Texaco's Pups' 3rd Week, part 1...

Like magic, the pup's eyes begin to fully open and their ears are now functional at three weeks of age. They are able to stand and totter from one place to another, so their world grows beyond their generous whelping box. They can now find places to sleep (their primary activity) throughout their room. Texaco, too, gets some child care relief since she can now easily exit the whelping room (in our case here, a bathroom) and spend much of the day outside the room looking over a foot-high puppy barrier in the door way.

As we noted, we named the pups after famous British car makers. The first pup, the sturdy white male, gets the famous moniker "COOPER," after racing car builder John Cooper. Cooper constructed winning Grand Prix cars (Formula 1, open-wheeled racing cars) and he modified British sedans for saloon (sedan) racing. He is perhaps best known for providing modifications to the utilitarian Morris/Austin Mini Minor, transforming this tiny car into the formidable sports machine the "Mini Cooper" in 1961. Alas today, the sun has set on the British empire since the new Mini Cooper is in fact manufactured and sold by Germany's BMW company.

In my (RJR) salad days, I used to compete in races and rallyes against the potent Mini Coopers using, more often than not, my 1967 Lotus Ford Cortina. How appropriate then, that the second born, the little girl of the litter, is named "CORTINA" after these famous British sports sedans.

There are two more pups to see at the celebration of their third week of life. Please click on the icon below to visit them...