy doesn’t actually have? That make no sense to me.

I hope you have had a wonderful day and I wish for ALL of us a good night’s sleep — including and especially the Montana Puppy Choir.

Good Night, Friends.

Day 49: A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag July 14, 2020

Puppy placement decisions are coming down to the wire as we see personalities emerge — puppies and humans.

I have had incredibly gracious and kind responses to my emails telling people I won’t have a puppy for them; I am actively trying to find puppies for these people.

I have also had a response that confirmed my decision to not place a puppy with the person — OUCH but I appreciate the information that my assessment was correct.

This is hard stuff for a person with an empathic heart, I assure you.

Busy morning — I need to deliver puppy stool samples to the veterinarian and also put the Wildflower Veterinary Recommendations under her nose to get her input. I promise to make up for the lack of morning photos this evening.

In the meantime, I invite all of us to consider the need to be gracious and kind, even and especially when we do not get what we want.

EVENING: PHOTOS FROM THE DAY

Seven weeks old today — amazing.

Good Night, Friends!

Day 48 A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag July 13, 2020

The end of my time with a litter always sneaks up on me — in just a week the puppies will have their pre-farewell veterinary exams and then they will be eight weeks and starting to leave us.

All of us.

As with previous litters, new families will be asked to provide an update/photos every week or so for a while so these can be shared on the blog to help with our collective Wildflower Withdrawal; blog analytics tell me that the Wildflowers have a Fan Club.

Today I want to invite the creation of another collaborative document — New Puppy Home Instructions. Based on your experience and knowledge what should new homes know about raising a Berner puppy? What advice did you receive that was great, dumb, impractical or invaluable?

This is a collaborative effort so you do not need to have a complete list — just email what comes to your mind as important (or not important) when raising a Berner puppy (sontag.bowman@gmail.com).

Send multiple emails if you continue to think of things over the week. I will plan to summarize our collaboration next weekend, and it will be a new page on our website.

Thank you for helping to support and foster community and collective wisdom around these puppies and their new families. They all deserve it.

One thing that will be on the list is the importance of considering and monitoring toys. I added those plastic things (from the play structure) back and they are a big hit BUT I am watching closely to make sure nobody gets obsessive about the cord.

Puppies can and do swallow all kinds of dangerous things. In general, rope toys are not a great idea and especially if they have stringy ends. Cloth toys need to be heavy duty fabric. If a piece can come off — or be chewed off — it is dangerous to a puppy.

And so I sit here and watch as I write/work/attempt to drink coffee before it gets cold. If I could not have this level of oversight, I would remove all toys — including the fabric tunnel — except kongs and the adult-sized nylabones.

See the “strings” on the tunnel? I watch it closely. With multiple puppies playing, the tunnel moves too much for any one puppy to start gnawing on the string but s/he likely would if alone with it.

I recently read an interesting study comparing dog age and human age — seven human years for every dog year is a myth. An eight-week-old puppy is roughly equivalent to a nine-month-old human.

This is helpful — consider the level of oversight you would provide to a nine-month-old infant who explores by putting everything in her mouth. With a human baby, we remove dangerous things, redirect, provide safe things to chew on, get bitten a few times, and understand it is a rare child who heads off to preschool still putting everything in her mouth.

The nature of development is that things change. Just as we do not need to teach human infants to stop putting everything in their mouths, so too does normal growth and development (and appropriate redirection) take care of puppy mouthing and biting.

Human infants who mouth and bite their parents do not grow up to be cannibals. Likewise, puppies who mouth and bite their humans do not grow up to be vicious. Our job is all about understanding what is normal, managing our expectations, and redirecting to safe and less painful options — with human infants and dog infants.