I had a friend call to see what I was doing during this pandemic. After we talked for a few minutes he said, “this really hasn’t changed your life, has it”? And it hasn’t. Actually, the rain has changed my daily routine more than the virus has.
Abby on the barrel.
Mann on whoa. I had him pull some chains to wear him down some.
Josie on whoa with me walking circles around her.
Thinking about the pandemic, this morning. When I was a fire fighter and we would get a call for a car wreck or something at 2:00 am I would usually tell the guys as we got on the pumper, “if these people would have been home in bed by 10:30 pm, like they should have been, they wouldn’t have this problem”.
Using that same logic for this pandemic I have decided to stay home and not be part of the problem. My stuff shouldn’t be more important than the world or the whole United States. If I have to get out, to distance myself from most people, if possible. I drove by the shooting range yesterday and they were open. There was no one shooting skeet but there were people shooting on the rifle range. In the short term I’m not going to shoot skeet. I may get so stir crazy that I shoot but this morning I’m not.
Now to my real problem, the rain. I think it rained every day this week except Tuesday. On Tuesday I picked up some dog food and rather than drive my truck to the shed I used the 4-wheeler. Even the 4-wheeler cut ruts in the yard. It’s too wet to work dogs. And that messes up my routine. It rained yesterday and today.
My puppies are doing fine and growing quickly. There are 8 of them left, 1 male and 7 females. The one male has a spot on his side but all of the puppies have a little orange on their head with a white body. I can’t tell them a part so I put different colored collars on them. As they came off or Sally managed to get them off, she ate the collars. Yesterday, I took the remaining collars off them. I may have to put a number on them with a magic marker.
Since there are 8 puppies I thought I would help Sally and I started feeding them before they were 3 weeks old, by a few days. I mix a can of evaporated milk, a can of warm water, an egg yolk (uncooked egg white is bad for dogs), a tablespoon of Karo syrup and a table spoon of yogurt in a jar and feed them half of the morning and half of the evening. This morning they cleaned the pan so I will start letting dog food soften in the milk and feed this to them.
Sally and the puppies new house.
Each time I feed the puppies I play the Gun Conditioning CD from Master’s Voice. I start it on track 2 or 3 and let it play to the end. Most of the time the music with gunshots is not through playing before the puppies are sleep. The CD plays to the end with the last track being almost totally gunshots. I’ve had people tell me that after being raised this way their puppy loves the sound of guns.
Usually, on my litters I have as many people as possible pet the puppies. With this virus disrupting everything I have curtailed people coming by. But I can’t go anywhere either so I can pet them 3 or 4 times a day. That should socialize them.
I have a new house built for them and after this weekend I will move them into it. It has an off the ground area for the puppies to play and I will still keep the heating pad in the house part. It is supposed to be in the low twenties of the night this weekend and then warm back up. I will move them to their new house after this weekend. It’s warmer for them in the shed.
Another shot of their new house.
Inside the puppies new home.
This post is a lot shorter than most of my posts but when it dries some I will get back to training young dogs.