Dec 262013
 

photo(28)As always, an adventure is underway at our house, and Christmas 2013 was no different.  After negotiating with our adult children, we came to the consensus that Paul and me and Fancy and her litter of six puppies would travel an hour and a half for our Christmas Eve dinner with them at my daughter’s house.

The positive was that I didn’t have to cook as much and I didn’t have to clean as much.  The downside was that it would be necessary for us to pack mama and the puppies in our motor home for the trek.  Newborn puppies, although fairly hardy, need to be kept at a steady warm temperature to keep them from getting sick which is mostly impossible traveling in a vehicle, even our mini van.  We needed some space for the Perla bed and power to keep the bed heater at a reliable temp.  I did find by measuring the temperature of the bed over a two day period several years ago that it was necessary to include a reptile thermostat to cycle the Lectro-Kennel on and off to keep the temperature  within the desired range.  Without the thermostat, the temps were a little too hot which can be as bad for the puppies as them getting chilled.

From day one until about two weeks have passed, I keep the puppies’  bed temp about 85-90 and ambient temperature at least 75.  In the motor home, we were able to accomplish this by running our generator to power the bed heater and by running the gas furnace.  Fancy loves to travel so she was all smiles to get to ride along on our holiday adventure.  The rest of the crew stayed behind to play and ward off strangers that might consider our house a target. haha  My wonderful pet sitter came by to give them a potty break and a yard run about mid way our trip.

Since we had the system down, we took off again on Christmas Day for a two hour drive in another direction to visit Paul’s extended family and my parents.  Only dog people would understand, but we do what we need to when it comes to keeping our dogs safe and make adjustments along the way.  There were lots of eyes rolling when we mentioned that we had a litter of puppies in the motor home with us, but hey, it worked for us and we had a great time 🙂

 Posted by at 11:05 pm

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