SPEAKER_01

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Tech Box Podcast. We are here on a Tuesday recording. We thought we might miss it with Dale's Korea adventure, but we made it and uh live from Korea. I mean, it it seemed like we were going that route, didn't it, for a little bit there? Or at least Seattle. Yeah. Yeah. Live from the Trailways bus station in Seattle. I'm on the bus on my way back trying to get back to Texas. You know, like here we go. So at this point now, everybody's probably wondering what we're talking about. So maybe uh before we start talking about weaning, we uh jump in and talk a little bit about your Korean adventure. If people follow you on Facebook, they saw some pictures from your Korea trip, uh, judging. Um, if they don't, well, you missed out. So we'll uh we'll let you know how how did judging in Korea go and talk a little bit about your adventure.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's a beautiful city, and and it's really it's uh was very exciting to see a whole nother culture of people, all purebred dog enthusiasts. One thing that I really kind of caught my attention was uh in the morning I went out running and they had everybody walking dogs, they were all purebreds. I mean, corgis, poodles, bishons, maltese, ashiba in me. And I saw you know a lot of dogs, and they were all purebred dogs because they don't have like uh loose feral dogs running around that nobody officially claims that are having mixed breed puppies. That but the people that were all purebreds and they were all groomed nicely, and I just kind of thought, well, this is pretty cool to see you know how these, you know, how much they appreciated purebred dogs. And uh that was nice.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that was just around your running around your hotel.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, on the trails by the you know, uh, you know, the trails went down through the city. Uh they had a the river and the trails are on each side. I think it's kind of cool is they had public workout areas along the trails, and they had exercise equipment built in there, you know, weight machines and liftacles and uh had a hula hoop station. I don't know if they call it hula hoops, but it's what I would call hula hoop. And people were like doing the hula hoop and and uh yeah, it was a very community fitness type of thing, which was kind of cool. And it was probably every quarter of a mile down the the trail system, and it's like every people in their apartments and all come down to the river and work out, you know, have their have their coffee or tea or whatever in the morning and you know, talk smack and work out, and you know, it was it was it was very interesting and walk their dogs, it was it was very cool. I I I enjoyed seeing all that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that seems interesting. They must not have I guess I don't really know where it's at geography-wise, like winter, it must be warmer weather all the time, like south like Texas and stuff, where you can put that stuff outside and it not be a big deal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, oh well, no, I'm sure they're not going in there and you know, dealing with massive snowfall and then their park is out there. I don't see that. But yeah, I think it's a a bit more tropical. And they're you know, their plants looked a little bit more tropical. I I do think they have seasons, but I think that it's it's it's a more tropical place, and people get to kind of hang outside. But the the shows, uh the shows were were were well attended, and they had some really beautiful dogs, and they're super into grooming and stuff. And I got a grooming and presentation guide, a really cool book, which I'm gonna give to McKenna because she's learning about grooming and had some di have really explicit diagrams on grooming and stuff. I thought was pretty neat. And uh, but uh yeah, that was it was really nice. And the breeds that there was quality in, there was depth of quality, and uh but it was it was pretty and everyone's like pretty cool sport, you know, a lot of bowing. I thank you, thank you. You know, it was very nice. It's you know, had had a we had a good time. And of course the shopping, we'll have to get Jane on so she can talk about the shopping. But there was some uh there's some pretty good shopping. One fun fact if you want to ask for running shoes in Korea, if you're bigger than a size 10, if you need more than a size 10, they look at you like you are some sort of mutant, like they have never even heard of something. Like they not only that's you want 12 cents though. 12? You want 12? Yeah, like you know, and like, no, you know, it's like no such thing as a 12. So if if you if you need over an 11, you're out of luck, you know. So just plan on ordering it. But very cool, they had like really cool uh stores with uh lots of really great running shoes and up to a size 11, your options are off the chain, you know. 12, you're screwed, you know. So but you know, but good to be back home again, and uh, it was you know, ready to ready to to deal with and take care of things here.

SPEAKER_01

Was the show like was this a specialty or of some sort, or was it just a normal show? All breed. All breed.

SPEAKER_00

What were they were the entries comparable to what we would have here as a show or yeah, you know, it was like a comparable to a um one of our small local shows. Yeah, I think they had four judges. They have they do junior puppy and then like an intermediate puppy. The junior puppies don't compete for uh best of breed or winner's dog, winner's bitch, and the uh but the the next class up puppy, the graduate or whatever, they can compete, and then they have like the champions and stuff. So it it was a little something, but uh one thing about those shows is they the stewards do everything, right? So it's like really simple how that the stewards got they got you covered, right? You know, of course each morning I did about one fun thing if I ever go back to that, I'm gonna get a signature stamp because I signed about a hundred and fifty pages and cards each day. You know, so I mean that they but the stewards have it all filled out and all the ribbons out there and they just give it to you and you're like thank you, and you're like, thank you, and you know, and off you go. But and they it's in much the same way as what we do with our uh you know, switching the judges around, it's like you did this to this, and then that this to that. You know, they c I think that that was kind of uh you know, the the the same with that is like you would be doing one thing and then move over to the next. This was this was my uh best minor puppy in show, little bedlington terrier puppy.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Very, very cool. I mean, not very many bedlingtons, but quality. And then my best in show was uh black and tan American cocker. Which, you know, super beautiful. Yeah, and uh but uh yeah, it was it was nice, it was fun.

SPEAKER_01

It's different system, you know, so you get you know, different different way of doing some of the stuff, and you know, I thought it was there a language barrier at all for you in in any of that, or wasn't did they speak good enough English that you could get it?

SPEAKER_00

There were plenty of people that spoke pretty good English that kinda you could you know could kind of make it through. And then of course, you know, charades will get you a long way, you know. I mean, you know, you know, you know, show me the bite. You know, like got it, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, it was restaurant foods, did you run across anything? You're like, oh wow, that's great.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, well, that would be a kind of like a individual type of thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So on the vegetarian aspect, that was okay. I was different. It was different. There was things, uh lots of stuff, you know, it's like, you know, it was kind of like this or possibly fry it, you know. But it it was it was different. It was educational. You got to, you know, see different things and you know starve to death. No, I didn't lose any weight. So hey, you know, there there was certainly more than enough food there and stuff, but it was it was different. If if you're a sushi person, they got which I thought I really knew what sushi was. I had no really idea that that like, wow, that's that's that's Olympic type of sushi, you know. That's that's really raw. It probably swam its way to the table. Um, but uh it was it was good. It was the plenty of good food. The people were fabulous, and we had a fantastic host, uh hostess Helen Kim, and she made sure that we were had a good time and put a lot of work into it. There's like always that one person for the Kennel Club that like makes it happen, and that's Helen, and she makes it look easy, but it's not.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, overall, you got back after some delays and cancel flights and all the things, but you made it back, and you know, now you can look back at it and be like, well, hey, here's what was awesome about it, and hopefully tune out the delays and cancellations.

SPEAKER_00

Travel is travel, and you know, I mean, and yes, like you know, I'm not want to do a lot of public lamenting on travel, but you know, you gotta have your have your ducks in a row and then just kind of gotta roll with it. Yeah, so it we had like th three fight cancellations and involved three different airlines getting back home, and sure, it was 30 hours, you know, but uh you know, just have to kind of roll with the punches and kind of see where it goes on that. And you just kind of go, well, okay, that's what that looks like. We may be spending the day or two in Seattle or you know, drop us off at the Greyhound uh bus station or whatever. But once we got you know, got back into the United States, you kind of go, okay, I'm here. I'm back on native soil, we'll figure this out, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, then it's like, well, we can rent a car and drive, we can get on a bus, we can, you know, whatever we gotta do.

SPEAKER_00

We should never whatever we gotta do. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how I I think about people traveling with animals, and I think, you know, that could be a special kind of uh exciting, you know. I mean, if you're like, you know, flying with that with animals and stuff like that, that could be challenging and yet exciting, you know. Or kids, good lord. Yeah, yeah. There was one little there was one little bundle of love that was like about 10 seats behind us on the way out, and like going, oh, okay, well, out go the hearing aids, in go the ear pods, then the headset, and we're gonna crank it up.

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's like noise cancellation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's like isn't that cute? You know, looks just like you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, that well, he got through it, and here we are on Tuesday, ready to get back to normal and and record the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

So we're gonna shoot for whatever normal looks like.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. So today we're we're gonna talk about uh weaning and everything weaning that that Dale knows and tips and tricks that he has, and we have some listener questions on weaning, but why don't we start with uh just talking about weaning in general and how important that is, or how it's you know, one of the big stressors of of puppy raising and how vital it is to the process of getting puppies weaned and ready to go home.

SPEAKER_00

Here's the magic about weaning. Do not name a puppy until you have it weaned. Unless you need like a unless you need uh something to put on this little marker, you know. Don't don't get attached, don't decide it's your heart dog, don't decide anything until you got it weaned because the you know, you get them born, that's the first hurdle. The next the next big uh challenge is getting them weaned. And toy breeds are come in with a whole nother set of challenges with the weaning. And and that's where that's where you need to be consistent, you need to be breed specific, you need to be puppy specific, and really look at where that is going as far as that. And a lot of people, and I say this with love, are just damn lazy about weaning. And when you are lazy are lazy about that, well, I just leave it with the mama until it's like, well, that's great, because she's no longer giving milk. She's eating all of the slop you're trying to get the baby to eat. So your your bitch in the meantime is getting hog fat and she's knocking the puppies around. Some breeds are better with puppies than others, but they're really not offering anything to the feeding and development of the puppies. So you the better job you do on weaning and the more aggressive you are on getting the puppies weaned, the better off you're the better off for that puppy. And that's the sooner you get weaned and get solid on food, the sooner you're gonna be able to either re-home or do next step with that puppy, like come up with a snake.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And is it the same, is it's what we've talked about before, right? Is like welping and weaning. And so what are some of your tips to successful weaning? Yeah, it's like we you just talked about you know, being agreed being a little aggressive with weaning, but is it really breed specific on, you know, are you starting at four weeks old with some mush or whatever people would call it and what they're making up, or do you just I know some people just put food in there and oh, the puppies just figure it out. They just learn from their mom and how to eat food. And, you know, there's so many different processes to to weaning.

SPEAKER_00

Well, so some breeds are stronger weaners than others. Like just saying, even breeds that can be a similar size can be way different. Weaning is not a one size fits all. There's certain weaning protocols that go to your breed, and then you're going to have to adjust that within your breed as to your litter size, the size of your puppies, how strong they are, and what your setup and situation is. So, like if you compare weaning cocker spaniel puppies to cavalier King Charles spaniel puppies, very different. Though, even though they're roughly the same size, they and they're spaniels, and you think, oh, well, spaniel is a spaniel. It's you know, 18 pounds is 18 pounds. No. The cavalier puppies are way harder to get weaned than the cocker puppies. And they are way more infantile, they will go down in hypoglycemia, they will stress, all of that stuff. So, you know, you have to kind of know your breed a little bit. But I will say one thing that is like that is like kind of a little steadfast rule that we start to do with on like the Spaniels, like the Cavaliers and stuff, is at six weeks of age, the moms are away from the puppies all day long. So we take them out and then you know, and we don't put them back in till right before bed. So they have to like make it through the day without mom. But mom isn't she's starting to dry up. And not only that, mom's bowel movements are an epic amount of poop into the puppy area that you know, because we're while you're weaning, you're also trying to not have them get infected with coccidiosis and giardia, which is way harder than people say. Every time, you know, every time someone says something like, Oh, I got a puppy, and it had coccidia or giardia, and those breeders, they must have been dirty, terrible people. Like, newsflash, it's really hard because the mom is cleaning the puppies, and if she gets into the puppy food, she's eating like she's condemned. Well, you've got like this epic amount of poop, and the moms are cleaning their poop, and so it's a little bit natural for the puppies to go after the mom's poop. I mean, so you got this little poop festival going on here, and you're trying like, no, no, no, no festival. You're gonna go here, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna separate you guys from here and try to keep everybody from getting into each other's poop. Because it's not totally un canine to have interest in the poop, especially during the weaning process. You know, once the puppies no longer have milk poop, the moms aren't as interested in still cleaning it. You know, but it's you want you want to keep the mom's poop away from the puppies because they are going to have interest in it. And if they do get into that, you're going to then have uh you're gonna have coccidiosis. And then, of course, while you've got this mega shit fest going on here, you know, if anybody steps in that and then gets into the water, now we've got Giardia. You know, here we go. So it's super easy when you've got like you got the because you were these are still babies and they're fragile, and we're having to keep them in from weather. Like it can't be, they can't be in a hundred degrees and they can't be in cold. So we're gonna have to uh climate control it. In the meantime, you know, then we're also gonna have to keep them in a we're trying to teach them to go out to the side to go to the bathroom. And somebody's always gonna be having an accident, and you know, and so you clean something and it's clean for about as long as it takes for you to carry the laundry over to the washer, and then all of a sudden there's another poop. And you're bigger, you're litter, just it goes times however many, times six puppies, you know. So it's a lot more to it than claim, you know, meets the eye. So whenever, you know, in a vet or or someone goes ahead and says something like, oh, well, there was Cox City, or there was Giardia, well, they just didn't keep it clean enough, I'm like, you do it. Show me how you're gonna do this better, because it's hard and it and they're not working with you, they're making it as hard as humanly possible. So once you figure it out, because once you've got the feeding kind of figured out, then you can kind of figure out the going to the bathroom, and then you can kind of start working that in a schedule. One thing like with like with the cavaliers, we're in what we've been doing now is we've been mostly weaning onto dry food, which is less messy and less it's easier to keep them onto than you know. Sometimes you have to do soft food. That's a you know, sometimes, and that's kind of the that's kind of the old way of thinking, like we can go ahead and just take some of the food and add some hot water to it and stir in some canned food and make this gruel slop mush, the mix the magic puppy mixture, which is disgusting. And uh, but that's okay, but now today we have new better dry food that's like weaning formula. We, you know, and the bites are smaller, they're they've got more cakeals, less likely to cause sloppy poops, you know, and then you know, a little bit more delicious and easy to get them onto. One thing that when you start with your weaning on like a a a little bit larger dog, when you're talking like a tiny chihuahua, a Japanese chin, a papillon, something that's very little, those dogs need a more steady uh steady supply of blood sugar and food. You know, but like when you're talking about like a spaniel or something a little bigger, you can be a little bit harder core and you can put the food down and then pick it up and take it away and kind of condition them to eat when you're putting the food down. But you if that's work, it's breeze specific.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

How have you done with your chin puppies weaning?

SPEAKER_01

I I feel like I've tried every different way under the book because every litter kind of gives you something different that you're just like, well, that worked for this litter. So then you try it on the next one, and it's like, oh, that's not working. Or you'll have a litter of three puppies, and it's like at four weeks or five weeks, one of them's like, I want to eat this food, and the other two are still just want nothing, you know. Some the other two are still trying to nurse on mom at nine weeks, you know, is this like they it's it throws a curveball every time. So I don't know that there's necessarily that I found this a way that is like, this is the law, this is the golden rule of how you do it, you know, and it's just you know, and then sometimes you know, I guess here would be a question that I would have, but also goes into one of the listener questions too. Is from your experiences, have you ever noticed it's different based on litter size? So like is a singleton harder or two puppies harder to wean than a litter of five or six where they're learning from their their their litter mates?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, that's a that's a pretty reasonably honest upright question. The a bigger litter, true, they will stimulate each other into eating. Because one of the best ways to make puppies eat is when they are competition eating with the other puppies. If you want It, I want it more. It's that theory. So that is yes, that does. But the bigger your litter, the more you have to pay attention on each individual puppy. Because it's super easy because you're like, everything's going good, and you look away because your car has a recall, your washing machine quit, you had to run someone over to the doctor's office, and you looked away and you go, Oh, that puppy didn't. You put the food in there and you didn't see that five of them ate really great, but you didn't catch that the one didn't. And it's like that fast. And you come back and it's in hypoglycemia. And you're like, well, wow, I'm the worst person ever. I miss that. And it's because it's like you you've got all individual, when you have like one or two puppies, yeah, you probably pay more attention to them and you are more in tune to what they're doing. When you have a litter, a little bit you're like just tending to the masses, and you're probably not doing as much individually watching them. But you really have to kind of watch out. It's like this puppy is taking to food. Okay, that's great. So we're gonna start making it, but this puppy's not. I feel as though that in weaning, especially the true toys, which I consider the true toys to be breeds that are a single digit in weight. The true toys, you have to be kind of careful because while you don't really ever get to do tough love with them, like if you had Labrador Retriever puppies, they're gonna eat. They're gonna this, you know, and if they don't, if they miss a meal, they're gonna be fine. You know, they'll catch it up on the next one. Your, your, your little chin puppy, if they miss a meal, it's probably dead by the next one. So you have to go ahead and be aware that some of them are gonna wean off faster than others. And I think there's a sometimes a degree of liver shunt that they're having to overcome as they go from milk onto solid food. And I think that's where a lot of times people, when they think of what do we do to try to help them to eat, well, let's go ahead and start mixing in meat and canned and all of this stuff, which is just bombarding them with even more protein. And so if they can get their protein from carbohydrates, I think that that's that is so much better for them digestively. You're gonna get better poops, better stools, stronger puppies. So you really want to try to keep their blood sugar up through carbs and not just like load them up on massive amounts of protein. So that's kind of like you know, when we were talking about like with the chin and stuff, and the the Schwa was using the captain crunch and just stuff to keep them eating and they'll and they will, you know, keeping their blood sugar up and keeping carbs in them and keeping them digestively strong because it doesn't help you if they're eating a lot of slop and then just gonna blast it out in a big ooey gooey poo. It's not sticking with them, it's they're they're pooping too soon and it's just going right through them. So we start like on the Cavaliers. I said, we pull the moms out six weeks, make them spend the day without, put food in, take food out, put food in, take food out. One of them one of my friends kind of got me started on that. Jamie is was she's hardcore on that because sometimes I'll get lazy and I'll just left the food in all day. You know, it's like I got busy, I didn't take it out. You know, you need to take it out, you need to keep to the schedule because you're teaching them to eat, and you can teach to be little shitheads too, and not and play with the food and spill it all over and go to the bathroom and next thing now you're cleaning up, you know, you when you buy that expensive weaning formula feed and you don't want to be throwing it away and vacuuming it up, it's it's expensive to buy, and you really want them just to eat it. So try to have it in and then take it back. And one thing, like when you're sending a puppy home and it's you've got it weaned solid and it's eating good. I don't want a puppy to go home like on a cavalier or a cocker. I want them to be weaned for a solid two weeks, like solid, no anything to do with mom or anything like that. So if they can go home at 10 weeks, that's that's good. They've had, you know, they're into their shots, they're solid onto their weaning. On littler breeds, smaller breeds, true toys, I really think you need 12. You really need to have them 12 weeks solid weaned before you even 12 weeks, two pounds is kind of always been our rule of thumb that you've got a good shot at them taking them and not killing them at especially if they have to travel and do something stressful, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Like if you're selling them local, that's one thing, but if they have a long car ride or a flight, it's like I mean, you're gonna send them through a stressful event. And if they are fragile in any way, shape, or form, that's gonna push them over the edge for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Traveling is stressful on us. Imagine how it is on a two-pound puppy. You should have seen it when they were telling me you're not getting on that flight. I know we have your baggage. We know we're, you know, there is no other flight going out of here. But sorry. Yeah, no, it's stressful. It's stressful. And so imagine puppies, you know, they're they're traveling, they're everything's changing, they're their schedule's off, you know, they're not going to the bathroom. It's it's a it's a it's a rough time for them. So keeping records of that as far as like when you start, you know, so like on our shock carts, we'll have you're gonna do the four, you know, 21 days, the internal, six weeks for the six week shot, and then the wormings, and then six weeks, mom starts spending the day away. You know, at my and and you need and look and see, because if you have a couple of super little dinkies that are like way smaller, especially if they maybe have a little open spot in their head, you know, you might have to kind of adjust that a little bit because it's not one size fits all, because not every puppy is exactly the same as the other. But, you know, and sometimes I'll go ahead and say, well, we're gonna take these away from mom. Maybe we'll leave this one with the mom. And I've even occasionally, if I've had some like little hineies that, you know, I've even taken them and maybe put them with a litter that's a few weeks younger, you know, you know, just to kind of give them a they can, hey, you can be a bigger fish in this pond, you know. But, you know, you really have to start working on that. And you start with along with the weaning. I said I don't think you can talk about weaning without treating for without talking about cocidia and giardia, because those are the those those are the two big problems we have with weaning puppies and sending puppies into their new home is dealing with coccidia, dealing with gyardia, and getting those puppies to eat through that transitionary period.

SPEAKER_01

So how do you deal with it? And how do you know if you have it?

SPEAKER_00

So I think you can just pretty much know that if you have a bunch of puppies in an area and they're going out to potty and they're all you know, I mean, there's no way you can keep them from getting into the poop 100%. So I preventatively treat them. You know, I'll treat them, you know, I'll treat them a uh a few days on, a few days off up through the weaning process. I'll preventatively treat them, uh, you know, along with our worming protocol. You know, there's there's a couple of different uh a couple of different things and and we can share that uh you can share that later on with that and stuff, but you know, we we'd actually do a a mixture of you know the of fimbendazole and metronizinol and stuff. Then Jane makes it up with uh chicken flavoring and stuff, and so it's not super yucky. It's a little yucky, but it's not super yucky. And while they're reading those puppies, you're you're treating them just to kind of stay ahead of that. Keep you keep it as clean as humanly possible. And sometimes like if I have like a really big litter, I'll start to break them up. You know, because I have in my nursery, I have like, you know, so I like I don't really if you you know, if you say I had I've had some litters of like eight and nine and I'll like put them in bunches of three, you know, whereas because it just it keeps them healthier, it makes them you know, keeps them keeps the poop exposure lower, keeps it where you can, you know, space, spaces your friend, and then staying ahead of that is is imperative. Litter box training on little tinies, on small breed dogs like chin and chihuahuas, these single-digit toys, really important, you know, because if you put that litter box in there and they start pottying that, you can localize it, you can stay on it, you can keep it cleaner, and and you know, it's l less likely for them to infect and walk in it and then get it into their water, and then you know, to go around it right on into Giardia land.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the the questions that we had is how do you handle when a puppy starts weaning, mom starts backing off, not wanting much to do with the puppy, and then all of a sudden the puppy decides to stop eating.

SPEAKER_00

That's that just sucks, and that happens all the time. So when mom is kind of when she'll kind of tell you when she's done, and when she's done, she's kind of done. And there's really not a lot you can do, you know, because you know how when we're talking about when they're firstborn and maybe their hormones haven't kicked in and their milk is just coming in, and you could there's things you can do to bring milk in. Sometimes you have to hold the moms down, let the puppies nurse and all that. Weaning when they're walking away, they're kind of done. So if the puppy hasn't done the transition hurdle on its own well enough to go the next step, keeping her in there as a hostile witness is not helping. You know, she's not gonna all of a sudden go, yeah, I'm really fond of this puppy, and I'm gonna try harder. That's not how it works. So, what you then at that point, what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to supplement feed. And sometimes what we'll do is we'll mix up like brown sugar honey uh oatmeal and with the syringe, cut the end of it off and like start syringe feeding them, making sure that you see them taking in and eating, keeping their blood sugar and their carbs up. If you because if you can get them to eat and get them to process it, they'll get hungry and they're gonna go ahead. Otherwise, if it doesn't work with toys to do that, we're gonna fast them out, get them hungry, and then we'll put the food in there. Toys will just go, I think I'm gonna die. And that's in and their little blood sugar will fall, and they'll just be like a little wind-up toy that the batteries are going dead on, and all of a sudden, and it's not they're not gonna get hungry and decide, I'm gonna go eat. They're gonna be like, I'm gonna die, you know. So that's when you tip the scales of fate and you start feeding them. I like say on a chin puppy, I would say about 10 to 12 PCs of oatmeal, maybe every uh four hours, five hours, you know, just kind of feed them until they get hungry. Anyone wants to see the video of that? I I've got a video I send out of Jane Tan feeding cavalier puppies. But those sometimes when you have those littler puppies, you just have to get them going, kind of like bump them up, you know, get them to like kickstart their little thing where they're you know, and as soon as they start processing that and it's going through them, they're gonna get stronger, their blood sugars and gets is gonna go up and be more stabilized, and they're gonna get hungry and they'll eat. When you've had something that you have fed, had to supplement feed, plan on adding a month to its pickup date. So if you were thinking about letting it go at 10 weeks and you had to hand feed it, wait till it's 14 weeks because those puppies are more fragile in their constitution, and you could knock them back, they could take a stress hit and go right back off on that. So, you know, that that you know, that's where you can, you know, you might have to supplement them, and then as you're putting food in, taking the dry food, like we we uh we're like in the uh Nutrasource starter, but there's all sorts of starter. There's Royal Canaan has a nice starter, you put uh Pyramid ProPlant has a nice puppy starter, you know, it's expensive, but it's good. And and you know, so you go ahead and do that. Then when I send those puppies home with the starter and stuff, and they're eating strong, and I had not had to do that, then you've got if they don't eat without litter mates or they're stressed, if you go ahead and you have some tricks and some magic you can throw out, you can say, Well, you can break out some canned food, you can break out some little Caesars, you can give them a little grilled chicken, shred it up on it, because you've got those tricks. If you're using all of that as the your everyday type of feeding, those puppies really aren't weaned to go because there's no tricks to boost them. Because if they if that they fall off of that, then that you are just down to only hand feeding. And I find that civilians are not good at hand feeding puppies. And I'm amazed and a little bit disappointed how many vets are not really aware of of how easy and how important it is to hand feed them if they if they're not eating. You know, it's just kind of like, well, the blood sugar's down, we're gonna go ahead and hit them with some dextrose and and that'll make them eat again. It's almost like you have to train them to take the food because when they have that that hypoglycemic ins incident, they all of a sudden become a little almost like they're upset and their stomach's off and they become like food repulsed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna say like that that was kind of the next question is like w what causes a puppy that's like eating hard food, drinking water, to then all of a sudden just be like, I don't want to eat anymore and stop eating.

SPEAKER_00

It can be anything. You can just a minor change, a little upset that can be like, you know, you put them out to go, you put them out to play for 15 minutes longer, and they just or or something anything happens and they just it change. Change is what does it in. You know, change is whenever you're changing something with the animals, that's when you really have to be diligent, you know, because it's like one of my friends always said, you can leave a horse in a pasture for 25 years and nothing will happen. And you put them in a new pasture, and in three hours they're gonna have stepped on a nail and cut themselves on a fence, and you'll have, you know, they'll, you know, da-da-da-da. And it's true, you know, you can go along a long time right here, but then you change it up and you have new potential for problems to arise. And it doesn't have to take much, and especially the smaller they are, the more susceptible, more fra you know, delicate they are to that change.

SPEAKER_01

So is that an all-puppy thing?

SPEAKER_00

Like all puppies get weird with change, or is it more like the more than the smaller and more fragile your puppies, the more susceptible you are to problems with the change. And it depends as to how the change might affect their digestive systems. Uh, you know, I mean, if they have if they have a little bit of of uh kennel cough, a urea upper respiratory infection, that can make them feel bad. Just enough. Just enough to have, you know, to make them not hungry enough, and then they don't eat, and then they go into that, start to slide into that, and then they don't feel like eating. You know, it could be it could be a shot reaction. It could be it could be anything like that. It can any change, you know, could be a little bump in the road. And you just have to be kind of there to say, okay, we're going through the little change and we're gonna supplement you through that, and you're gonna be okay. And the better you are at that, the more successful you'll be with that. Yeah, stronger your breeds are, the less you have to do with that. You know.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, that's or if you're like me and you just choose fragile breed, you know, you're gonna be able to do that. You just have a thing for things all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. You're just like you, you're you're big into you're into I need fra you know, you know, like I need a lot, you know. I mean, yeah. That and that's those are the those are the breed a lot of those breeds, like anything brachycephalic, anything small, you know, anything like that, it's you have a higher potential of that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, now it's kind of like so you you had mentioned earlier, you know, it's like I'll take a puppy and put it into, you know, with a different litter, and it can kind of be a bigger fish in the pond. And I think a lot of breeders can mix and match litters around, you know, sometimes in how you do it. And you know, what I did, I had two, I had two singleton litters. And so as the puppies got older, you know, I was like, how can I make this easier? Let's put the puppies together. You know, well, there you just went and completely changed both of their worlds, and now you go from puppy being a lazy pile that just lays around all day, eats, lays around, and sleeps, to now I have another puppy in here that's chewing on me and chasing me and playing with me, and now I'm burning more calories, and I can crash way faster, and I'm not used to, you know, now I need to eat that much more, that much more often, because I have this other energetic puppy chasing me around wanting to play, you know. So it's like there's there's a lot of factors that can go into that. And that kind of makes sense of what you said, you know, he's like you change their world, and you think you don't you don't think about those things when you're doing it, you just think like, hey, this is gonna be better for everybody. We're gonna put these two singleton letters together, they're old enough to be together. Like they can play, they can have somebody, they can learn from each other, and then all of a sudden now you have a puppy that's not eating. And it's like, why did this puppy stop eating? You know?

SPEAKER_00

Because puppy number two was feeling a little bit more zippy and decided, hey, let's play. I'm gonna pull your tail in a circle and drag you around the box for an hour or so. That would be great fun for me. It sucks a little bit for puppy number one. Yeah, you know, I mean, and the thing with the with puppies and baby babies, and especially you know, the toy breeds and smaller ones, you've got to keep their world small. You've got to keep their world small so you can you can maintain their little terrarium type of existence. You know, if you have Australian Shepherd puppies, you throw those little suckers out and they are gonna go find stuff and they'll be tearing up bales of hay. And I I love seeing my friends' large breed puppies, and they're just like doing stuff, you know, and my puppies are still like in in the terrarium in the little birdcage, like, you know, going today. I I played with my toy for three minutes, you know, like woo-hoo, you know, and I made it into the litter box by myself. You know, that it's just a it's a very different. So we, you know, when people get a new puppy, and this happens with Cavaliers kind of often, it's 10 weeks old, it's been going in and out, but in a controlled area, and it's used to being put down for naps and all that, and they take it home and their kids are excited, everyone's excited. We got the I all the time. I always say, keep the world small, add to it gradually. It's a baby, it's a baby, and they're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And you get and they send you over this video of that puppy running as fast as it can, chasing the kids, and they're screaming, they're laughing and loving life, and you're like, it you just you can just see the little odometer on the puppy. It's like, and you're like, I hope it eats. I hope it eats because it is burning through major blood sugar calories.

SPEAKER_01

That's what we see as breeders, right? We like we get those videos, and they you know, they want to show us like how happy the puppy is, and my family's so happy for the puppy. Thank you so much, it's so cute. And you want to be like, yes, it's so cute. I'm so glad it's fitting in and you guys love it. But the only thing we can think is it's gonna crash, it's gonna crash, it's gonna crash.

SPEAKER_00

It's going down. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, what time is it right now? They're gonna be calling in a few, they're gonna be calling in eight hours. It's at the vet clinic, they've just tested it for parvo. It it won't move, and it's like going, yeah, because it's got like a blood sugar of 12. You know, I mean, it's it's it's sane because they're just burning. It usually takes about two days to knock a fat, healthy, weaned puppy off its game because somebody didn't give. Enough supportive care in the transition from the litter care unit to the individual pet at home. And that's where you, as breeders, you know, even though they think we're just all such assholes all the time and that we're just the killer of dreams, and we're like, no, no, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. You know, it's because when it goes badly and everything falls to shit, and the puppy's not eating, and it's vomiting now, and it's got hypoglycemia, and they're rushing it to the emergency vet because they've waited till their vet closed, and so now they're gonna have to go to the after hours clinic where they're gonna charge them thousands of dollars per hour. It's your fault. So it's your fault. You're responsible for it. You're the one that's you're the one who di is disappointing the family and you're gonna ruin their chis their children's childhood, and it's your fault. And they're gonna come back to you, say, I only had the dog for I only had the judge, judge, I only had the dog for 36 hours, and then I spent ten thousand dollars at the emergency clinic. And they're like, Well, that's a bad breeder. Well, what your mistake was was you sent out something that wasn't as solid as it needed to be for that set of families. So in addition to looking at the puppy and where it's at, you have to look at the family. How many kids they got? I love kids. I was a kid once. I think they're great. Everybody else should have some. But and they're great for puppies. The puppies that are weaned and ready. You know, because they don't have kids don't have the understanding of of what it's like to be a baby and what it's like, you know, to do that. So if the parents don't have that understanding, then you as the breeder need to say, you're gonna have to wait till it's 16 weeks old. I'm sorry. I know it's gonna miss the birthday party and this and that and all that, but the puppy doesn't really need that. And when it goes bad and it could, you're gonna get the call and you're gonna be responsible and you're gonna feel really bad that the puppy had to go through all that and maybe died, and then they're gonna go and they're gonna be unhappy with you because now you suck. And it all comes down to being your fault. So better just to be better just to be hated up front and say, no, it's not ready for all that. You know, you're just gonna have to wait. And that's kind of that's where you are, because you have to be the one to see around the corners and say, this is not wean to your situation. This is weing to the situation of you have a pack and play, you take it out, you hold it, let it go potty, but you sit and watch TV with it. If you have that home, then they can take that puppy younger because they're gonna continue on with it the way you were doing with it, and it's not a total shock. Sometimes I'll go ahead and say, Yeah, that's great. I don't believe a word you're saying. I would need you to text me a picture of your pack and play and the puppy food and your outside play pen. As I I want to see it, because I think you're not listening to me, and I don't think you have it for the puppy, and the puppy needs to have it, and I'm not sending it until I know you have it. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

You know, and you know, that's one of the hard parts of weaning, too, is not even just like even with the puppy. It's like it's dealing with the potential buyers as well, because it's like, yeah, I think this puppy's gonna be weaned around 12 weeks and ready to go home. Give or take a week or two, you know, you know, I just give my vacation. Yeah. Now, since you said that's promised. Okay, so yeah, you know, so it it's gonna be 12 weeks. Okay, perfect. Yeah, perfect, yeah. So, you know, we're gonna go to Maui and you know, we're gonna get this puppy, and then you know, 11 weeks comes along, and you're just like, this puppy's not ready, and then you're the worst person in the world because well I had my big I was planning on getting this puppy, and my family's coming to town to see this puppy and give it hypoglycemia. And you know, like it's all it's all planned around this 12 weeks that you told me. You're awful. You told me this. Promised. You promised me. And now I gotta change my flights and all the things, and you know, it's like, well, yeah, but the puppy's not ready. Do you want a dead puppy and an alive puppy?

SPEAKER_00

Well, and so this is part of the thing. It's like that's something I always kind of uh you know, always kind of admired that Jane did is up front. It's up front. You say, you know, when is it gonna be ready? It's 10 weeks there. We'll circle back at eight weeks and I'll tell you if it's gonna be ready to go. Because it's a baby and they don't come with a manual. I don't know for a for a hundred percent fact for you to uh schedule your vacation and building a new house and all of this other stuff. I can't swear to you it's gonna be because the puppy doesn't have gauges. It doesn't, you know, you don't know for a hundred percent sure. Statistically speaking, probably will be ready. So that's why when you're making these, you're making these in the future obligations, leave yourself a caveat of check back at such and such, and also with the idea of like sometimes some will win wean small you know slower than others. And and then the other thing is like you're gonna maintain it the way I did because it won't be ready for that. If you want to wait and you want me to keep it an extra month, you know, if you don't want to have a pack and play and you don't want to have a little yard pen for it, then let me keep it an extra month. Then, you know, because it could be weaned to your situation at that point.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Up for it's like I don't even mind keeping them a little bit longer. If it's like 14 weeks is better for you, perfect for me. Like I would rather keep the puppy two weeks longer and make sure that it's thriving before we risk that. Because I don't think there's anything worse than sending a puppy to somebody and they have problems with it, whether it's hypoglycemia and they can recover it or death. Yeah. Like, I mean, that's last year.

SPEAKER_00

It's super stressful. It's super stressful. And it's super stressful. And then when especially like when they don't tell you if you it's part of part of, you know, I think today's society none of us want to actually talk because that's just too much trouble. It's just so much better if I can text you. Yeah. And and like, oh, I don't want to call them. I don't want to call them and say the puppy's not eating. Well, just such and such. And you da da da. And then they wait, and that's like, and you think, and you think no news is good news. You know, no news is good news. So along with that protocol of telling them on the dates and that make a make a protocol of the next day after those puppies go home, you shooting them a text. Is the puppy weaning? Sure they think that you're a psycho control freak. Yeah. They think you are a nut. Fine, it's okay. But you're a caring, responsible nut that is ultimately responsible for the vet bill when it goes badly. And you text them in the morning, is the puppy eating? Because the sooner you address these issues, you have options. You know, you have choices, you know, and the closer you get up to the problem, you begin, those options go away. Yeah. You know. So follow up that follow-up text, really good thing. Next morning, puppy eating, you know. How you know, what's the stools look like? You know, and I'm not above asking, send me a video of the puppy eating. You know, send me a picture of the soul. I have poop pictures in my phone. I want to see the poop. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, how is it just not not everybody this is gonna sound weird, but not everybody knows what poop looks like. You know, it's like, nope. We might we as breeders who see puppy poop all the time can spot something in the poop if we if it looks weird, it's like, ooh, that's looking a little runny, or that's you know, that that's this like the color's not right, or I see the color. Yeah, and you know, normal puppy buyers, you know, they just get a well, it has poop coming out. Well, yeah, but that's not good poop, you know. Like we can identify something and help correct it before it gets out of control. Um, you know, that that's that's in my protocol, is like I like the next day text and then I like a week follow-up. And generally you're gonna hear from them, you know, they're excited, they want to share the information with you. So it's like first three days-ish, you get commute, you know, pretty decent communication, and if you can keep that, you know, and and centered around making sure the puppy's eating and stuff like that. It's like you're pretty good after that.

SPEAKER_00

If they can make it 72 hours without without crashing them, you are kind of almost out of the woods. You I mean, you have really if they can make it 72 hours, you know, you are you have a you have it's like you're almost there. You are like running for the finish line. And uh because that poop, you know, it's like if you ever want to get uh, you know, 500 likes and comments, share a picture of good puppy poop on Facebook. People breeder the yay, it's because it's the tea leaves of the puppy's health. You can tell exactly how good or how bad it's going by the poop. And uh, you know, so I mean it's it's just important, you know. So, you know, you f follow up on that. There's a lot you can do with that, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, and that's just I mean, with anything in life, good communication is key. So communicate with your buyers before the puppy goes home as well as after. And you can really help, you know, the the the fate of the puppy going so anything else you want to add to weaning? I think we answered the the listener questions that we had about it. We talked about the vitalness of it. The apple cinnamon oatmeal thing is a good thing. You know, that was a that was kind of a point for me. I was like, huh, never thought about apple cinnamon, you know, yeah, or brown sugar cinnamon, you know, oatmeal, you know, as a good fit food. And so that was a that was a cool one.

SPEAKER_00

I think keeping your records on your litter, and I think keeping your you will find that puppies out of a certain bitch will, you know, of course, there's always room for change. And everything, every time you think there's a pattern, they're like it'll out the window. But, you know, keeping an eye on that and stuff, the more, the more you keep on on that is just imperative. So you can kind of like see making notes like this these weaned off without issue, this, this, this, this, because all of those things are hereditary and and are reproductively important to your program. And so when you want to add to them, as we talk about all these things over here, you know, puppies that wean strong are strong. Puppies that puppies that develop quicker and stuff, that is a strength and that is a quality you want to breed for. And puppies that go into food quicker, yeah, it's you know, because I think a lot of times we tend to fall in love with the things that need us. Like it's like it becomes your heart dog. Or it's like, oh, I love this one. It's like, and granted, whenever you start to really vest yourself into a puppy, and you're like pulling for it, and you're doing all this stuff to keep it, you know, like live, live, live, you get attached. And uh, because we feed the things we love. And but don't kid yourself if you don't, if you're thinking you're keeping that back to add into your breeding program, and you don't think that you're gonna be seeing that difficulty perpetuated and exacerbated in future generations, and if you get it going on all parts of your pedigrees, you could end up with some real nightmares, and you can lose all your productivity and stuff like that. So all of that is very hereditary. So keep that in mind when you're keeping back for your program. It's like, where do I where do I want this to go? Because it's challenging enough with strong. You know, you don't need to, you don't need to try for weaker. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

All right. I think that'll wrap us up with this episode of the Tack Box Podcast, episode 65. We are cruising right along, getting through this, getting to the the summer here. Things are progressing, we're moving forward. The podcast is doing awesome. So we appreciate each and every one of you guys here. Are you you you're getting ready to enter a show to exhibit? Is that what I'm gathering?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Dallas. Dallas closes tomorrow. So if I still remember how to enter a dog show, I am going to enter a dog show. Very excited. Nice. Chin and Cavalier or just Chin. No, I haven't messed out it. Now you you know, I'm gonna have to think on that some more.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you have until tomorrow. So I have until tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00

I'm asleep.

SPEAKER_01

What is it? What is it at the in in this? Is it one o'clock in this time zone? I don't even know. Like when shows close. I'm so new here.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's well, no, it's central for like on a frail and stuff. I was like, it would be central time zone, and that's what we are. So it would be 12. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So there you go. Yeah. I always just look at it. Yeah. So there we go. All right, everybody. So Dale's getting ready to exhibit again. That's great. Having fun. We'll wrap up this episode of the TAC Box Podcast. Thanks for being the best part of the listeners. We appreciate each and every one of you. Like our podcast, subscribe, leave us a review, and just let us know what you think. Uh, until we talk to you guys uh next week. Have a great day. Bye bye now.