Now we are two (weeks old)!

The puppies turned two weeks old yesterday and are growing by leaps and bounds! Their eyes are almost all open - the two cream parti girls were first in the eye department, and the two boys are the last. Their vision will remain fuzzy for a while, but will gradually sharpen and grow more acute. Their ears are also open, meaning that they are now able to experience the world through sight and sound as well as smell and touch.

This coincides with them growing stronger and starting to try to walk. They are attempting, with varying degrees of success, to get their legs under them and bear their weight, rather than "swimming" like an alligator across the bedding. Of course, they are still extremely shaky and can't take more than a few steps without tumbling over, but it's a first few steps in the right direction!

The pups had their first deworming yesterday evening. We deworm them with Strongid at 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks of age. They weren't all keen, but in general didn't mind the medicine. We do the adult dogs at the same time, since while the other adult dogs don't yet interact with the pups they do interact with the Mama so if anything is present it can get passed around.

These are some of the biggest pups we've ever had - only one fellow from our last litter, PJ, compares to the biggest of these pups, and the biggest of them has now surpassed him in size too. Even the smallest of these is in line with some of the bigger pups we've had in the past. The biggest boy weighed in at over 900g yesterday, while the smallest girl was over 650g. Only 5 pups out of 26 previous ones have been over 650g at this age. One of them was their dam, Galena, and she didn't turn out that big, but I think the fact she was one of a litter of 2 meant she was bigger at a young age and didn't grow so much later.

Given this, we estimate that the small ones - the caramel parti girls - will end up around their dam's size, 20-25 lbs, while the chocolate girls (solid & parti) will be 25-30 lbs and the two males will be 30-35 lbs or possibly as much as 40 lbs at maturity. These estimates are likely to be refined as their growth patterns evolve, but for now that's our best scientific guess. That makes these pups in line to be large minis and mediums in the Labradoodle sizing department.