Day Sixteen
A lot of changes are happening now. They are starting to interact with each other, and it is quite fun to watch. They try to mouth each other to see who has the biggest mouth. Then they knock each other over. I tried to get a video of it but by the time I thought to do that it was too late, and they tottered back to the bed. I am happy that every one of them leaves the nest to go potty already.
They had a visitor today which was a trial to see how Tiffin would react to someone holding her babies. She was ok but concerned at first. Then her tail started to wag, and she was fine. Maks on the other hand was a total lunatic. He didn't want a stranger to even go near the pups. I had to crate him. I have never seen him act this way before.
Today I started something I call PSST conditioning. I am conditioning them to react to a quiet sound. Back before BAER testing people would do different things to see if the puppy had hearing or not. One method used and I'm sure still probably used today was making a loud noise like banging two pans together. Of course, hearing pups would react, but sometimes deaf ones would too because they could feel the vibration. Back then we assumed Dals were either hearing or deaf. We didn't really know about unilateral hearing.
Back in 1981 at my first National I met a wonderful lady from New Mexico by the name of Cathy Nogar from Hopi Kachina Dalmatians. Cathy taught me a lot about breeding and raising dogs but the one thing she taught me that I have used ever since was PSST. What I do is I make a very quiet sound like you would to get someone's attention. Pssst While I am making that sound, I pop a tiny piece of ground beef into their mouth. Once their ears are open and they hear that sound they know something good to eat is coming and they will jump up from a sound sleep. I will use the sound when Tiffin comes in to feed them and later on when I am feeding them. I will watch each puppy a million times laying on the right side or laying on the left side and I will be relatively certain of the hearing status of each ear before the BAER testing is done. I did it once today and they were curious as to what that yummy thing I gave them was. I will do it twice tomorrow and every day. I haven't seen anything that tells me they are hearing yet but, in a few days, I think I will.
Here are some pictures from today. The yawning boy is Avalanche. He is getting cuter every day.
What's not to love about Tiffin and bunny. Bunny got thrown in the washer today because one of the puppies pooped on his nose. 
Merry Christmas and Season's greetings to all!
