We drove up and visited the puppies for about an hour yesterday. At four weeks old, they are just starting to be social, and gain personality. They play for 5-10 minutes, and then you turn around and they’re in a pile asleep. But the pile is never still; someone is always jockeying for a better spot. So 10-15 minutes later, everyone is suddenly up and fully awake.

They’re just figuring out how to play, and some are better than others…but neither their teeth nor their bite strength is enough to do any harm yet. The yips and yelps will come in a couple of weeks.

They are about 3-4 weeks from Max Q (in engineering: maximum cuteness). Jon’s left hip was bothering him, so it was hard for him to be comfortable and cuddle the pups (he did sing a song to one of the pups), but there were one or two that didn’t mind being hanging out with us. Who can say at this early point, but they’ve got our attention…

One gross of puppies. Actually there are 17 puppies more or less in this picture (some are under the wooden lip)

The Thing with Two Heads (And Two Extra Paws)

The two pups who like hanging around us. The one on the left happily clucked like a chicken while we held her.

The pups are so (relatively) big that poor Hershey (mom) has to stand to feed them. This scene is not nearly as placid as it looks.