Leona wants extra mush!

 

April 13, 2013

 

During the night I get to snuggle up with mom. It is a bit of a fight to get the best places though. Except for Little Lee my brothers push us girls around. Only when they get sleepy are we able to push our way in close to mom. Sometimes we still get a private feeding time with mom, which I love. Those boys seem to eat extra mush, leaving less for me. It seems that by eating extra mush they are growing faster than I am too. I need to start thinking about this. Right now, during the night, there is no extra mush. Whatever is left in our bowl mom eats. She eats the extra mush and leaves none for us puppies.

I know when morning comes The Man will bring us extra mush. Oh it is so delightful when he brings out extra mush. All of us puppies scramble to get the best spot to eat extra mush than anyone else. Today I am going to try to eat extra mush than even Liglag eats. He is the firstborn in our litter, and the biggest. He loves all kinds of food and will eat extra mush than anyone, except for our mom. He will even fight mom to get extra mush. Mom will growl at him as he is trying to get extra mush. Mom does not know it, but all of us English Springer Spaniel puppies laugh at her growl. Mom would never hurt us. Maybe there is something else around that she is protecting us from, but she will never hurt us. She is the best mom in the world, but I wonder sometimes when she takes our extra mush.

The Man brings extra mush

I smell The Man coming to our whelping room. Mom is usually with him. Mom really likes The Man. I do think my mom is a bit confused though, sometimes The Man tells her to do something and she does it. Mom must forget that dogs are in charge, not people. As The Man comes closer I sit up and start sniffing the air. OH MY GOODNESS! While I like it that The Man smells what he has with him is some extra mush! I know it is not mom’s milk, but the more mush we have the better.

Ever since we started eating more mush we puppies could eat so much that our bellies would feel all stuffed. I also learned something about having more mush. Puppies can play in mush and the more mush there is to play in the better. We splash the mush all over, and the more mush we splash around the better.

It seems like when we puppies get done getting our whelping pen just right, with more mush spread all over it, we go to sleep. Usually The Man keeps mom away when we are eating our mush. I did wake up a little bit after eating more mush and decorating our whelping pen with it. I saw that mom was eating all of our hard work. She was not leaving any more mush in our whelping pen. When she got done cleaning up the pen I saw her look at me.

Puppies eating all the extra mush

Leona leaves the extra mush

I love it when my mom is around me. She was looking at me with those soft brown eyes as she came over to me. Then she started licking me. My mom loves me so much and kisses me. I just wish that she would kiss me without removing more mush off of me while doing it. When all of the mush is off me she moves on to another puppy.

As mom moves on to clean up the rest of the litter I find I cannot keep my eyes open any longer. Oh my belly is so full. It is hard work eating more mush. But I am good little English Springer Spaniel puppy and I will do my best to eat more mush than all of the other puppies in my litter.

Puppies sleeping after getting lots of extra mush

Author’s Note: Getting weight on this litter was very critical. At two weeks of age they were running about half the size of what we have experienced with other English Springer Spaniel puppy litters. We found a local farm that we were able to get raw goats milk from, which we have had better success with than formula. While these puppies would eat dry at this stage it was not enough to put the desired weight on. Instead we decided to mix the goat’s milk with Purina Pro Plan Puppy Food, Chicken and Rice. We are not proponents of long term us of canned foods since dogs need the dry to help in the care of their teeth. However putting weight on puppies, or supplementing nursing or expecting mother are two reasons we find valid for going with the canned food.