The two three week old puppies of the “T” Litter are getting pretty active, just today I caught them growling, chewing on and pawing at each other in play. They aren’t terribly steady, but they can push themselves up on all fours and toddle around a bit. Right now their front end is the strongest so that they can push themselves up to get to the teats as needed, but over the next week or two the rear end will catch up and they will be four wheel drive machines.

Although they are still primarily nursing, they are getting some puppy mush each day, which is canned puppy food and milk replacer. Since they aren’t very steady on their feet, I mainly spoon feed it to them. That will all change soon as they transition to a food bowl. When I introduce the food bowl, I also start banging loud pots to condition them to loud noises. I am pretty loud as it is and I was doing some cleaning and running the vacuum near them recently, so I consider that the start of noise conditioning also.

The day before last Ruth found an oppossum in the barn and had it cornered under the (totally unused in South Carolina) snow plow blade. After I got Ruth kenneled back up, I picked it up with a couple of shovels, threw it in a trash can, then pitched it out into the field near the dog kennels. Well it decided to take up residence in the rock and brush pile behind the dog kennels, so Ruth has a toy to torment. I hope that it moves away soon. You hear her locate it at the end of this week’s video:

I didn’t take much for candid pictures of them this week, but here are there individual photos. I’ll be sure to take more this week with them doing so many cute things, like attacking each other in the way that siblings do.

Male pup, Tobin:

Male pup, Tobin, face
Male pup, Tobin, back

Female pup, Tabitha:

Female pup, Tabitha, face
Female pup, Tabitha, back

We got out this morning to practice water work with the dogs. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but here is a gallery of some nice photos. All of the ducks lived. You can click on the first thumbnail photo to se a larger version, then page through the training photo gallery:

Free swim: Duke in front, Obi and Sally behind (and a silly Pointer named Dolly very top)
Obi makes the blind retrieve
Obi on his way back from the retrieve
Obi on the right of the photo, making his way back to Charles on left
Duke with a water retrieve, Sally in foreground
Sally with a duck retrieve

I was late to sit down today with all of the training, then just spending time with the family. So now we are on to homework time with my son and I need to get after it. Post again next week.