Pictured below are Sydney’s newborn puppies. Girls are in Light Pink, Dark Pink, Purple, Orange, Green, and Black strips of flannel. Boys are in Blue, Maroon, Black, and Brown. When the puppies are between 1 and 2 weeks, we will put real collars on them. Then at about 5 weeks, we will replace these very small collars with larger ones that are exactly the same as the smaller ones they wear from 2 to 5 weeks of age.
When we have more than one litter here at the same time, we use multi-colored collars on many of the puppies in the second litter born.
The girl currently in light pink will wear a light pink and green collar with lady bugs on it. We’ll be calling her Lady Bug.
The girl in dark pink will wear a black collar with what looks like big bubbles, some of which are pink. We’ll call her Bubbles.
We’ll be calling the girl in green Dotty because she will be in a green collar with dots.
The girl in black will wear a black collar with silver sparkly bones. Her temporary name will be Sparkles.
We’ll be calling the girl in orange Bee because she will be wearing an orange and blue collar with bumble bees on it.
The boy in blue will be in a light blue collar with fire hydrants on it to differentiate him from Paisley’s Mr. Blue. We’ll call him LB (short for Light Blue).
We’ll call the boy in red Stripes because he will move into a red striped collar.
The boys in maroon and brown will simply be called Mr. Maroon and Mr. Brown and will go into solid color maroon and brown collars.
Scroll below the pictures to read more developmental information on newborn puppies.
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. To make sure that each one is growing well and getting their share of mom’s milk, we weigh them daily. 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 Sydney’s newborn puppies are growing on a weekly basis. See our Available Puppies page to get to pages of Sydney’s newborn puppies at other ages.