Ablutions !

Four days old and all is going well with Smudge and her six pups. Today one of the families having one of the boys from this litter, asked if I could take a photo of the boys, so I did and I have put them up tonight and labelled them. I will try and get a couple photo's of just the girls up soon. The photo's I take are taken randomly and at this stage its hard to take a posed photo as when you disturb them, all they want is to wriggle around and find Mummy's milk and you can't get their attention due to the fact that their eyes and ears are not yet open.

The video tonight is one I caught earlier of the pups being cleaned and encouraged to go toilet. At this age Mum stimulates them by licking them to empty their bowels and to urinate, around two weeks they will start to toilet without Mum cueing them. Mum though will still clean up after them and at around four to six weeks as the pups start to eat more solids the Mum will start to stop cleaning up after them.
The video shows how mobile they are already getting and how noisy they can get when they want Mum to get on with the most important thing, giving them access to the milk bar.