We visited the new puppy again on Sunday and she’s (still) completely adorable. Actually ALL the pups are. The biggest in the litter weighs in at 7kg, whilst our little girl is a far more petite 4.5kg – although the size of her paws tells us that there’s going to be a lot of growing happening over the next few months.
We sat on the grass and had 12 little fur bundles clambering all over us, licking our faces, nibbling on our hands-feet-clothes, then racing off on adventures only to come racing back, falling over their own legs – and each other. The aloe vera in the garden took quite a hammering once they discovered that the fleshy leaves came off and the lawn has numerous little proto-holes dug all over it. Thank goodness only one pup’s coming home with us!
Since then we’ve done a little audit of our house and garden to see how safe and secure they are for the puppy. It turns out that SO many things will need to be packed away over the next couple of weeks if they’re to survive the onslaught of the needle-sharp teeth and boundless energy.
We also just took Hot House Flower (dog number one) to the vet to check out her intermittently runny tummy. The last time we took her along to check this out we were told that she has the canine equivalent of irritable bowel syndrome, that we should add psyllium husk to her meals and just keep an eye her. Since things haven’t improved and the back lawn has turned into the bog of eternal stench, we took her back for another round of tests – just in case…
The vet duly sent another faecal sample off to the lab – this time for more comprehensive testing than the last sample – and the results show that HHF has a little more than an ‘irritable bowel.’ She has both coronavirus and campylobacter in her system. These are a huge risk for puppies and can lurk in the system (both the dog’s and environment) for prolonged periods.
The solution is apparently to change HHF’s diet a bit (no more raw chicken!) and to inoculate both dogs against the coronavirus. Since the vaccination takes two weeks to be effective and since the puppy will only be getting her C7 vaccination at the end of October (at 10 wks), she’ll have to stay with the breeder for a bit longer than planned. Disappointing, but we’d rather err on the side of caution – particularly since coronavirus can be so dangerous for puppies. Besides which, it’ll give us a couple of extra weeks in which to puppy-proof the house and replace the bog of eternal stench with some all-new virus-free lawn. What fun!
