Today was the day for the first visit at the vet for vaccinations and a general health check up. It all went very well. The puppies were all healthy and relaxed as well. The problem was to get them all into the car! Despite Anna's help it was really a challenge. Just a few days ago I took them in the car without any problem. Now they were escaping and so lively I did not manage to get them in their from the back. And once inside they climbed over the little gap between the window and the rack onto the back seat... 10 puppies at the age of 6 weeks is a challenge!

This weekend all the puppies had a bath. Puppies need to get used to water and it was also nice to have them all cleaned. We put a low, round bucket on a grooming table unde the shower. While wetting them I fed them with their favourite food. None of them had a problem with the bath, they showed us a lot of trust. Or they are just true water dogs who love water!

The puppies have entered a new phase of exploring the world! Watch out - they chew on everything, jump high, enter the cupboards and the fridge, and bite HARD!!! In this video they are playing wildly in the living room in the evening. This weekend Yatzie's beloved mini-mum Anna arrived from Sweden and will be here with us for 10 days! What a joy for everyone! Yatzie got crazy when she saw her at Schiphol airport.

Just a whole lot of shots from around the adventure track and the back yard from today. I have so little time now I did not even make choices of which pictures to publish - I put all of them here! Enjoy! Remember that you can click on the photo and see it enlarged. Then next by clicking the NEXT button. on the right side of the picture when you keep your cursor on it.

Yatzie is playing with and caring for two of her puppies while the rest are asleep. This is the Green and White breasted girls. They are enjoying the way she is cleaning, biting, softly playing with them. These moments are precious. With so many puppies around they each do not get this chance to bond with her too often. In the second short video their are many puppies around her and on her playing.

Soon the time will come when the puppies will not suckle at all any longer. So I thought it was nice to share a movie when they do. They love the milk but they also enjoy the food I am giving them 3-4 times a day. Yatzie is saying no to them more and more. She walks away barking, growling at them when they are not allowed to drink. Tough for a puppy who is used to always be welcomed by mama. By week 7 they must be ready to leave her and eat only dog food.

Backyards are good for many things when you have 10 puppies. The routine is now that they go out after sleeping, eating or playing to avoid too much of their emptying in the house... It works fins and I believe is also a very good way to teach them house breaking.

But today the backyard has turned into an adventure track! I went around some constuction sites in the neighbourhood and picked up things lying around. I also pulled out one of my winter tires and other things from the shed. The puppies need challenges, walking on different materials, climbing etc. This video shows their first time around there, so they still have a lot to discover.

This morning the puppies made so much noise before I had a chance to take them downstairs that I had to go look for my earplus ;-). 10 little heads sticking up from the home made gate in front of the puppy room, jumping, screaming -  take me first, take me first! They had just eaten so it was not that they were so hungry... I just feel that they now entered into an age where they need a lot of new stimulation, even more than before. Little sweethearts of mine!

Let me present the family on portraits! Each puppy has its own page now under Puppies. Here below is a collage of all of us. Thanks photographer Sonja Klopper, www.sonpictures.nl for the great shots! Not to forget the gorgeous father Chico on a recent pictures sent to us from Italy.

Puppies need to drink a lot. But they are often so busy that they forget! So I have come up with a trick - I add a little salmon oil to the water bowl and swoosch - all the puppies gather around it and drink loads!

Sometimes Yatzie takes a log for the fireplace and starts chewing on it. Quickly the puppies gather around her and take over the log! "If we can not go to the forest the forest comes to us!"

Our two food monsters, Mr Chubby guy (red collar) and Saartje, are getting along very well. "Saartje, you are not allowed to share with him your tricks of how to turn the food bin over, open the drawers and eat from the packages and such things! Understood? :-) "

Two by two the puppies are coming along with us in the car. These two (the white breasted girl and the light blue girl) were very relaxed and fell asleep in the car! We also bring them with us to places in our arms. Here we are at a clothes shop and at the video store. There the puppies were also very relaxed and took the chance to get a nap on the cashier's counter! Successful or unsuccessful socialization?

I am a person that normally likes order. At least a certain amount of it... My life with the puppies gives no room for that. Our living room has now turned into a gypsy place and a toilet at the same time! And I love it! The puppies are with us all the time, they are so happy and satisfied. Yatzie as well as all of us can play with them all day. They are getting to know Saartje very well too. And it is sooo messy and sooo fantastic!

Barbet Yatzie and her 10 puppies outside in the backyard all together this morning. The puppies run and jump but when near mama the milk is still more tempting than the green grass or the leaves that seem to be tasting very good! Yatzie has started to say no to them sometimes when they want to drink, which is very good for the weaning process. The front character in the beginning is (upon request) the purple boy who now has a brown collar. The green girl also has a change in collar - it broke so she is now the second girl without a collar. The other is the white chested so she can easily be distinguished.

There are a million of things for a little puppy to experience. These 10 get loadsof new things to taste, feel, bite every day! They like it and at the end of the day fall asleep happy and tiiired...

Or... maybe I am the Marlboro man!

PS It is plastic ;-) DS

Our orange collared boy is finding out his true identitiy!

The puppies are enjoying the nice weather and play around in the backyard. Children from the neighbourhood are helping. In the pictures below Yatzie is there with her threee brown puppies. They are curiously following her into the bushes, retrieving the branches and leaping with joy. In the last sequence Yatzie is playing with one puppy on the brick stones.

Lately, now that there is more space since the puppies are at the ground floor and since they also eat other food and do not hang in her nipples all day long, Yatzie is able to play with her puppies one by one. And she does! Sometimes I wonder who is enjoying it the most - Yatzie or the puppy? I made many films of about 2 minutes, and they were all so sweet I just publish them all here. She is playing with the green collared girl and the orange collared boy.

Now that the puppies are downstairs they are also getting to know our second dog, the labrador Saartje, 12 years old. She never had puppies but is very sweet to them. Well, not when it comes to them trying to eat her delicious calf hoof - then she really says NO! They need to learn the rules of the dog world, so here you go...

Almost everything is interesting for a little puppy. Instead of throwing away the cellofan that was around a gift, or the empty box from the Nespresso capsules, I give it to the puppies. They fight over it, play with it, drag it around. Everything is a toy!

So sorry webcam devotees - today there was nothing happening in the puppy room. The puppies now spend most of their day downstairs. It is so nice that all of us are together the whole day. In the video you can see how busy it can be around a mother of 10. She tries to move around the house but the puppies are hanging on the nipples, always hungry! She has found out that they can not get to her when she gets up on the couch, so she escapes for a moment, but soon after she is back to feed the 10 hungry mouths!

Now the period starts when the puppies need to get socialized in all different ways. They must get used to not only many different people, but also to sounds, smells, surfaces etc. The dust buster makes a lot of noise and when I put it down in the puppy box the puppies are at first afraid but then the curiosity takes over and they want to smell and taste!

Last night all puppies spent the evening with us by the fireplace! It was a great experience for all of us. They checked out the whole house, drank from mummy, looked into the fire with wonder and then fell asleep on the carpet.

The puppies are growing fast and need more space to run on and more adventures every day. It is time to let them experience the rest of the house. Therefore I have pupy secured the stairs on the top floor with a gate and at the ground floor all the electric cords have been attached to the wall, lifted up when possible and when necessary covered with blankets. The door towards our back yard has a draft so there is now a blanket to minimize it. The puppies are still young and sensitive to draft and cold weather. Now our little rascals can occupy the whole house!

In the morning hours, after Yatzie's first feeding, the puppies are always very lively. They wrestle, chase and have a lot of fun. They have started to invite each other to play by the play invitation gesture - front bows, back end up. This morning I mistakenly left a Cleanex box on the ground. It was investigated thoroughly by the puppies. I realized what was happening when I saw puppies carrying around pieces of paper in the room! And chewing on it! I had to take some out of the mouth of the little rascals! I did not catch this in the video though. It is happening behind the puppy box as I am filming.

The puppy owners are all very eager to spend some time with the puppies already and are very welcome now that the puppies are 4 weeks old. The sweet family Zuidbergs came over today and had real quality time with the puppies in the puppy room, helping me in the second deworming process, as well as outside in the sun. After having come to know all of the puppies they concluded: All of them are lovely, and who ever becomes ours we will be happy! The choice will be made in a few weeks when the characters have become even more clear.

Lately Yatzie feeds her puppies standing up. It requires a lot of strength and balance in the little puppies' bodies and I guess gets them fit! They still fall off the nipples at times, and in the fall brings a few of the sisters and brothers down as well. IN this video it is the first moment of feeding in the morning and there is a big rush!

Until now the puppies ate from my hand. Today was the first meal from a puppy bowl. They had boiled chicken mixed with warm water. Everything that I serve seems to be a gourmet experience for them. It is great to watch their eagerness. It was very crowded around AND INSIDE the bowl and tomorrow I will use two bowls!

Sometimes I bring just one puppy to Yatzie while she is in the living room downstairs for them to get some special time together. Then Yatzie will tenderly embrace her little one and carefullly play. It is so sweet to witness that tears come to my eyes.

In this video the puppies are eagerly eating boiled salmon that I also ran through a mixer. I slowly let the puppies try different foods, to get their little bellies used to it before the nursing period is over. The best thing is to start with easily digestible animal protein and fat such as light meat and fish. The food should be luke warm like the milk they are used to. I separate the puppies do get some control over the eating procedure. They do not really have manners yet! Salmon was all over them and the room afterwards!

Regularly I introduce new toys of different materials for the puppies to explore. This little wooden train attracted some attention and is also good as a head rest!

The sun was shining today and Margot and I took the puppies outside for the very first time. In our back yard I placed a puppy pen where they could move freely. Yatzie was around and fed them in the pen. That made them feel a bit more safe during this new adventure which was a bit frightening judging by their peeping sound!

In this video the puppies are 24 days old, playing around with each other in the puppy room.

Yatzie has adjusted to the puppy rush and is able to let all of her puppies drink together again. But only 9 of her 10 nipples have milk so there is always a puppy running around searching. Nowadays she sometimes sits or stands feeding them. She lets them drink shorter periods but more often.

Just sharing some more pictures from the past days, from playful times and restful times. The puppies are just being sooo sweet now, all ten of them. It is fantastic to be with them!

The puppies still sleep long periods between eating and playing. Here I catched some of the beauties lost inside their dreams. Maybe they were dreaming of the meatballs I offered them earlier on? It is time to start introducing food other than milk now. They loved it! All of the puppies now weight over a kilo.

The puppies are starting to play a lot with each other, already checking out the rank of the brothers and sisters, trying to dominate the other. They are adorable all of them. Looking you in the eyes, wanting to crawl on you, sleep in your lap.  When I am not in the room for a while I long for them!

The puppies are sleeping on their 20th morning. Mummy comes inside the room to check on them and feed. There is a big rush to the nipples! Who is gonna make it to the best ones?

This big boy reached a kilo when the rest were between 800 and 900. He is very verbal and clearly lets you know when he is hungry. Which is all the time! He is fantastic to deal with, so sweet, round and chubby. Yatzie now has a lot of milk! During week three the milk production reaches its peak. A bitch of ten can produce more than 2 liters of milk per day for her puppies! We know into which belly most of that milk goes!

"I wish I was a puppy", said Bart tonight :-) not getting any attention for the past three weeks. He knows to where my devotion and time goes. The puppies are ready to have more social interaction and the children spend some time with them every day. Yet only the closest family has been allowed to touch the puppies. After cuddeling and playing for 15 minutes they need to rest again. The two little sisters look tired but content!

Today I introduced a water bowl in the puppy room. The puppies ability to lick develops these days. I captured the very first lick of water! Some of the puppies prefer to just walk around in it! In the second video one can also see that the 16 day old puppies have already started playing with each other! The puppy box has now been opened so the puppies can walk freely in the room. That makes it more difficult to catch a good view with the webcam I am afraid, because you never know where the puppies are in the room and the camera can not get it all. So I am sorry about that, for those of you who used to watch a lot, but there is nothing to do about it. In the night and in the morning they are still in the puppy box, and the camera will catch them, but then the light is low on the other hand.

It is a lot with 10 puppies for a first time mother. I admire Yatzie who took on her responsibility with much devotion. But she is sometimes overwhelmed with the great needs of her babies; they run faster, they scream louder, they suck harder. So together Yatzie and I have come up with a solution for her to be more restful during the feeding. She lies down on her favourite pillow or on a bed and I bring her the puppies 5 by 5. This way I also monitor that they all get to drink enough. More needy puppies get an extra drink from time to time. I stay with her, cuddle her, encourage her, give her drink and food. She enjoys this new procedure. She comes to get me when it is time to feed, even during the night. It is truly sweet how she trusts in me and I am honoured by the shared responsibility. I became an amma. Sometimes, when there is a group of dogs living together, the bitches help each other to nurse, some even develop milk - I did not :-)!

All puppies are born with worms and need be dewormed at week 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12. When the bitch is pregnant her rising progesterone levels cause immature worm larvae in her muscles to awaken and swim right through the uterine wall into the puppy before it is even born. By two or three weeks of age puppies are shedding worm eggs and infecting each other. This weekend was the first go. I used Drontal Pup suspension and mixed it with puppy milk. With a syringe I was able to give each puppy the right amount. First I tried to give it in the mouth, unmixed, but the poor little girl looked very unhappy and spit out most of it. So the rest I gave with the sond directly into the stomach. Safe. Also the mother needs to be dewormed.

Holland was blessed with a summer weekend even though it actually was october! 25-30 degrees! So we decided to enjoy the seasons last barbecue with our good friends. Yatzie is always around when the barbecue starts. The past week her appetite is enormous. I am so fglad about that. She even eats her dried food without additives! And of course she got to taste of the delicious sausages as well! Our food monster labrador Saartje ate from the charcoal left over the next day and is still having a bad stomach ache...

The puppies just woke up on their 16th morning. They can smell that their mother is nearby. They run around on staggering legs in the puppy box trying to find her! But she is not there yet... The puppies' concentration and determination is fantastic to see. They have developed their ability to walk so quickly.

Recently I put a few teddybears in the box. The puppies are checking them out by biting and sniffing. One can also note that the puppies are starting to interact with each other. They lick, bite and smell each other.

The puppies are sleeping, resting, moving a little. One is licking her sister's paw. So sweet. They are 13 days old  here.

In this video you can see how quickly the puppies have learned to stand on their legs and start to walk! There is one that even manages to escape from the puppybox and almost falls into Yatzie's food container! On the way down the ramp he stops to do a little pee.... In the puppy box I have an area with newspapers and I am teaching the puppies to go there for their "needs". Some of them learned it already all by themselves. Others I try to teach by observing them and putting them there when it is time.