Topaz puppies: Six weeks old!

Hard to believe, but these little doods are six weeks old! They are growing well, with more and more teeth every day, and very playful and happy little tykes. They are still nursing, but we're starting to notice Topaz is not comfortable while nursing, whining a bit and moving around, and she doesn't let them nurse more than a few minutes at a time, but she is still being a dutiful mama and feeding her babes when they get noisy. They are also eating more an more "solid" food - that is, soaked kibble to make it mushy. But with their teeth being pretty well developed now, in the next week we will begin mixing dry kibble with the mush and soon enough it will be all dry kibble mixed with soft food (but not mush).

Topaz is a great mama from another perspective (great for us!) - she is still cleaning up after her babes very regularly and efficiently, meaning there is little clean up for us to do. This makes our lives a lot easier - not so much poop to deal with and not as much laundry to do with continual washing of pee pads. Not sure what it does for Topaz's diet, but hey, this is normal for mama dogs... though many of our other mamas stop being so diligient by the time the pups are that old. Isn't hat what humans are for, after all - cleaning up after us dogs?

The pups' personalities are starting to be more distinguishable as well. The white-and-black parti girl is very brave and adventurous. The black and white boy is very social and cuddly. The red girl is confident and friendly. The red and gold boys playful and independent.

A couple of them - black boy and red boy - will have quite curly coats, while red girl has a very soft, more wavy coat. As far as size goes, they are fairly similar in size - they are not huge pups, in fact a lot smaller than Phoenix's were at this age, but they're all growing well so there's no concerns in that department. Topaz is on the small side herself, so we fully expect these pups to be in the 20-lb range, give or take 3-4 lbs.

The next 2-3 weeks will mark lots of adventure and change for these wee pups. The near future holds microchipping, a vet appointment, temperament testing, neutering, and then - bye-bye mama and the hopme they've know so far and off to begin a new life with their forever families!