August 9th, 2009 Pippies (8 Days Old)
by admin on Aug.21, 2009, under Puppies
Today – the pippies are still sleeping most of the time. When they’re awake they’re eating. Flash Dance seems to be repeatedly late for supper (like my friend Josh). No worries though, he just dives into the middle of the pile, goes deep for one of the lower teats and with his bum straight up in the air, he kicks his little back feet like he was on a treadmill. Where is the camera when you need it! All the pippies are developing as expected. Today is the first day of the thermal stress sessions. We take each pippy and place them in a box, alone on the cold floor, for 3 minutes. After a minute or so they make some noise and squirm around… at the end of the 3 minutes we hold them close, warm them and place them back into the nest so they can huddle with their litter mates. This process causes their adrenal system to respond with a brief output of corticosteroid hormones, which helps them resist disease later on. These sessions will go on once a day, for one week.
In case you thought I have spelling issues, you’re right. I spelled puppies as pippies once and I liked the sound so well that it became their collective nickname. Here’s to the pippies 
