Friday, May 06, 2011

Puppy Therapy

Well, the pups are five weeks old now, and they've turned into "real" puppies, i.e. they've grown and developed to the point where they look and act like what we ordinarily think of when we think of puppies.

That alone seems almost a miracle to me. Just think of where they started five short weeks ago:  unable to see, unable to hear, barely able to nurse, only able to squiggle themselves pulling with their front paws, unable even to pee and poo on their own.   Then look at them now!  It doesn't matter how many times I see it; the wonder of life and development amazes me every time.

The pups' ability to warm our hearts and lower our blood pressures amazes me every time, too.  There's nothing like "puppy therapy" to chase our blues away.  Take a look. This is DH, late in the evening so it's almost dark, getting some much needed puppy therapy after a long stressful day at work.  Now, puppy therapy doesn't mean we get to take our human hats off; you'll see DH still has to correct a couple of the pups about puppy biting (something we start correcting them on as soon as they start play biting us at about 4.5 weeks old). Oh, but there's nothing like all those sparkling eyes and wagging tails making us feel wanted and loved:




One of the reasons we do this breeding thing (even though we do only one litter per year, and not even that sometimes) is that we know a properly raised, well-socialized, healthy puppy can bring its own "therapy" tools to each family.  In this case, the joy we receive from these little ones will be multiplied by six (or more), as each pup moves to its forever home in about three weeks time.

In the meantime, we'll take all the therapy we can get!

Until next time,
Joan

1 comment:

Mary said...

Although I wish I could have puppy therapy like you guys, I have dog therapy everyday. Good thing Hope still thinks she is a puppy.