Hello world.  We have arrived.  We are Ivy's puppies and in no time at all we'll be ready to take you on!

Since not all of you have seen puppies grow from day 1, we thought we would chronicle our growth and development with you.

We were born on March 8.  I am not sure if you heard but our Mom had trouble delivering us.  Had it not been for hart, our Mom wouldn't have access to a vet and if that had happened, none of us could give you these updates because we would be gone.  <puppy shudder>

Here we are on day one with our Mom.  She's the best. 

This photo was from the day we were born.  When this photo was taken, we were all blind, deaf and toothless.  At this stage she needed to keep us warm because we were not able to regulate our own body temperatures.  You have heard of the term puppy pile?  We do it to stay warm - we cuddle up to each other so we can conserve body heat.  Our Mom had some help too because the humans we are staying with also put up heat lamps.  We didn't know how to urinate or defecate yet so our Mom licked us all the time to stimulate us to do our business, and she also kept us clean that way.  That is dedication! 

We are amazed when our Mom tells us stories of how she survived when she was a puppy because she didn't have a safe and warm place.  She was outside. 

Here we are at 2 weeks of age. 

We have been able to use our sense of smell and touch since we were born so we have mastered that.  Our sense of smell and touch helped  us root about to find our Mom and to eat.  Mom is kind of like the dairy bar, and we visited the dairy bar a lot.  During these first few weeks our Mom produced a kind of milk called colostrum which is rich in antibodies and provides passive immunity to us.  By feeding us this kind of milk, our Mom was helping to protect us from diseases. 

Our birth weight almost doubled in the time from the first picture to the second picture.  That's because pretty much all we did was sleep (like 90% of our time) and eat.  All of our energy was funnelled into growth and it shows!  Plus we were not able to support our own weight yet.  We would kind of crawl making paddling motions with our front legs. 

Here we are at 3 weeks old. 

Massive changes.  Our ears and eyes that were sealed since birth started to open.  It is a whole new world to us.  We were able to see our Mom for the first time.  She is so beautiful!  We were also able to see the humans that are helping us along.  They don't have much fur!

We have started to become more vocal too.  Instead of grunting and mewing we can yelp and whine.  

Stay tuned and we'll give you an update of us leaving the neonatal period for the transitional period.