Puppy H has now come back up to her birth weight of 8.3 oz, up from a somewhat worrisome low of 7.4 oz. I’ve never had a puppy so slow to gain — except one who died — so I was a little concerned. But I’ve seen enough puppies by now to really think she looked okay. I think she just worked too hard to nurse before Kenya’s milk really came in, and then didn’t have the strength for the vigorous nursing that would have got her going after Kenya was finally set to feed her properly. I tube-fed her every five hours yesterday, goat’s milk Esbilac, and that supplementary nutrition that she didn’t have to work for seems to have done the trick. Hopefully I will now be able to retire the feeding tube!
So, how about Hadiyya? (“Gift”) She isn’t much of a gift, though, since I could perfectly well have gone to the best breeder in the country and bought their best available girl puppy, for what these two attempted litters have cost me. Throw in last year’s losses from breeding and I could have bought a fabulous young finished champion, probably. Sigh.
Okay, how about Haruko? That means “sunlight child”, and Hikari means “light”, and Hiroko means “abundant.” I could do with some abundance, if I ever have the nerve to try to breed another litter. Hotaru means “firefly”. Lots of great Japanese names; I would totally use a Japanese name if I had an Akita or Shiba puppy; not sure if I want to, for a Cavalier.
Heulwen means “sunshine”
Plenty of time to think about it. I won’t name her until she’s three or four weeks old and I’m dead sure she’ll survive.
Meanwhile! I’m kind of taking today off because I got sucked into a REALLY GREAT SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK. I started it today just to have something to read during breakfast, and now I’m forcing myself to take a break. Gotta go write guests posts for various blogs. I’ll post about this book tonight, I expect — and I expect to put it on my Hugo nomination form. I’ve been thinking and thinking about whether it’s really good enough to deserve a major award, but frankly I’m pretty impressed with it. Plus , seriously, wouldn’t that be a landmark, a self-published book making the ballot?
TOMORROW I hope I will start back over with the current revision. I’m ready to read it again straight through. The very final draft! Well, at last for now.
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