
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.