TWO WEEKS

It is hard to believe they are two weeks old already. Today they had their nails trimmed for the second time. We also started the sound/food conditioning. I will explain what this is and why I do it. As everyone knows deafness is one of the health issues we have in the Dalmatian breed. So in order to tell the hearing status of each puppy as early as possible I condition then to a sound which means food is coming. What I use for the sound is psst. Just like I was trying to get their attention. As I say psst I pop a tiny ball of raw ground beef in the puppy's mouth. They absolutely love the taste of it from the first time. I will do this once a day for the first day. Then twice a day. I increase it to three times a day. I also make the sound every time Gambit goes in to feed them. With consistency it doesn't take them long to jump up from a sound sleep when they hear the psst sound. If there is a puppy that never jumps up he is most likely deaf. If a puppy only jumps up some of the time he may be a unilateral hearing puppy. I will be able to tell at a very early age the hearing status of each puppy. Then when they are 6 weeks old I will have them BAER hearing tested at Cornell University in New York.