montana wildhack wrote:
For those of you who have had litters, I have some questions about the
post-weaning experience.

We were told that we should not let Neo nurse her puppies at all. She
seems fine with that decision and isn't freaking out. The puppies
obviously want to nurse, but are eating very well and being fed
frequently (4x a day).

We were advised that it would take "a couple of days" to dry her up. She
still seems to have some milk, so I obviously don't know how long it
takes to really dry her up. Her nipples are in good shape, so I'm not
worried about that.

How long does it take before she won't produce milk and when should she
be allowed to interact with the puppies again? She obviously sees them,
but she doesn't have access to them, or they to her.

Are we talking 4-5 days?


Boy, I don't know. We had a couple of litters when I was living at home
and we never restricted the mother's access to the puppies (although we
made it possible for her to escape from them when she needed some "Me Time".

Once they were well started on eating solid food she quit allowing them
to nurse except for brief peiods, and usually just one pup at a time.
Whoever caught her in a generous mood, maybe. She really didn't like
the teeth at all, though, and made her feelings well known to the little
vampires. And over the space of maybe a couple, three weeks of
increasingly adamant refusals they finally quit asking entirely and that
was that.

Kathleen