Poor Nando – 20 weeks of age was not much fun!
Teething
His teething process ramped up again, and he lost both of his large upper molar teeth within 4 days. He seemed quite painful, as he was rubbing at his face with his front paw in the mornings, on the side where the tooth was loose. Once, after eating, he whimpered a few times because the sharp edges of the loose tooth were jammed up into his gum – he felt better after we wiggled it loose again. There was a little bit of blood seen on his toys after the teeth fell out, but he felt much better once they were both gone.
We have found some of his baby teeth! – usually where he had been laying. In the picture below, the large tooth is one of the molars, the smaller teeth are his incisors.
Crusty Eyes
Both of Nando’s eyes had some yellow green crusty discharge in the mornings that sometimes glued his eyelids together. Perhaps they were irritated by the molars falling out, which were just below the eyes.
Update: It turns out that he had a bacterial conjunctivitis that antibiotic ointment cleared up.
Fear and Humping!
Also possibly related to the teething was that Nando showed more signs of fear this week. Sometimes it was difficult to walk him places he would normally go – e.g. to the toilet! I have read that this increased anxiety can be normal for puppies at this age, and is usually only transitory – the same things is often it seen with human toddlers. Nando even found rain scary this week. He humped his favourite sheep skin a lot……it seemed to be a ‘stress-relief’ thing.
Ticks!
We pulled over 20 ticks from Nando this week – on with the Frontline!
Commuting
Nando went to the main train station and caught a train for the first time. He did very well with this considering the crappy scary week he was having!!
By the end of the week, both molars had fallen out, his eyes had cleared up and the sun was shining!
