London delivered nine puppies on Thanksgiving morning November 24. All puppies are healthy, average to large sized, and doing well. Scroll down to see pictures of London’s newborn puppies. Scroll to the bottom for developmental information of puppies this age.
There are two girls and seven boys. The girls are in pink and purple collars. The boys are in blue, gray, black, red, orange, teal, and yellow collars. The puppies will remain in the same colors until they leave us.
The picture above is our current set-up for London’s litter. The room in the picture is attached to our kitchen. My “bed” for the next two weeks is on top of our kitchen table which you can see behind the couch. London’s whelping box is enclosed in fencing to give her privacy from our other adult dogs who live in the same room. To the right of the box next to the fireplace are scales for daily weighing and a portable heater to increase the temperature right around the puppies for the first few days.
The blue box in front of the scales is where we put the puppies when we change out the bedding in the whelping box. When the puppies outgrow the box, we’ll have a small pen to put the puppies when changing the pads in their living area. It’s important to keep everything clean so that puppies are conditioned to like a clean “den”.
Developmental Information
The average newborn Golden Retriever puppy weighs about 14 ounces. They are totally dependent on their moms. Their eyes and ears are closed and they depend on their already developing sense of smell to find their moms. They cannot walk, but rather scoot around on their bellies.
During these first days, the mom is the primary caretaker. In fact, usually the moms are hesitant to leave the box even for potty breaks. The mom will not only keep them fed, but cleans them as well.
However, newborn puppies need us humans for the best possible chance of surviving and thriving. We take turns keeping watch over the puppies for the first two weeks, including overnight. Puppies are so small at this age that without supervision, it is very common for the mom to accidentally lay on one of them.
We handle them often and start clipping nails weekly at one or two days of age. At least once a day, we weigh them to make sure each one is growing well and getting their share of mom’s milk. We also give them daily probiotics which keeps their digestive system strong.
At three days, we will start ENS (early neurological stimulation). You can read about ENS on our Raising Puppies page .
We ask families to wait until puppies are at least two weeks old before making definite plans and booking flights to pick up puppies. We don’t anticipate loosing any puppies, but it does sometimes happen in those first couple of weeks. We’ve only lost one puppy (ever) after two weeks of age.
We’ll continue keeping you posted on how Tara’s newborn puppies are growing on a weekly basis. See our Available Puppies page to get to pages of Tara’s newborn puppies at other ages.