Litter 6 - Week Three

Week Three

Because the puppies' eyes had just started to open, the first group of photos below were taken with great care in dim light and fairly long exposures. I didn't take many shots because it was very time-consuming waiting to catch just the right moment when they wouldn't twitch in their sleep. These were all 1 and 2 second exposures using just the light streaming in from the shaded window across the room, so I got a ton of blurred twitching puppy pictures. What you see below are the ones where the puppies cooperated. <g>
I'm writing this on the last day of week three and what an interesting week it's been. Record heat for Northern California made things pretty miserable for everyone, and the poor pups were teething the whole time. Yes, that's a teething ring in the pictures below. Okay, we were desperate for anything that would quiet them down. <grin> Why is it that they can't all just teeth at the same time? But noooooo, they had to spread out that precious phase one darling, screeching puppy at a time. With that behind us now, we are looking forward to the remaining weeks ahead. The puppies are getting more mobile every day and are past the stage of walking like Frankenstein. They can stand still without falling over, walk with fairly good control--though not with any great speed--and are even beginning to try little play bows. They chew on us, each other, their mother, and the toys in the box, even doing some pretty tough little grab-and-shake-it moves. Today is the babies' 3-week birthday and they will all be going out to explore the backyard. A few nights ago, I checked in on them and everyone was asleep except green girl, who was just sitting in the corner with her back to the wall and looking out the front of the whelping box. I'd not seen any of them sitting as of yet so I was quite taken with the picture. The photographer in me should have been screaming "Get your camera!" but the dog lover in me over-rode that thought and I picked her up, cooing and awing at her. So cute!

The last couple of days I've been absorbed with trying to figure out how to get a live streaming video working. The puppy webcam is great but, man, wouldn't live streaming video be awesome? Well the last two days have been quite an adventure. Just a year or two ago, you could have a live connection to the web with no firewall and maybe get a few innocent probes hitting your computer. While testing the video stream, I had to drop the firewall briefly and holy cow! All I can say is if any of you have broadband and you are not behind a firewall, you and your personal information are not safe. I have always known that but having been behind a firewall all these years, I had no idea how bad it had gotten. All I can think of to compare it to is the footage I've seen of folks crossing the streets of war-torn Sarajevo and dodging the bullets of snipers. Without a firewall and the obvious antivirus software, you are seriously taking your chances. I did get the video working and it's being beta-tested by a few friends to check bandwidth usage. I'm hoping to open it up to the general public this week. Hoohoo! It will be limited to 15 minutes and 10 users at a time.

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Click on any of the pictures below to see larger versions





The remaining pictures on this page were shot on their 3 week brirthday.