Puppy Update: Week 4

Man, has it already been 4 weeks! Time flies when you’re a step dad!!! Basically puppies, all nine, are doing well. They are BIG, everybody who sees them wants one. Apparently it’s a little unusual to see such healthy plump puppies as people don’t tend to feed them, or the mama as well as we have been feeding them. Sandy has been a superb mama. Actually I’m not really surprised by that as she is a sweet sweet dog anyway; she so attentive.

There have been some health issues though. Week 2 one of the pups developed what looked like an open sore on its tail. The vet, Martin, the only vet in town, said it was bacterial infection and gave it antibiotics for three days. That seemed to do the trick. Then last week we noticed, again in the tail, on 3 pups this white crusty thing, Martin says its fungus and now they are taking meds for 3 weeks! Dealing with illness is so stressful mainly because I don’t trust ANY health care in Kisumu as far as I can throw my Toyota, I started voraciously reading about canine skin diseases on the internet, I don’t know if I’d do the puppy thing again, I get too emotional about it. I am really trying not to get too attached to any pups…just in case.

Last week we decide to move them out of the pantry as they all had opened their eyes and had become mobile little poopers and pee’rs and Gladys (our cook) was over it. So we finished fencing the kennel and outside they went. On the first night they were out I was nervous as a mother hen. And it rained. It’s now rainy season here so it rains almost everyday. But it didn’t just ‘rain’ it RAINED…for a long time. And it turned out the place we put the kennel was a water collection area and even though we built the kennel with 8 inch legs so the floor was above ground, the water was up to the floor of the kennel knocking to come in. So me and the guard piled all nine in a box and brought them back inside. We moved everything to higher ground over the week and yesterday they are all back outside.