Monday

Pup Murdoch is going to be the 'bad boy' in the litter. He is already exploring the confines of the whelping box and while the others are content to spend most of their time with their mum he just has to go the extra mile and go much further away. Alice watches him crawl away and is dying to drag him back with her paw but we are on hand to turn him round and point him in the right direction back to her, so he paddles his way back and then when he hits a solid object like another pup or her leg he moves direction and carries on. It's like watching one of those hoover robots who is programmed to clean your house and just go round and round change direction when they hit objects and keep cleaning!

I was sitting in the whelping box and he came up against my leg and just carried on and crawled up my trouser leg.  It was surprisingly difficult to get him out again, he obviously felt quite safe and secure in there

Murdoch and Lottie are the biggest at the moment and Monk next and Morse is smallest - he was the last one born. Murdoch is darker brown than the other three and has more brown patches and the longest tail.  Monk has identical brown patches to Alice and Jarno.  Today they each put on 60 grams, apart from Murdoch who was wriggling so much it was hard to get an accurate weight. 

A welcome diversion came today, looking out of the window one of the shetland ponies in the field next to the house has given birth to a foal.