At last, some time available to get some photos from over the past week online.
My little Anatolian Captors (I've been abducted, you know!) are growing up so fast!
Here is sister Ruya, giving a snack to her little sister, Spot.
Like her mother Zor, Ruya is drying up and weaning the pups. Given the choice between Mommy Zor and "Mom #2", the pups opt for Zor if they have a choice. Sometimes you can see both Zor and Ruya stretched out, welcoming any takers, but Ruya will be alone and all the pups will be with Zor, who can give them the goods with less effort on their part. :)
Ruya, who hasn't had a litter yet, has these dainty 'bags'. Just these rear ones gave a little milk when the puppies began to demand it. Zor's 'bags' on the other hand are quite large and often swollen with milk although they are getting flatter and shrinking now as she weans the pups.
Mr. T, looking adorable
A common sight these days. Darth and Coco tend to curl up on the bricks right next to the large dog house. Sometimes they are together like this, or it's just Darth or just Coco. They seem to like laying down off on their own and on cooler surfaces.
Batman checking them out before dinner.
Time for chow! That's 'J' standing in the middle of the puppy 'flying saucer' bowl with both feet inside.
They all do this from time to time, sometimes several at once are standing over the food. I put an extra pot into the puppy area to make sure all have an equal chance.
Darth and Coco, all roly poly from chow are at it again in their favorite area.
Spot chomping on Ruya's tail. Ruya looking a bit resigned. :)
She'll jump up if a puppy is too rough. Coco sometimes gets way too rough with that chomping and tail pulling. Ruya and Zor give Coco a little roughing up if she's too pushy. She's becoming more gentle about it now.
Cameo appearance by Boone! Daddy Boone on the left gets meaningful glares cast on him by Zor and Ruya when he's near the pups. He's here checking out Coco and Darth, under the watchful eyes of Zor, who is yawning - probably to tell him to keep calm if he's going to get that close to the babies. Yawning is a calming signal used between dogs as part of their interpack communication. You can read different things they do with their body language, by looking around online such as
here.
Darth checking out some big doggie toys that the Koerners brought as gifts for our dogs well over a year ago. Off to the left, 'J' samples a littermate's tail.
One thing that's fun to do each afternoon if it isn't raining, is to get a nice thick blanket and sit down with the pups for a while at their level and gauge their personalities.
Batman does his part, and tugs on a corner, helping to spread the blanket.
Coco helps fluff up the blanket, lumps are good!
Shortly before the blanket is completely down, everyone wants to get on it! There's no room for me sometimes!
Didn't I say
Everyone! This is after the blanket party had gone on for a while.
All rumpled up, some pups snoozing, some wrestling, they LOVE blanket time.. That's Darth right at the top in deep snooze, no longer on the blanket somehow! :)
Ruya likes to get on the blanket too and tries to sit in my lap. That's what we did when she was a baby too. She's very snuggly and will still try to get into your lap sometimes!
Zor comes on the blanket too but gives up in disgust when the pups beeline for the milkwagon, so it's just not relaxing for her. :)
Ruya is safe in that regard right now since the pups have to work a lot harder to get the sparse amount of milk she makes, so they prefer their real mommy.
If a puppy mouths me too hard, I give them the nylabone or another toy to chew and pet them, so it's kept handily near the blanket. My adult dogs have never really taken to Nylabones, so our's seem to last forever!
Ending Blanket time... When it gets dark, I have to get the pups off the blanket so I can put it away, in case of rain. Much nicer sitting on a dry blanket the next afternoon!
But how does one just pick up the blanket when seven pups around ten pounds or more each, and Ruya, who is about 120 pounds, are all still sleeping on it? They're all such angels when sleeping, I just don't want to wake them up. Solution: Usually in a few hours, it is time for their next feed, then they all get up and it's easy to pick the up the blanket and go.
Well, one evening, it was starting to RAIN after the end of blanket time. The pups were oblivious to the sprinkles as they snoozed but the sprinkles were coming down faster, and I wanted to get that blanket NOW!
So, in desperation on this particular night, I did a variation on the famous "Tablecloth Trick" - uh... well, with about 200 pounds of canine on on top of it, the 'table cloth' doesn't just WHIP out from under them, but a series of tugs (and giggles as the puppies roll or shift) eventually gets the blanket back to me. :)
Since I'm the camera gal and the Tablecloth gal, you only get to see the "After" in this case!
VOILA! Tablecloth gone!
Amazingly, most of the sleepy pups stayed right in their places and slept on barely disturbed. A few got up to go pee and they noticed the rain then, so went into one of the doghouses.
Coco who was laying on her tummy, got enough momentum from my tugs to cause her to roll onto her back. But even with that change in position, increasing sprinkles and the missing blanket, she snoozed on!
Ruya's legs can be seen here on the right. She got up when I insisted that I wanted the blanket, then she settled back down as I took the pic. Coco still in dreamland, shifted slightly and settled against Ruya's legs.
Puppies are chewing on each other and everything a lot now. So they have cardboard boxes tossed around to keep them entertained. The Milkbones box is one of the chew toys.
More fun!
Here are 'T' at the top and Spot at the bottom playing tug of war with a paper towel cardboard tube.
Fun and cheap toys!
While puppies were wrestling, playing with cardboard tubes and a clean plastic milk jug with pepples inside, the racket got Ruya into a playful mood!
Ruya at 3.5 years, outweighs any one of the pups at least ten times.
But she went into a play bow with a wiggle butt and waggy tail, singling out DARTH!
Darth playbowed back to her, barked and wiggled his butt - wagging his tail REAL FAST! I missed shot because I had my hands full with with the scooper and pine shavings and the camera was in my pocket. Ruya raised her foot and patted it down in front of him in a little dance, whereupon he dashed at her foot and tried to chomp on it. So CUTE!
Ruya then pretended he had tackled her, so she flipped over onto her side, lying down on the ground.
Finally I had the camera in hand.
Seeing his opportunity, Darth ran up to her neck and grabbed her collar and started shaking his 'kill'.
Closeup of the grip he has on her collar. :D
Such a patient & cooperative 'kill'! ;)
Ruya tackled by the Mighty Darth, gives him a hug.
That was hard work, so Darth went off to snooze in one of his favorite spots.
A friend back East thoughtfully provided the white box which the puppies love! (the original content of the box was a bit too rich for them though, haha!)
And here we have Ruya getting her tail sampled again. :)
More pics to come!
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