Week 3 Summary for 03/02/2026
All weights in ounces.
| Puppy | Week 2 (02/23/2026) | Week 3 (03/02/2026) | % Change |
| 1 – Mr. Ruby | 42.35 | 58.63 | 38.4% |
| 2 – Mr. Emerald | 37.85 | 56.23 | 48.5% |
| 3 – Ms. Sapphire | 40.95 | 60.43 | 47.6% |
| 4 – Mr. Onyx | 44.6 | 67.06 | 50.4% |
| 5 – Ms. Pearl | 42.1 | 60.01 | 42.5% |
| Average (This Litter) | 41.57 | 60.47 | 45.5% |
| Average (Other Litters) | 35.4 | 55.96 | 55.78% |
Note: For Week 4 next week, all weights will be switched over to pounds in 5/100th increments due to the puppies outgrowing the scale (happens every litter around this time).
Summary: Mr. Onyx continues to lead the way overall from Week 1 until today and is dominating the others at 67.06 ounces. His female counterpart in the overall is Ms. Sapphire who has overtaken Ms. Pearl, however, it’s so close, it’s probably within the margin of error of the scale. The two girls are essentially tied for 2nd place in the overall. Mr. Onyx, the largest puppy by far, just packed it on this last week and had the largest percentage gain for the week at 50.4%. Our average Laekenois litter gains 55.78% during the third week. This litter gained 45.5% in it’s third week which is the first time where this littler did not exceed prior litter averages. Our average Laekenois litter has an average week 3 weight of 55.96 ounces while this litter is at 60.47 ounces which is quite a gap and even the smallest puppy in this litter is nearly 3 ounces above the average litter weight.
I did a query for the largest puppy we have ever had for week 3. It is Mr. Onyx of this litter. The prior largest week 3 puppy was 65.6 ounces which is just slightly behind Mr. Onyx at 67.06 ounces. One caveat to that data is that the prior largest pup did have 3 extra days to get there than did Mr. Onyx.
Mama is still doing well. To date, no supplementation for the puppies has been used. The litter did have a lower % gain this week than prior litters but we don’t believe there is anything to make of that since this litter is quite a bit larger than our average litter. We think Mama is keeping up with the litter’s needs just fine. We are likely to introduce new food experiences to the pups in week 4.
Puppy Development: Communication is happening in earnest. They growl and bark at each other, especially when playing. They growl and bark at us when they hear us enter the room. When they hear Mama moving around in the room, they call for her. They really like being handled by us now. If they know we are close to the whelping box, they walk over to where we are and they wag their tails when doing so. They’ve been exposed to various sounds, like things going “thud” in the night and various tones. Music (classic rock, country, and classical) and talk/news radio (NPR, Fox News, CNN, Sports radio, and games, etc) so they’ve heard a lot of different things and heard lots of different human voices at various tones and volumes.
We’ve had a few different items that are novel to the pups in the whelping box for periods of time for them to experience but just in case Mama wants to play with and chew up some of those items, so they are only in the whelping box while we are there attending to it. There will probably be a much higher focus on novel items during the upcoming week 4. One favorite item of the past and for this litter so far is the crushed up thin water bottles that you usually get out of 24 packs at the grocery story. Those bottles make a crinkly sound when puppies traverse them and play with each other over them and it gives them a very novel texture, terrain, and sound to experience. So far, these pups haven’t come across anything they didn’t get around to exploring on their own without Mama being present.
That’s about it for the week summary. I hope we didn’t forget anything.
Have a good week and God bless.