The little ones are flourishing and developing some impish personalities. They’ve been weaned and are now eating what we call “puppy paste,” a combination of soaked puppy kibble, a little canned meat, Esbilac and baby rice slurried in hot water. It’s made up in a large shallow pan so the pups can all eat together.

Every evening the puppy pen has to be cleaned up, disinfected and fresh newspaper put down. While I’m doing this, the babies have the run of the rest of the sun room, supervised by my lovely bride. They tear about, wrestle and knock each other over, play tug-of-war with toys and generally run wild. Eventually they wind down, go back into the pen and go to sleep, looking angelic. A puppy’s day is done.

We think we’ve settled on names for them, both call names and ones for AKC registration.

Dutch (Soyara’s The Flying Dutchman)

Ilya (Soyara’s Ilya Murometz)

Carmen (Soyara’s Carmen Fantasy)

Aida (Soyara’s Celeste Aida)