Puppies at christmas

Pups were 4 weeks old on Christmas day. They have had socialisation in bucket loads these last few days, although now they have got into the idea of solid food, there are times when you wouldn't want to pick up and cuddle a puppy who is wearing more of his dinner than he has eaten! (anyone who thinks breeding pups is easy money, ought to come and see how much effort is required just to keep them clean, let alone everything else that the pups and mum require)
Unfortunatly Bella has almost given up on the pups, I think it is a combination of her wanting to be with us and the fact that she is finding 8 strong pups too much.
Depending on the weather over the next week or so, I intend to start introducing them to the great outdoors soon, which should start to give them an idea of what housetraining is about.

I don't normally update this often, but yesterday I spent ages waiting to get a photo of the pups when they were awake, but they chose to have a very sleepy day. Then lo and behold at 11:30pm they decided it was playtime. Of course by the time I got the camera I had missed most of it , but I got a couple of shots.

Back to the subject of rehoming my poodles :-). I started the bathing and clipping, ready for christmas, yesterday. Safe in the knowledge that everywhere is frozen so the girls should stay fairly clean. Dollar was the first for a spruce up. Guess who found the only defrosted part of "the bog of eternal stench!"

Nearly three weeks old

Just an excuse to put a couple more photos up really. Still not much to say other than the pups are continuing to thrive, for the last couple of days they have started to get up onto unsteady legs and make a very good attempt to get off their bed and onto the paper to have a wee.
Went shopping for puppy toys yesterday so in about a week they can start having some toys in with them.
The messy part starts just in time for Christmas as I am planning to introduce them to their 1st solid meals this weekend.

On a different note, after bogging off twice in two days, (45mins and 1hr 40mins) after deer, does anyone want a pair of very deaf apricot standard poodles? - only joking!

More puppy pictures

Pups have started to open their eyes today, they are all fat as butter and totally gorgeous. They sleep as much as any other pups I've had, but when they are on the go they are very fast and determined, a sign of good working dogs perhaps? they certainly get around the whelping box more than the poodle pups do.

Puppy pictures

Mum and babies doing very well, although Bella is torn between looking after her babies and greeting everyone who comes to visit.

Haircuts and surgical cuts

I am pleased to say that Oliver has left to join a lovely new family today, a couple and their white toy poodle. I think he has well and truely fallen on his feet and get the impression that he is going to be spoilt rotten. He had a wash and brush up before he left, and looked very cute.

Bella, our working cocker has more than made up for one pup leaving by producing 8 gorgeous babies. It unfortunatly wasn't trouble free. She started showing signs on the start of labour, being restless and a bit huffy puffy, on Thursday evening. So I had a restless night, as did she, setting my alarm every couple of hours to go and check that she wasn't in full labour, Friday morning and she appeared ok so I took the rest of the girls for their walk. At 10:30 Graham phoned to say she was leaking, so I cut the walk short and was back in about 45 minutes. She didn't do anything until 12:30 when out popped a beautiful tri coloured bitch, with apparently very little effort. Brilliant I thought, at last a considerate dog who was going to produce pups easily and at a civilised time - wrong. The next pup didn't arrive until 2:20 but was followed fairly quickly by the 3rd, then nothing. At 6pm we took a very relaxed Bella to the vets with her 3 pups. An xray confirmed therre were at least 3 more to come, one of which was already in the birth canal.
She was given a shot of oxytocin to try and get things moving, half an hour later and she was almost asleep in the back of the car. This was then followed by the vet attempting to pull the pup out, but it was just that bit too far back. At this point the only option was a caeserian. She couldn't have had more attention, there were 3 vets, 2 nurses, Graham and myself, she had timed her visit well :-). The pup who had been stuck in the birth canal was the only one that took a bit of real effort to get going, and my thanks have to go to Emma for reviving him, but within a very short period we had a total of 8 noisy pups. We were on our way home within 15 minutes of the last suture going in, and Bella was feeding her new brood as soon as they were in the whelping box, they are so much more resiliant than us humans!
Mum and pups are thriving and once again it will be nice to see a different breed developing (and no clipping, hooray)

Bouncing back

After loosing Cinders it's been hard to get back in the swing, but when you have a naughty pup to keep you occupied, it helps. Oliver has definately got an outgoing personality. He wants to be in on everything, he thinks he is "the man" when playing with the big dogs, barking and growling and they are so gentle with him, even Audrey who is still only a puppy herself. He is very keen to say hello to all our visitors and as can be seen from the photos, he thinks little boys (one of my daughters friends) are great fun!
He is still looking for that special home to call his own, please give me a ring if you would like more details. He will be ready to go in about 2 weeks. He is going to be a small toy, the photos make him look bigger than he is, which at the moment is 3.5" tall.

Cinders R.I.P.

Yesterday, whilst in the care of a good friend, Cinders was hit by a car and killed. This was a terrible accident and no one is to blame, not even the F****ing taxi driver who didn't stop even though there were children in the road trying to get Cinders back, and when later tracked down said she didn't have time to stop for that sort of thing as she had to get to work!
I write this as a little tribute to her memory. I was conned when I bought Cinders, she came from a respected breeder who lives about 6 hours from me, on the initial phone enquiry I stressed that to fit into our household she needed to be an outgoing pup (she was 5 months old when I took her on). I was assured this was the case. Due to journey time we agreed to meet at a show where he was exhibiting some of his other dogs. He presented me with a cat box with a very frightened pup at the back of it, he assured me that this was purely because she had never been in a car before and a show is a frightening place for a first visit. I should have listened to my instincts and walked away, but because of the journey we had made I allowed myself to beleive him. As we were leaving (having paid a huge sum of money for her) he casualy mentioned that she had never had a coolar or lead on, wasn't housetrained and he hadn't given her a name.
When we got home she spent the first few weeks hiding in corners and would go rigid when picked up, in time she trusted us and learned to enjoy human and canine company. Walks were her greatest pleasure, she ran like the wind, chased rabbit and deer with the big dogs on walks and played with toys, she wouldn't hesitate about running up to greet people we met on her walks. I think her walks were the way she de stressed herself as she was quite a hyper dog in the house. She also insisted on sitting on my lap in the evenings which is where she felt secure.
What we never achieved was geting her completly housetrained. I know she started life in a flat, what I am guessing she was crated for lengthy periods as she would happily soil her pen and then sleep in it, she would also toilet anywhere else in the house if she got caught short. We worked hard on this by giving her every opportunity to go out, and by keeping her beds clean at all times, and to a certain extent this worked but if she was upset about anything she would forget and would mess in her pen overnight.
She had a puppy last year, and initialy she was very overprotective about him, burrying him in the bedding and carrying him around the house! but in the end she did a very good job with him and Jack was a fantastic happy little chap.
I am now glad I took Cinders on as I think the two years she spent here were good ones, far better than the life she had previously, without a name, without walks and without love.

Oliver

I know, it's fatal giving them a name, but he is always wanting more of everything so he had to be Oliver. He is most definately out and about now ('though still a bit unsteady), he is already investigating everything, and constantly getting himself in trouble with the cats. Once he has had enough action - at the moment he can manage about 10 minutes before he is flaked out, he wants to snuggle on the nearest available lap, where he will sleep for as long as you sit still. The big dogs have started to take an interest in him so he finds he is often fast asleep and a giant nose comes from nowhere and pushes him out of bed!

3 Weeks old and homeless!!

Betty's pup, which at the moment is being called Blobby due to his rather round well fed shape, has now got his eyes open and is making some effort to get up and about. He is doing very well as he has no competition, but being an only baby means that he isn't happy when Betty leaves him for a toilet break so he now has a cuddly toy to snuggle into when he is left.
Within 72 hours of him being born I had 3 people who were very keen to have this little man, but unfortunately all have had to pull out due to personal circumstances so he has gone from being very much spoken for to needing to find a special home. He is still too young to say what sort of character he will be, obviously he should be a bold well adjusted lad but we will have to wait and see as to whether he will be a hooligan or a lap dog.
He has started to have visitors now(feline as well as human) so that his socialisation can begin.

Nearly 2 weeks old

Not much can be said about Betty's pup at the moment, other than he is tiny, black and eating for England. Still difficult to get a decent picture but have put a couple of shots on anyway, would like to show him with his mum but as they are both black you can't make him out!

Just the 1!!

Betty had her puppy in the early hours of Wednesday morning - what's wrong with having pups at a sociable time? She produced a very healthy black boy with no trouble, but she was quite big during this pregnancy so I had guessed at 2 maybe 3 pups. As the morning went on Betty was showing no sign of pushing but was restless and a bit shivery so I thought I should have her checked by a vet. We got to the surgery and the vet had a feel, she thought the same as I did, definitely a lump but not sure if it was a puppy or the uterus contracting, so we took an xray, sure enough there was a mass by her pelvis which looked like a pup, the picture was a bit grainy but you could make out a skull, backbone and legs. It was almost out so the vet decided to see if a combination of squeezing the abdomen and trying to hook it out would work.
Of course Betty's size was against her, the vet could only insert 1 finger so was limited on what she could feel. After a fairly lengthy attempt to move this mass we decided that a Cesarean was our only course of action, so at this point I requested that she would be spayed at the same time (I don't believe in breeding from an animal that has needed surgical intervention to get the babies out). Just to make sure we took another xray and lo and behold the 'puppy' had gone!, we took a third picture and still no pup! We can only conclude that it must have been excrement that we saw on the 1st picture - Bettys diet contains a lot of bone.
So Betty is now home with her very precious baby, and as usual is the most devoted mum. The pictures are not great, black and small are not the easiest combination to photograph(and i'm not sure why Emily found it necessary to wear a cat mask) but hopefully we will get some better shots as he grows.

Just Chillin'

All fairly peaceful at the moment, so I took advantage of the lovely weather we are currently enjoying and sat in the garden this afternoon and too a few photos. Unfortunatly I was wrong about Miss Tibbs expecting kittens, so we will try again next year. But I did notice that Betty has been eating very well and was looking a little round, mentioned this to Graham who has now confessed to letting her out with Alfie when she was in season! So it looks like we may have an unplanned patter of tiny paws in October.