By Albert & Terra Collver · June 2, 2026

We're seven days into life with the Game On litter — eight puppies, four pounds of fur and feet between them — and one of the small disciplines we keep up with every morning is weighing every single puppy. We've now logged 56 weights for this litter (eight puppies × seven days), and they tell us more than you might think. Today we wanted to walk through why we do this, what we're looking for, and where the Game On babies stand a week in.

Why daily weights matter

Most breeders take birth weights. Many breeders weigh every few days. Reputable breeders — and the ones we admire — weigh every puppy every day for at least the first two weeks. Here's what those numbers actually do for us.

1. Daily weights are the earliest warning system for a sick puppy. Long before a newborn looks sick — long before their nose feels cool, before they cry differently, before mom starts pushing them away — their weight stops climbing. A puppy who gained 10 g yesterday and 0 g today is a puppy we want eyes on now, not tomorrow. We have caught problems on Day 3 because of a flat weight on Day 3 that we would not have caught at all from across the whelping box. In the worst-case scenarios, a single day of intervention is the difference between a puppy who is fine by Day 10 and a puppy who isn't.

2. They tell us whether mom's milk is keeping up. Etta is feeding eight puppies, which is a tremendous metabolic ask. If the whole litter starts gaining more slowly across a couple of days, that's a signal we need to support her — more food, more fluids, sometimes supplemental bottle-feeding the smallest two or three until things catch up. If the litter is racing along, we know she's doing brilliantly and we leave well enough alone.

3. They give each puppy an identity early. Eight tiny black-and-white-or-liver-and-white puppies look very similar when they're seven days old. The collar colors and litter names are part of how we tell them apart, but the growth curve is just as much of a fingerprint. By Day 7 we already know which puppies are vigorous, which are steady-eddies, and which need to be watched.

4. They're the foundation of the conversations we'll have with you. When we sit down at seven weeks to match puppies to families, we're not just looking at temperament test scores — we're looking at fourteen-plus weeks of growth data, vet notes, and behavior observations. Daily weights are the first chapter of that story.

What we expect to see

A loose set of expectations for a healthy ESS litter through the first ten days:

- Every puppy should gain weight every day after the first 24 hours (it's normal to lose 5–10% in the first day before milk fully comes in).
- Birth weight should roughly double by Day 10.
- No two puppies grow at exactly the same rate — but no one should be losing ground or flat for more than a day at a time.

If we see a flat line or a loss of more than 5–10 g, we intervene. If we see all eight gaining nicely, we just keep going.

Where the Game On litter stands at one week

A few observations from the numbers themselves:

- Hunter has just passed Purdey for the heavyweight spot. Hunter started life as the heaviest puppy at 450 g and has been the leader most days; Purdey closed the gap by Day 6 and the two of them traded places on Day 7. They're separated by 10 g, which is to say, by basically nothing.
- Six of the eight puppies are already over 1.5× their birth weight, with Hunter and Purdey at 1.64× and 1.68× respectively. The breed-wide rule of thumb is "double by Day 10," and on present trajectories every puppy will get there comfortably.
- Skeet and Domino are growing more modestly — 1.43× and 1.46× of their birth weights — but both are gaining steadily every day with no flat spots. Domino was the third-lightest at birth (370 g), and Skeet started middle-of-the-pack. They're keeping up, just on their own pace.
- Wildcard, the lightest puppy at birth (360 g), has grown the fastest of the lighter half — 230 g of gain, 1.64× of her birth weight. The smallest puppy at birth is very often not the smallest puppy at eight weeks.

A note on food motivation and training

Here's something we've noticed across many litters, and that the Game On litter is already showing signs of: the puppies who eat the most enthusiastically as newborns very often grow into the dogs who train most easily as adults.

It's not magic — it's reinforcement-learning math. Dogs learn by being rewarded, and the most reliable reward for the great majority of dogs is food. A dog who is food motivated — who will work for a piece of kibble, who lights up when the treat pouch comes out — is a dog who is easy to teach almost anything. A dog who could take or leave food is a dog you have to be cleverer with: higher-value treats, perfectly timed play rewards, a more sophisticated training plan.

The newborns who are first on the nipple at every feeding, who fight for position, who put on weight with that single-minded intensity — those puppies are showing us early that food is going to mean something to them. That trait tends to stick. It doesn't tell us everything (some of the most food-driven puppies become hard-driving working dogs that aren't right for every home), but it's a positive signal we factor in when we're matching puppies to families, especially families planning agility, obedience, scent work, or hunting careers.

Hunter, Purdey, Tracker, and Wildcard are showing the most enthusiastic eating patterns so far. We'll see how that translates over the next six weeks.

Coming up

The next milestone is eyes opening, which usually happens around Days 10–14 for English Springer Spaniels. Once their eyes are open the world starts becoming a much more interesting place — and our blog posts will start getting much, much cuter.

Daily weights continue throughout. We'll share another snapshot at the two-week mark.

— Albert & Terra