3 Weeks Today

Ever have one of those days that at the end of the day you wondered what the hell happened and you wish you could start it all over again, well that was yesterday.  Backing up to Wed I had opened a new bag of formula and although it looked different, I didn't think anything about it.   Wed night purple boy and lime girl had some loose stools.  When I woke up yesterday morning - whewy I had ten puppies with some pretty stinky diarrhea.   Nasty, stinky and very smelly.  My morning consisted of cleaning puppies, cleaning a whelping box and cleaning more puppies.  I called Anne and asked her what she thought about what was happening and she agreed with me that it was most likely the formula but to be on the safe side, I should take stool samples into the vets office, get them all wormed and start them on puppy gruel earlier than anticipated.

As I was preparing to do this, my holistic vet called and was originally scheduled to come to the house at 6 pm to give Brandy and Dallas a chiropractic adjustment and she wanted to know if she could come at 1:30.  It was now 11:30 so I was going to have to wait to go to the vets office until after Dr. Finn had left the house.  I was also supposed to go to work for a few hours, ha! That wasn't happening, so I called my office and explained that I wasn't coming in.  Dr Finn came and didn't finish until after 4pm - ugh, I still needed to get to the vets office before they closed.  This is when Christine told me that she had locked her keys in her truck, which was parked immediately behind both of my vehicles.  She needed to be at another appointment at 5pm.  My dad was here and I had to borrow his car to take her to her next appointment while AAA came to the house to unlock her truck.  Then off to the vets office before they closed in order to get stool samples analysed.  Good news I was able to accomplish all of this and find out there was nothing to worry about and I was pretty confident at that point that the formula was a bad batch.

Next I had to pick up a different brand of formula to make the puppy gruel and back home.  Still had stinky puppies but they were STARVING and pretty sure at that point that someone had slit their little throats for lack of food.  I hadn't been able to give them anything all day.  I made the gruel and thankfully it was nice enough that I could take them out on the back deck to feed them.

They are really not ready to eat puppy gruel and I think I managed to get some down them in order to keep them from crying in hunger.  At 8pm I sat down at my computer for the first time of the day and realized that I hadn't eaten all day.  I don't think I have ever been so happy to have a day be over with.

Starting today - it was a much better day.  The weather was not as nice today so I had to feed the puppies in the kitchen.  I have these wonderful rubber mats that I put down and decided today that I would do one puppy at a time, dipping my finger in the gruel and letting them suck on it bringing it to the gruel.  It has been a slow process, 10 puppies every couple of hours but I am happy to say that at the end of the day, I have 8 of the 10 puppies that are starting to lap up the gruel and diving in with gusto.  Hopefully tomorrow little lime and orange boy will be doing so as well.

The puppies are starting to get more and more active and it is fun to watch them start to chew on each other.  Last night little teal girl had the heating pad in her mouth and was tugging and pulling on it with all her might.  Made me laugh after a really crappy day.  Tonight I am sure I will be able to sleep much better not worrying about upset little tummies.

Tomorrow my dad said he would come by and help me do 3 week pictures so stay tuned.