July 28

Because so many of the puppies look alike, I have had to put ribbons
on them to tell everyone apart. Between Annabelle's desire to
thoroughly clean the puppies and the puppies climbing all over each
other, the ribbons keep coming off so I am going out to buy collars
today.

Yes, I know they sell temporary collars that are like hospital
bracelets (unable to be easily taken off), but I couldn't find any at
the pet store and with the growth rate of these puppies I would have
to put a new set of collars on every 10 days or so. You can also paint
each of the puppies nails a different color. Maybe if there were more
girls in the litter, I might consider it, but that seems like a lot of
work and weird for this litter. So puppy collars it is!

Now where to get puppy collars? I first tried the big pet stores and
was shocked at the price of their collars. At least $5 each! Multiply
that by 9 puppies and that is not in a non-profit, humane society's
budget. I looked online. To get 9 different colors that I would need
to tell the pups apart, it was going to be just as expensive as the
pet stores, be a pain in the butt, and take 3-4 days minimum for the
collars to arrive...

So I ended up at Walmart. They didn't have the best selection, but I
was able to get 7 collars for less than $13. I then went to Target for
the last 2. They didn't have any better suggestion than Walmart, but
they had what was needed and for about $2 each.

Also, just to brag about my puppies... There are 6 sizes of collars:
Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, XL, and Jumbo. I tried to get the tiny
collars (suggested to fit chihuahuas), but the tiny ones would have to
be expanded about as open as they could be. So that there is still
room for growth, we had to go up to size small (8-14" - suggested to
fit pugs)! Wow! These pups are getting big fast!