A week ago the Game On litter discovered the food bowl. This week they discovered the throttle. Five weeks old today, and by every measure — the scale, the noise, the wrestling, the mileage they’re putting on those short legs — this was the biggest week of growth and development the litter has had yet.
The puppies are five weeks old. They are eating solid food with real enthusiasm now, nursing less, playing harder, and starting the deliberate socialization work that turns a healthy puppy into a confident adult dog. And they put on more weight this week than in any week of their lives.
The headline lives on the scale
We weigh every puppy, every day. Here is what five weeks looks like.
As of this week’s weigh-in the litter totals roughly 21.57 kilograms — about 47.6 pounds of English Springer Spaniel, up from about 34 pounds a week ago. That is +6.1 kilograms (13.5 pounds) of puppy added in a single week — nearly double the week-four gain, and the largest one-week jump the litter has posted. This is exactly the growth surge you want to see right as weaning gets underway and eight strong appetites kick into gear. The headlines:
- Seven of the eight puppies are now past 6× their birth weight. A month and a week ago these were 360-to-450-gram newborns; today the smallest is 2,405 grams (5 lb 5 oz) and the largest just crossed three kilograms.
- Purdey stays the size leader at 3,015 g (6 lb 10 oz) — the first puppy in the litter past the three-kilogram mark — with Tracker holding firm at #2 and now past 7× birth weight.
- Wildcard remains the best growth story in the box. Born the smallest puppy at 360 grams, she is now #3 in the litter and tops the whole field in relative growth at 7.81× her birth weight. A puppy who started behind and simply never stopped climbing.
- Trap posted the single biggest seven-day gain (+930 g) and climbed two spots to #4. And the heartening one: Domino — last week’s caboose — put on +895 g and climbed off the bottom of the standings, from #8 to #6. Last week it was Skeet making that climb; this week it’s Domino. No puppy is lagging the curve.
- The only “quiet” week belonged to Diver (+505 g), who slid from #3 to #7 — and even her quiet week left her comfortably past 6× birth weight. When the slowest grower in a litter is still tracking well above target, the whole litter is healthy.
(A quick honesty note for the data-minded: these are the weekly-chart weigh-in numbers; daily figures live in our puppy-tracking app and can vary by a few grams with feed timing. The shape of the story doesn’t change.)
Weaning hits its stride
Last week’s first messy meals have become real meals. The “puppy mush” is thickening week by week — less soup, more food — and we’ve added feedings as the puppies demand more from the pan and a little less from Etta. This is the transition working exactly on schedule: a gradual handoff that will be complete by around seven to eight weeks, so that by the time these puppies go to their new homes in late July, eating from a bowl is old, boring, familiar news.
Etta is still nursing several times a day, on her own terms — standing up, stepping in and out, and increasingly setting the schedule as eight sets of needle teeth come in. That’s healthy maternal behavior, and the pan picks up precisely the slack she’s beginning to set down. The 13.5-pound week on the scale is the proof that the overlap is working: nobody is going without while the systems trade off.
The socialization sprint begins
Five weeks is where our Puppy Culture socialization work shifts into its most active phase. The puppies can now walk over, climb on, and deliberately investigate whatever we introduce, so we’re adding novelty steadily: new footing and textures underfoot, new objects to clamber over, and graduated sound exposure — household clatter, the vacuum, the doorbell, working up toward low-volume recorded gunfire down the road. Early Scent Introduction continues in the background, and the play between littermates — full-contact wrestling, pouncing, play-bows — is doing the single most important job of these weeks: teaching bite inhibition and how to be a dog among dogs.
We’re watching personalities sharpen by the day: who barrels in first, who hangs back to assess, who instigates, who keeps the peace. Those notes feed directly into the formal Volhard temperament test in mid-July and, from there, into how we match each puppy to the right home.
Crate training begins
This week we also started crate training — and like everything else we do here, we start it early and gently so it’s never a shock later. The wire crates are now set up in and around the puppy area with the doors open and soft bedding inside, so the puppies can wander in, climb around, and — as you can see in the photo above — curl up for a nap entirely on their own terms. No doors closed, no pressure, no crying: just a cozy, safe little den that smells like their littermates and good naps.
That’s the whole idea. By letting the puppies discover the crate as a good place on their own schedule now, we’re building the foundation that makes housetraining and that first night in a new home dramatically easier. A puppy who already thinks of a crate as a comfortable place to rest is a puppy who settles faster, sleeps better, and house-trains more smoothly. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll add short closed-door sessions and mealtimes in the crate, so that by go-home day in late July, the crate is just another familiar, reassuring part of the world — one less new thing for your puppy to worry about.
What’s coming up — the big week is next
The calendar gets busy fast from here, and the next few days are the start of it:
- Sunday, July 5 — Microchipping & PRA DNA test. Permanent ID for every puppy, plus a DNA sample to confirm clear eyes across the litter.
- Monday, July 6 — OFA / CERF eye exam. A canine ophthalmologist screens all eight puppies (Animal Eye Associates, Kirkwood, MO).
- Week of July 14 — Volhard temperament test & fecal check.
- Saturday, July 18 — Bird & water introduction — pigeons, shallow water, and retrieve play, the foundation for our hunt-prospect and field homes.
- Tuesday, July 21 — 8-week wellness exam & first vaccinations (Franklin County Animal Medical Center, Washington, MO).
- Monday, July 27 — Show evaluation, and then the day everyone’s counting toward: Go-Home Day, Tuesday, July 28.
One more from the hardest worker in the room
Five weeks ago Etta was nursing eight newborns around the clock. Today those newborns are a 47-pound pack that can eat, run, argue, climb, and grow half a pound a day each — and Etta gets to nurse standing up, on her schedule, while the pan does more of the feeding. She built the foundation; now we get to build on it.
As always: when you collect your puppy in late July, thank Etta first.
We’ll keep the camera rolling — and the pan full.
— Albert & Terra
Three Doves Performance Dogs — AKC Breeder of Merit, English Springer Spaniel
www.three-doves.com · info@three-doves.com · 636-751-3971
