Puppies! 9 of them!

Another happening around the Potts' house is the appearance of NINE puppies!  Born in the wee hours of the morning on June 19th. (I heard them when I took a bathroom break at 3:30am). Our dog, Cookie, has been pregnant for awhile but we thought we had another month before the puppies appeared! 

Cookie and her puppies the day they were born

If you don't know our dog story: Cookie, the mom dog, came with our house and in the 9 months we've been here we have had no success in taming her.  Do you remember we had 2 dogs when we first got here?  Well - Mango (who is also currently pregnant - but still living at her new home) is Cookie's mom and Cookie is the only pup our neighbour, Caleb, couldn't catch to give away.  We don't need a repeat "wild dog" situation around here!  We've been trying to figure out Zambian dog control and we were at the point back in April when we'd given up on her and had decided to really seriously pressure the vet to finally send someone to shoot her. She doesn't have her rabies shot, we can't catch her to spay her or vaccinate her, and she's attracting unwanted neighbour dogs into our yard. Not to mention she's a useless guard dog as she runs away from people.  (We've had 2 thefts outside the house since we've come). Then she got pregnant and I couldn't bring myself to get her shot while she was pregnant!

The puppies a day or two after they were born.  It took us about 3-4 days to finally count them all!

So - now we have 9 pups.  And we do not want them running around and being wild.  We can't really play with them per se - since Cookie won't let us near her.  We weren't sure what instinct would prevail - usually the flight one is Cookie's go to.  But now with puppies we don't want to test her fight vs. flight!  After the first day we're starting to realize that if we don't approach her while she's "trapped" with her puppies she doesn't seem to mind if we look and touch while she's out and about.  If we do snatch a puppy and she sees she does follow us and bark and growl a bit.  So we have a system… one person feeds Cookie and the other snatches 1-3 pups and goes around the front of the house and inside.  Cookie doesn't care as long as she's getting food.  She's always hungry since she's feeding 9 puppies!  We get to hold the puppies and then we feed Cookie again and put them back.  So far, so good.  This works since the puppies are only a week old and not very mobile yet.  We're not sure what will happen (especially with Cookie) when they start roaming.  

Three of the puppies

Two more pups

And another snatch - though I think the brown one is the same one
as the first photo?  This is one of the cute black ones we might keep.

The plan right now is "wait and see" but we have started preparations to bring the puppies inside if Cookie won't let us handle and tame them.  We have a box in Kate's old room (where there's no furniture and it should be easier to keep it clean and have the puppies not wreck anything).  I also bought a couple baby bottles. 

I sure hope they can at least wait until next weekend… I have 3 workshops coming up this week and that last thing I'm going to want to do is take care of 9 puppies (especially during the night!)

We're planning on keeping one.  Probably one (there are two females) of the black ones with a white stripe on her nose.  And a cute little white tip on the tail.

Malachi is loving the puppies.  He wants to keep whichever one he happens to be holding at the time. And he keeps asking when we can keep them in the box in Kate's old room.  

Kate is warming up to them slowly. She likes them warm and sleepy on her.  If they move then she's done. Hopefully she's not overwhelmed when all 9 of them start to move around the yard!  She did ask yesterday if we can't keep two.  One for Malachi and one for her.  (Nope - sorry kiddo!)

The kids holding some puppies