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Nell Pup Pix and a Heart Video

Three quarters done — I just have to edit and upload Heart’s photos, and my Sisyphean tasks for this week are done. OK, maybe it’s not quite that onerous…

In the meantime, here are my two favorites from the Nell photos –

Butters, French Bulldog Puppy
Butters — which is, or rather was, short for Butterscotch, but is now officially the poor little thing’s call name.

Cream French Bulldog Puppy

The still nameless cream boy, waiting patiently for Bryan and Allison to tell us what we should refer to him as… I’m just going to call him ‘Stache’ for now, in honor of his funky half mustache marking.

Here’s the rest, or see them full sized on Flickr.

.. and here’s Heart

Happy Birfday, Chunk Muffin!

Heart of Gold is two weeks old – Happy Birfday, silly little chunky muffin!

Here’s the whole photoset, on Flickr.

Little Miss Chunky Butt Opens Her Eyes

10 Day old French Bulldog puppy

Princess Chunky Butt is growing by leaps and bounds, not all of them merely in terms of her girth, either.

Her widdle eyes are open (first one yesterday evening, second one this morning), so no more flash photography for a while, which means any photos will be a bit dark and grainy. She’s also super quick at crawling around, and can find her way to Tula’s most readily available nipple in record speed. As a singleton, she’s pretty much used to getting her own way, and squawks up a storm if you pick her up or do anything to thwart her attempts to get to where she wants to go.

As we learned with Delilah and Solo (ok, mostly with Delilah) singletons are a special kind of dog. Affectionate and loving, for sure, but used to getting their own way, and sometimes less than cognizant of the fact that they are actually dogs, and not small people in fur coats. Because of this, I’ve been contemplating putting two of the largest of Nell’s puppies in with her.

Cutest French Bulldog Puppy Ever!

Penelope has tons of milk, but she’s a rather lackadaisical mother. She cleans the pups, but she’d rather sleep on the floor than in the whelping box, and if one of them starts crying, eh – that’s what the nanny (meaning me) is for. Tula, on the other hand, would eat through the door if she heard her puppy crying on the other side of it, and Heart is so clean you’d think she’d been put through a car wash. If we moved the two largest pups, the smaller ones would have a chance to nurse more readily, Penelope would have less work to do, and Heart would have some siblings to both keep her company, and give her a run for her money in the competition department.

I haven’t quite decided yet if I’ll do so, but it’s a possibility.

The rest of the photos are over here on Flickr, and here’s a little video with her Royal Cute-i-Tude showing off her crawling, wiggling, rolling over skills – and her open eyes! Music is by Feist, because Sean was in the background yapping to me about laundry, and no one needs to listen to that..

Birthday Girl and Puppy Pix

Penelope's Pups at One Day Old

Barb pointed out to me that I forgot to mention that Penelope’s pups share a birthday – with Penelope! They were born two years to the day from Penelope. What a nice birthday present!

Penelope has lots of milk now, and the pups are thriving. She’s not quite got the knack of the whole cleaning them off thing, however, so I’m spending a lot of time dabbing them off with wet wipes. This is especially noticeable on the creams, who seem to have a penchant for pooping on each other, and for managing to get themselves covered in Penelope’s blood. Nothing says adorable like poopy pups with blood spattered heads!

The creams are darkening up already, and on the largest girl you can already see a tan colored dorsal stripe up her back. As they age, they’ll gradually look less white, and more a pale golden color.

Puppy Pile

More photos of Penelope’s kids are here, on Flickr.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about little Heart! She celebrated her one week birthday yesterday, and if it’s possible, she’s gotten even cuter. She has definately gotten fatter, that’s for sure, and it’s no wonder since Tula is giving enough milk to feed an entire herd of dairy cattle.

Suction Tongue!

Her nose freckles are getting more noticeable, which is good – we want her nose to fill in completely, until it’s totally black.

She’s not just a pretty puppy, either – she’s a calm, mellow, content little baby. She rarely cries, she’s not fussy and she’s happy to be picked up. She’s not slow, either – she’s vigorous and crawls enthusiastically. All together she’s been a joy to watch growing up, and it’s hard to resist kissing her on the forehead every time I see her.

Look at this face – who wouldn’t want to smooch it?

Kissable Face Frenchie Baby

More photos of Heart and Tula are here, and if I get time (and a nap) I’ll shoot some video tonight.

By the way, if you’ve phoned or emailed I am not ignoring you — I’m just a little swamped at the moment, between caring for two litters on two floors, and trying to get in some work when I get a chance. Bear with me — things will be better by middle of next week, and I’ll try to get caught up on replies and return phone calls by then.

Preparing for Penelope's Puppies

We’re in the final few days before Penelope is due to whelp her puppies, and as a result today was moving day. Tula and Heart have been downstairs, in the room we’ve designated as our ‘whelping room’. It’s basically a spare bedroom off of our family room, which we’ve tiled and added a large wall heater to. It has all of our puppy supplies in it, from heating pads to rubbing alcohol to wet wipes, and the walls are covered with photos of puppies past. I’m sure it makes for an interesting ambience for the overnight guests who stay in it from time to time.

Heart in the Upstairs bedroomSince this room is the most convenient for me to get to quickly throughout the day while I’m working, it makes sense to put the youngest puppies into it. That meant moving Tula upstairs, to the second spare bedroom.

I’ve never before had to move a mother with a young puppy, and I was a bit apprehensive that Tula might be nervous at being in a new place. We moved the pool she’d been using downstairs, and I kept the same pad and towel in it for her, in hopes it would give her a sense of continuity.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry.

After ten minutes of sniffing around, Tula popped into the whelping box and settled down to nurse Heart (who couldn’t have cared less about where we moved her, so long as her personal milk bar came along for the ride).

The next step was to let Penelope come into the downstairs whelping room for a good sniff around. She looked at the pool, shrugged, and walked over to the bed and waited for me to pick her up. I popped her into the whelping box and suggested she take a good look around, as she was about to spend quite a bit of time in there, like it or not.

Again with the shrugging, although this time she deigned to at least pretend some interest in the towels and whelping pad. Honestly, she was more concerned with getting out the living room and grabbing one of the good hooves before Dexter got to it. I’m not sure the whole ‘motherhood thing’ concept has kicked in yet with her.

There’s a baby monitor base set up in the upstairs bedroom, and the hand held unit is downstairs, where I can turn it on. This will let me sit with Penelope and her puppies, and listen to Tula and Heart at the same time.

We had it on during dinner, and Sean and I spent ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell Tula was doing up there. We heard what sounded like light construction, including what could possibly have been a load of gravel being dropped out, perhaps for foundation work. Every time the sounds became too intriguing, one of us would dash upstairs, only to find Tula sitting innocently in the whelping box, looking at us with an expression that clearly said “What did you expect to find?”.

I’m thinking about installing one of those Nanny cam things, just so we can figure out where she’s stashing the backhoe.

Heart of Gold continues to grow exponentially cuter with each passing day. If she continues on at this rate, she will radiate a force field of cuteness that can be felt all the way in California. Today, she did the coveted “tongue stuck out milk bubble ear twitch” triple combination, which I believe has been made illegal in two states and at least one territory.

If you look at the large version of this photo, you can see her little nose freckles starting to appear. Over time, they’ll increase in number until her nose and muzzle are completely black. On her ear, you can see the little fringe of white hairs that outline the top edge. It’s a tiny, perfect little outline.

For more cuteness, check out her other photos here.