Litter Fostering

Here are some interesting things about fostering a litter, in case you think it might be fun (it is, provided someone can be with them most of the time):

The pups are really quiet and easy to look after until close to 4 weeks, when they start lapping milk replacer and eating "soup" (puppy kibble and milk replacer blended). Before that, mama dog keeps the den clean of pee and poo, so really, all you're doing is fostering the mom and providing a safe place for her and her pups. Oh, and making sure the runt gets the biggest teat!

But once they reach 4 weeks, litter fostering begins. The mom begins to wean them, so they need to be fed. This is the beginning of lots of noise and poop.

5:00 a.m. is the noisiest because the puppies haven't eaten all night. They screech non-stop (1 screech x 8 puppies) the entire time breakfast is being prepared. And then there's the sound of the blender crunching up kibble and hot water. You just have to work as fast as you can and not worry about anyone who might be trying to sleep.

Fortunately, my sense of smell isn't as good as it used to be. But even so, there's no way to fully obliterate what I've come to call 'poopy hour'. Poopy Hour happens every time the puppies finish eating and every time they wake up (every 1 to 1.5 hours). Everybody poops and pees at once. And it's not like they reserve a specific area of the puppy room for this, oh no! It's just where-ever they happen to be when the need strikes. This means having on hand a supply (big supply!) of paper towel, old towels or rags and a fresh bucket of mop-water. And then you just move as fast as you can to clean up each poop and pee as it happens, because otherwise they'll just march right through it. Too bad about the rain forest, because I use as much paper towel as I need - 3 rolls a day. In the puppy room I have a garbage can with a lid on it, and a bag inside that, so I can just scoop and dump, scoop and dump.

Although the entire floor is covered with tarp, tarp crinkles and gets folds in it. But these gravitate toward the walls and corners, so I've added heavy-duty vinyl mats around the edges. I place just a couple of disposable pads in the corners. If anyone happens to pee or poo while I'm watching, I can scoop them up and put them there.

And I love the smell of dettol antiseptic in the morning. Just a tablespoon of it in the mop water overpowers the smell of poop.

It's a big help to have a room devoted to the litter - one that's close, so you can look in on them every ten minutes or so and keep the room (and the puppies) clean.

And that's it for now. Time to check for poop.