What Lies Beaneath

Sleeping puppies are so sweet. They smell good, they sound adorable with their soft puppy breathing and their little twiches and whines and I am safe in the knowledge that a sleeping puppy is using all that Leeloo fuel to grow and get big and strong. Little do you realize that lurking beneath the surface of that darling exterior is an evil waiting to be released.

I speak of course of puppy poop.

Dams clean their puppies by licking their bottoms which stimulates their bowels and they just lick up the result, this is totally normal and very tidy. Halo was pretty crazy about puppy poop so I didn't have to worry about cleaning up after the puppies for a long time after they were born. If she could have she would have eaten their poop up until they left for their new homes. Happy thought right? 

When the puppies were born Leeloo was all over eating the placenta and sac and all that fun stuff that comes along with birth. Am I right moms? After they'd been here a few hours and had something to eat, their bowels automatically shifted what was in there to out here. Generally a bitch will just clean that right up. Leeloo, on the other hand, has different ideas about this particular aspect of being a mom. 

Ridgebacks are well known for not liking poop or pee anywhere near them. This makes them incredibly easy to house train and is a really handy habit. They actively avoid stepping near theirs or anyone else's and will invariably get this disgusted look on their face like "Oh ew, ya, someone poo-ed here" and tiptoe around it.

So here is Leeloo, all enamoured with her little brood and then these puppies start pooping out their very first poop. I'm not kidding, the expression on her face was exactly "Oh what the ...? It's pooping! Near me! Oh, poo ... no no ... no to poo." And she pulled her feet away from the offering and turned her nose pointedly in another direction.

So now we are at an impasse. Leeloo will clean up the puppy poop but only if she is actually in the act of stimpulating its bowels. If a puppy poops on its own, which they can do, Leeloo won't touch it. This isn't a tragedy really, it's just going to cause me way way more laundry than I anticipated. At least when they are 6 weeks old and on solid food I won't be telling her to STOP eating the puppy poop like I had to with Halo ... it was insane. I bet once the puppies are started on solid food she won't touch what they leave behind!

Trust Leeloo to throw me a curve ball. It's just another quirk of my funny Bubbalicious.