BIG WEEKEND FOR A LITTLE BOY

Reid had a huge weekend!  As of this post, he has had his first trip outside in the x-pen.  This was quickly followed by a second trip outside, out of the x-pen.  He was totally unhappy inside the pen and totally joyous to be out with the big dogs.  Obviously I wouldn't leave him alone out there with all the big dogs as there are too many areas he could get into trouble at his age and size, but if I stay out with him he is fine.  My dogs have all seen puppies and other dogs come and go and they are very easy to get on with.  Mama Spice keeps an eye on him and so do Auntie Maddy and Auntie Dora.  Who would have thought Dora would be so protective?  Dora has been itching to get into the whelping box with the pups since week one.  She will literally get snarky at the other dogs if they get too rough around Reid.  I'm sure Dora would be the one to teach Reid the ins and outs of being a good boy (she is the Diva and the boss of the house) but Dora leaves next weekend for her home with my sister and her family in Tennessee.  Dora and Ben should make a perfect team. 
Reid has gotten into this mood of not wanting to do any potty inside any portion of his box.  When I came home on Friday he was out of the box and had pottied outside the box.  So I spent an hour enlarging the area and making him a sleep/play place and at the way other end a potty area.  Unfortunately, he would still rather potty out.  Well, okay it's not unfortunate, it's pretty cool really.  As to the remainder of this outdoor adventures, he has walked about 1/2 way around the dog yard area and back, bouncing around trying to keep up with the rest of the dogs.  He got under the porch and thankfully was able to be coaxed out.  He learned to stand on his hind legs to drink out of the big dogs bucket outside. 
Today has been more firsts for Reid.  He has actually pottied outside 90% of the time versus inside his pen or on the kitchen floor (one of his favorite places I'm afraid).  What a good 5 week old puppy!  I'm not sure he really correlates what he does to me wanting him to do it outside, but hey I'll take what I get at this age.
He climbed up on the bottom step by himself and then basically fell off of it two seconds later.  I put him on the porch and he followed the rest of the kids into the house up over the threshhold without falling over.  Definately a major accomplishment!
And finally he got his first visit with kids!  My landlord was over the take care of cows and the garden and the kids got to play and hold Reid for a while.  He was so cute with them--very social little guy for sure.
So now he is off to his favorite sleepy space, nope not his pen or his fluffy bed, but the pile of blankets on the floor by the bedroom door.  I believe he is like his daddy Bryce, he likes cush. 
Until next time...

REID

Tragically, on Friday July 9th we lost the tri boy that we had named Sloan.  Sahra (the co-breeder and owner of papa Bryce) and I have decided to keep the remaining puppy, named Reid.  Here are pictures of him from last Sunday at age 4 weeks.  Reid continues to blossom, is enjoying wolfing down puppy mush, has figured out where the appropriate place is to do his duty, and of course has me totally figured out and already wrapped around his paw.  Sahra and I look forward to watching him grow up-fingers crossed!

BOORINNNG.....

PUPPIES AT 3 WEEKS OLD

Here are pictures of the boys at 3 weeks.  Co-breeder and Bryce's owner Sahra and her husband John came up on Sat. to take these pictures.  Thanks to John for his patience and wonderful photos!

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...

WHIRLWINDS

Whirlwinds. Worked all week, finished projects that had to be completed at home, packed the TB on Sat and found out there was no a/c working. Drove to Jean's packed to the rafters and on the rafters of the TB, unpacked, settled dogs. Thanks to Don for putting the a/c in the kennel for my kids. Drove to the show on Sunday, said brief hellos and was handed a Samoyed to walk to the ring. Mostly a blur of activity after that, held Sammy's, chatted with friends, watched someone's van have an under the hood electrical fire (scarey, but no dogs in the van, but boy did my heart go out to the owner--what a way to end their dog show weekend), showed Rumor who was RWB to Elaine's Safari-a very nice young bitch. Loaded dogs back up, came home, now doing all the things that have to be done before I leave again. Work on Tues, hopefully get the lawned mowed before being gone a week (so it's not jungle fever here next week!), pack dogs back up, drive to LaCrosse to drop off two dogs, drive to Jean's, load up and then drive to Fargo. Three days of shows, with probably little sleep--because you know how much socializing goes with dog shows, swapping help to show Collies to get help to show Cardigans (a pre-thanks to Peppi and Brian for that!), of course we all show late on Sunday, so it'll be that, then a pack up, drive to Jean's, stay the night, pack up, drive to LaCrosse, pick up dogs, drive home and then back to work the next Tues. Whirlwinds.
Oh yea, and 16 short days to Spice's due date! Yipppeeee!!! Uh oh, I think that means more Whirlwinds. Sheesh, just writing it all out feels exhausting! :-)

Yup, she's preggers

Great news, all the signs of pregnancy are there for Spice! Her due date is June 16. I'll be getting some picks later this week. I kind of ran of out of oomph today. Yesterday was so busy, I'm working on sprucing up the indoor garage kennel runs. Love my new tools--especially that drill and it only took me about 30 mins to figure out how to make everything work with it. Stop that snickering! Got about 1/2 of the grass mowed, which anyone that's been out here can attest to the fact that there is alot of grass to push mow. Cleaned up the burn barrel area and put in some new metal flashing to expand the area. This worked out great because then I dug around in the garage and pulled out all the corrugated cardboard boxes that have accumulated in the past year and a half and got those burned. Yea, yea, ozone, pollutants, tell it to someone that lives closer to a landfill and has a truck. I burn my garbage, and I won't even begin to discuss what's buried in the big ol' hole out where there was a hog building. It's filled in now and Rick planted corn over it this year. If I start to glow in the dark after eating a few ears of sweet corn you'll know why. ;-)
All of the materials for the whelping box are on site now, this week when it's nice after work I'll finish sealing the wood and putting it together. As usual when I visit the Menard's I went a big over the top and it's going to be one solid, big structure. I think I'm going to have to actually assemble it in the bedroom--it won't fit thru the door all in one and I'm not even sure I could lift it in one piece. What the heck? It should last for puppies until I'm tired of having anymore litters. I'm a bit worried it might not be tall enough for the puppies, but I've already come up with an easy solution that can be added after the puppies get big and active. For now it's made so I can get in and out and over the sides without killing myself or pulling a muscle. These are important for those of us out of shape, getting way to old to crawl on the ground people.
I can't believe it's nearly 7 pm on Sunday--I want another weekend now! The good part is that on Mon, Tues, Thurs now I get to carpool and that means leaving work at 4 instead of 5--and heck the decrease in gas and pollutants from that V8 vehicle I drive should balance out the garbage burning, right?
Until next time...

Rain Rain Go Away and take the Wind with you...

Yesterday was interesting. It's been a rainy and windy May so far and I have now experienced the excitement of mud bogging. Along with a few other items, the gravel road took a real beating from the past winter. Since the last thaw there have been big mounds of black dirt heaved up thru the gravel. Add in the downpours we've had and well it's a little like driving in freshly mixed cement. I realize that my usual rate of speed down said gravel road is just a shade over the recommended limit, but I am now down to a crawl and still getting shifted and shoved all over the place. The driveway isn't a mud bog, it's a water obstacle course. Small, medium, large and pond-like potholes full of water down at the "dip" in the road. All in all a simply fascinating driving experience in and out of the farm. Ha.
Today, again, we have wind. Big time wind. I laughed at Sahra when she asked "is it always windy here?" because yep, it's always windy here. Sometimes a barely there breeze, sometimes gale force drama. Today's it's just below gale force which means I'm going to do inside things today. Trim some dog nails, laundry and vaccum with my new Dyson (thanks to Jean!). Maybe today is the day I get the sewing back out and finish up some more projects. For now it's some computer time while playing tug with Harold--I am the supreme multi-tasker--and humongoid cups of coffee.
Until next time...