Yesterday my handyman *wink* got out the puppy pen at my request and set it up for Winter and her troop. It was time to move them from the big crate to a larger area. Because I never got Winter clipped before the babies arrived, she tends to get too warm in that cozy crate with all those growing bodies surrounding her. This way she can move away from them if she gets too warm. And the babies have more room to explore and strengthen their toddling legs. Although at this point, they really just want to cuddle with mom and their siblings.

And we’ve added the babies first litter box! Now, at this point they may not even know what it is or how to use it. But a puppy’s natural instinct is to move away from their sleeping area to potty. They don’t want to soil where they sleep. So as the pups get better about crawling and toddling on their now shaky legs, they will toddle off their bed onto the litter box.

As you can see by the picture, our introductory litter box (called a UgoDog) is a commercial tray with two grates on top. It’s about the same level as the bed and takes up about half of the puppy pen, while the bed takes up the other half. So it’s easy for them to move from one to another. Mom is still doing clean-up when the puppies potty but as they get bigger and are producing more stools, the stools sometimes get smashed into the grate. At that time (around 4-4.5 weeks), I’ll switch them to our normal litter box with pine pellets. The pine pellets have a nice smell and the poop is easily scooped out with a cat litter scoop.

Puppies all settled in. You can see we’ve started to introduce some toys into their pen too. At this point they are not interested in them, but we’ll keep introducing different ones and eventually they’ll started being interested and engage with them.

Here comes mom!

All settled in.

And an added blanket for warmth and privacy.

P.S.For any sleuths that spy the bird cage through the window on the front porch, that’s not a real bird. 😉