A Sheepdog Diary: puppies OctoPups nutritious

The OctoPups are now 11 days old, how time flies. The last week has been a bit of a blur, Arctic Fox has been poorly and there’s been a lot to do. She has been off her food, so preparation of lots of good, nutritious, tempting food to encourage her to eat has been called for. I can’t say that I would thank anyone for offering it me, but apart from one day, she has eaten well. A typical menu has been scrambled eggs with spinach, lightly poached liver, raw and the best minced steak, minced beef - sometimes raw, sometimes boiled - boiled chicken and fish poached in goat’s milk. Then there’s the porridge cooked in the liver and chicken juices, kibble soaked in the meat juices - she is completely refusing kibble, I guess why wouldn’t she with all the other goodies on offer? Then for pud ... natural, live yoghurt or a drink of goat’s milk.

This little OctoPup rather fancies a little of what her Mum's having

I have become a surrogate Mum for a while. To take some of the pressure off Arctic Fox and to speed up her recovery I am bottle feeding the pups, just two meals a day, but that’s plenty for a novice. Have you ever tried to bottle feed a pup? It is not easy.

Hungry girl

I had puppy feeding bottles, just in case, but obviously hoped that I’d never have to use them. Well, how anyone can raise healthy pups on the silly little bottles with equally silly little teats is beyond me. They spat out the narrow, pointy teats and completely refused to suck. I resorted to squirting a few drops of milk onto their tongue with a syringe ... that took forever. I have a cyber-friend who breeds so I rang her. She told me to get a baby bottle, we discussed flow rates (of which I now consider myself to be a bit of an expert!) ... this I did and hey presto the pups started to feed. Of course, feeding puppies with a bottle also requires you to ‘burp’ them too, just as you would a baby on your shoulder. Then the toileting ... they are only just becoming old enough to do this for themselves, so I had to do it for them!

Time for the weigh in

All this is taking it’s toll on me. I have had barely 10 hours sleep over the last 8 days so am walking around like a zombie (nothing new there, some might say), I have put on weight as whilst Arctic Fox has eaten very healthily, I’ve eaten any old junk ... if it take less than 2 minutes to prepare then that’s what I’ve had. I’m never entirely sure whether I’ve washed that morning and am also walking around with milk stains all down my shoulder and poo stains down my front. A lovely sight I am sure!

Meanwhile, the OctoPups are completely oblivious, a friend’s comment in an e-mail received this morning sums it up ...

“Pups of course have no idea what's going on, they just want milk and clearly have a very strong instinct for survival.”