MORE PUPPY PICS

SNOOZING BETWEEN SNACKS





UP ON ALL 4's!!

OH MAN--WHY DID YOU WAKE ME UP?


BERT-PROFILE


BERT--HEAD ON

ERNIE-PROFILEERNIE--HEAD ON

PUPPIES ON 6/26/10

PUPPIES AT 1 WEEK OLD

"Ernie" Sable male

"Ernie"

"Bert" Tri male

"Bert"

PUPPIES 06/19/10

Sadly on Sat. we had to let the little girl go to join her brothers. She had lost weight, would not eat and even with tube feedings just could not get a foothold. The two remaining puppy boys are doing fantastic, they have doubled their birth weight and eat like piglets. The tri is already the mellow, settled puppy and the sable is the complainer who is always crawling into a tight spot. I suspect he will be the first out of the box and will then sit there and cry because he can't figure out what to do nex. Even at 7 days old their little personalities are clear. We've dubbed the tri "Bert" and the sable "Ernie". Now we watch and wait and hope they both turn out to be healthy, happy, very correct, very hairy puppies. And of course eye checks will be interesting since daddy Bryce is a normal eyed/carrier of CEA. Given the heartbreak with this litter, wouldn't it be a grand gift if they were both normal eyed? Sigh..probably a bit too much to hope for.
Until next time on puppy watch...

BABIES

The tri girl

The Sable Boy and Tri Boy

Spice and Bryce's babies arrived on Sun. 6/13/10. There were 7, sadly 4 were born dead. If they had all lived we would have had our true rainbow litter, there were sables,sable merles and a blue merle. Right now we have 1 tri boy, 1 sable white factored boy (a Bryce lookalike) and 1 tri girl. Our little girl was born 5.2 ounces but as of today is 7.7 ounces. She had a rocky day today, but this evening seems to be rallying. She has two little dots of white that sit apart and just below her white collar. I call them angel kisses, because she is surely been blessed thru to this point.

Sahra (Bryce's owner and the co-breeder of the litter) drove from LaCrosse to Peppi's home north of St Paul and the two of them have been here since Friday night. They are my rocks and I have dubbed Peppi as "Collie Midwife Extrodinaire". Without them I'm not sure it would have gone as well as it did.

I've included pics of the boys and the girl taken on Tues. I didn't have time today to get more pics, but will post as the days progress. Right now I'm on sleep deprivation and it's almost time for overnight puppy watch.

Until next time...

Whoops, missed one

I missed yesterdays update on Spice. So far, so good. We are all ready and I suspect she is too. Poor baby, she really has no idea what's going on. Sahra and Peppi arrived, there was a trip to the store so we have plenty of human supplies including the required amounts of junk food. :-) Bryce has decided he needs to hold watch over Spice and has been spending alot of time laying in front of the bedroom doorway "guarding" his girl. It's very sweet.

News from the show yesterday too! Rumor was WB/BOW, Best Puppy and a Puppy Group3! Thanks to Mac and Diana for taking her to Lake Minnetonka. No points yesterday because there were no other bitches and only one dog, but more dogs entered today, so fingers crossed for that cross-over point.

Other than the ever present threat of rain and this a.m.'s fog, nothing really new and exciting here, yet.

And we wait...

5 DAYS OF SPICE

We did Spice's xray today and counted 6 puppy heads! Now we just need big, healthy puppies to come out. Nothing new to report other than Maddy is really torked that she's been kicked out of the bedroom.

For anyone that may have attempted to answer the puppy questionnaire, please resend it with the new instructions. There were mechanical difficulties with the one originally on the website. I love technology when it works.

The humidity is back, so the a/c went back on and I left Spice stretched out on the bedroom floor in front of the fan. I wonder if she will actually loose all her hair post pregnancy, because she sure doesn't loose it for very long any other time.

Until next time...

6 DAYS

Hmm...realized last night that perhaps the whelping box project was really, really well built. Insert "heavy" in place of well built. And it's big. Apparently I was thinking Spice needed the cadillac of whelping areas. Oh well, there's room for me to squeeze in and sit there with the puppies too. Of course, it also barely fits into the bedroom. Spice seems to like it, she was in and out and in and out after I put the finishing touches on the xpen and drapes. Gotta keep those drafts off the puppies. At some point I'll have to take pictures of the maternity ward. Thanks to big old farm houses with big old rooms with wood floors or I'm not sure where I would have put her. Sahra and I had a long talk last night about our anxieties of Spice delivering too soon, something I don't anticipate, but of course my worry-button has been activated. Apparently she's pyschic and picked up on that because she's been worrying too. However, Spice looked at me last night and basically gave me the "don't worry mom, I've got it handled" look. She ate like a horse last night too and actually had a short romp in the yard before she gave up and found her favorite spot in the yard. She loves to lay on the lower part of the sidewalk and oversee the other dogs playing and has a good overall look of the farm and that dang road a 1/4 mile away. One never knows when a car might drive by and has to be "chased". Go figure. :-)
So all is well with 6 days to go. Xrays tomorrow a.m. and I can hardly wait. I am revising my previous notion of 8 puppies down to 4-5. But as long as they are big and healthy I don't care if it's 2, oh and there has to be a non-blue GIRL for Sahra. :-)
Until next time...

7 DAYS

I really think I need some kind of catchy theme song for the puppy countdown, but I just cannot come up with anything. Update for the a.m. Spice did not eat really well last night. She picked at her dry food (which is EVO and even I think it smells great), so I mixed in some Evangers canned and she ate about 1/2. I put her bowl in the refrigerator. About 2 hrs later, I got the bowl out, warmed it up and added 2 hamburgers that got a little charred. I had a cooking mishap and they just were a bit, okay more than a bit, overcooked. Oh and a half a cup of shredded cheese. She ate most of that. Put the bowl away. About 10, I put the bowl back out and she ate the rest.
This a.m. I put a can of Evangers in her bowl and she ate that. Then I left her a bowl of dry to pick at during the day. She's drinking alot of water too, so now she has 2 buckets. I've kicked Maddy and Jam out of the bedroom for the duration. Maddy is pretty okay with it, Jam is totally put out. Dora is now on crate duty with the rest of the kidlets. In effect, the bedroom is now Spice's hangout only.
Tick tock, tick tock....and we wait...

8 DAYS....

8 days...xrays on Friday. Poor Spice, she ate most of her breakfast. I think the puppies are crowding her tum-tum. So she'll get dinner and a late night snacklet from now on.
And the wait continues...

9 DAYS AND COUNTING...

Got back from the Fargo shows today. I really enjoyed going, the show site was pretty good. There was tons of grooming and electricity and the club had an awesome idea and put up actual kennels for x-pens. They were HUGE and kept very clean with new sawdust each day. The CWCCA supported entry on Sat. drew a large entry for the weekend and there were majors in dogs and bitches all three days. Rumor did place first in her class all three days (two of which she was the only entry in her class, but hey it's another blue ribbon!) and she "earned" her mom and really great travel mug sponsored by Pro Plan. Mac showed her on Sat and Sun and she's off to MN for a show next weekend with her. Mac and Rue really click and I'm on puppy watch.
Yep! 9 Days and Counting! It was a great trip, but alot of driving for me, so I don't know that I"ll make it a yearly show. However, in 20 years of showing, it was my first trip to North Dakota, so that was cool. We camped across from the show site and the dogs had lots of nice long walks. The weather was off and on with rain, so what else is new? I swear if Jean plans a cook out at a dog show, it rains. :-) Jean had three really great wins with Rue's brother, Flip. And I got to show Danni on Sat. Which I enjoyed so much. Since Danni is both Trace's and Rue's mom, well hey, she's a special girl to me. Thanks to Jean for entering her at the last minute when I had a panic attack about making sure we'd have enough girls for majors. :-)
There was also much time spent with Peppi and Brian and the usual gabfest. Peppi deserves handler of the day award on Friday for basically showing 4 boys, 1 smooth girl and 1 rough girl in Collies. I helped in Winner's Dog, but she did the rest and a big pat on the back for her--when you have all but 2 of the entire Smooth entry, well, you get the picture.
Okay, the TB is unpacked, the dogs and I are fed, everyone is pretty much settled in. I have laundry and of course, as I predicted the damn grass grew while I was gone. I see my future this week, laundry, a bit of housework to make it presentable for my Dog Midwives to arrive on Sat., lots of mowing, a trip to the vet for xrays on Spice and oh yea, I suppose I can find a bit of time for sleep in there somewhere.
Until next time...

COUNTING DOWN

Oh yea, and it's 15 days to Spice babies! The count down begins. Oh boy I am so ready and yet so not ready!

Just Useless Stuff :-)

Off to the north, well okay, North Dakota, but it IS north of Iowa! Hopefully there will be good news to post at the end of the journey along with the usual fun stuff. Peppi, Jean and I will have our hands full with the Collies followed by the Cardigans. I heard rain, so I packed a couple of umbrellas. Whenever I'm not prepared for rain it happens, so I'm hoping that by being prepared this time the rain will run the other way. I took a week of vacation for this show so no matter the outcome I'm looking forward to some relax and veg time. This will be the last dog show until fall for me since Spice is pregnant and I have another week of vacation scheduled around her delivery and a week with the puppies. I've asked for maternity leave but my boss just looked at me and walked away. I think I heard her laughing her head off in her office. Sahra is being so wonderful and taking Spice for the week, of course I had to threaten her to get her to do that for me--haha NOT! I think if I left Spice there too long I'd loose my dog. Bella is going for a trial run at a new home, so we'll see how that works out. The rest of my dogs get to spend the week at Camp Runge in the a/c kennel being spoiled by Don. And yes, I suspect that Don does spoil them. Maybe not with Maddy, I think she annoys him, but then, she annoys the vast majority of those she meets. Oh and Harold might be a bit of a pill. He's such a baby. Jam of course goes with me. I think he might need to get one of those Emotional Support dog vests and become my assistance dog. Somedays I don't know what I'd do without that ugly brown dog. Just being with him makes me happy. Same with Trace-face, I almost can't go a day without him a-roo-rooing to me. Rumor will do her show dog thing and then pout about it. I have got to find her something else to do while we are on "maternity leave". I found a nice conservation park near here, I so wish I still had Murphy's tracking stuff (lost in the flood), cause I think Rue might like tracking.
Uh oh it's after 10 p.m. I gotta get my happy ass to bed, tomorrow is a long day of driving and it's supposed to rain. Ugh.
Until next time...