Jonah and Seven were entered in their first official event last weekend, the conformation match at the CWA National in Aldergrove, BC. He started the day by winning the 3-6 month puppy dog class, beating his brother Hokum. Seven was 2nd in her big class of 3-6 month puppy bitches. Jonah and I went back in for Best Puppy and we won! What a thrill! He showed his little heart out and ultimately lost Best in Match to Logan, a very nice adult champion male owned by our friend Ellen. But I couldn’t be more pleased with his first big win. Grateful thanks to judge Karen Lee of Surrey Hill whippets for the honor!
I had hoped to get more updates done today but the website had a profound but thankfully temporary meltdown and I spent too much valuable time trying to get it up and running. More soon!
Boy does time ever fly when you’re having fun! I guess I was deluding myself when I thought I might be able to reclaim some time once the puppies were all off in their new homes. I don’t know how this could possibly be, but I seem to be more busy than ever! I have lots of news and new photos to post but no time to post them. However, since I get regular inquiries about whether puppies are available, I wanted to post a brief update.
There are no puppies available from the Chili x Lark litter. Except for the two puppies who stayed here, all the others are firmly settled in their new homes, and are doing wonderfully. I am so grateful to have found such wonderful homes for these special puppies! Thanks to all the new owners who have been so generous in sending updates and photos; I am saving up photos and will get the website uploaded one of these days when I have a little bit of time.
Eight weeks is a very busy age! In the 10 days since my last update, the puppies have had multiple visitors and several outings to friends’ houses. They had their first shots. They were all BAER tested and all have normal hearing (yay!). We’ve had mixed weather but the puppies were able to spend four full days soaking up the sunshine outside in their safe and secure outdoor pen on my back deck, and had lots and lots of wild playtime in the big yard!
All this activity means I’m late getting my website updated. However, to make up for it, I have lots of new stuff to share this week! There are THREE new photo albums in the litter’s photo gallery:
Seven week stacked photos, obviously taken some time ago but it has taken me some time to get them off the camera and posted.
Eight week stacked photos.
This was a very problematic photo session. The puppies were not cooperative for their Auntie Mary Downing and my camera was even less cooperative for me. I only managed to get one decent photo from the entire session so I decided to switch and try stacking the little worms myself and give the camera to Mary instead. I thought it would be easier for her to videotape instead of shooting stills. With the exception of Seven’s photo (at right), the rest of the 8 week stacked shots are stills captured from the videos, so they are pretty low quality although the puppies were pretty well behaved for me. I know this is the crucial age for evaluating conformation, so I also included short video clips of each puppy stacked below the stills on the photo album, and while they are also not great quality, they might give a better idea of what the puppies look like. FYI, the sound tracks for these clips are muted, so don’t think there is something wrong with your speakers when you only hear silence. You will probably wonder why there are no photos or video of fawn boy #2. Unfortunately he sprained his leg a few days ago and was very uncomfortable during the photo shoot so rather than torture him we decided to leave him alone. However, he looks pretty much the same as he did in his 7 week photo.
Eight week candid photos, all shot out in the yard on a nice sunny day. During their play sessions the puppies are not just exercising and exploring their world, but learning social skills from the adult dogs. In addition to Lark and Kestrel, who is by far the very best puppy auntie ever born, grandma Wren is now allowed out with the puppies during playtime. She mostly ignores them but will occasionally play with them or more often will don her grumpy grandma hat and very appropriately put a cheeky puppy in his or her place. Ringer has also been granted puppy playtime privileges but I have to watch him like a hawk because he likes to smack them around, playfully of course. Although Ringer is 8 years old now, in his brain he is still 8 weeks old and he doesn’t realize he outweighs them by 400%.
But Kestrel is their very favorite play buddy. She is so wonderful with them. She brings them toys and invites them to play by dropping toys on their heads or shoving them in their faces. Today I laughed when she brought her aerobie frisbee (shaped like a ring) over to one of the puppies and gently draped it over her neck. What a goofball. The puppies absolutely adore her and worship the ground she walks on. Kestrel has played this role for two generations of puppies now. She is spayed and will never have her own puppies but she is the very best puppy socializer I know and I really enjoy watching her interact with the little ones.
Last but not least, here is this week’s fun video, actually shot a week ago when the puppies were a few days over 7 weeks old. I actually managed to get it uploaded to youtube the next day but it has taken me this long to get it on my own website. Enjoy!
To make up for last week’s appalling dearth of cute candid photos, today I took a whole bunch of action shots of the pups playing like wild animals out in the yard during a brief break in the rain. My camera is not a fancy digital SLR really suited for action photos but it still managed to do a decent job of it, and I’ve added a new album to the litter’s photo gallery.
I cannot believe the puppies are already 7 weeks old and in just a few short weeks will be heading off to their new homes. I enjoy every second of raising a litter and will really miss the little buggers when they’re gone. They are getting so big and so active now, really interacting with their environment with wild abandon, always making me laugh with their crazy antics. They are out in my smaller side yard three times a day for their meals, potty breaks and playtime, and then get at least one longer play session in the big yard. Branwen would absolutely love to play with them in the yard but she is just too exuberant and rough with them outside, so her playtime with the puppies is strictly restricted to in the house and for the most part I’ve only allowed Lark out with them in the yard. But the last few days I’ve left Kestrel out with them too. Interestingly, she shows absolutely no interest in playing with them in the house, but she loves interacting with them in the yard, and unlike Branwen, is amazingly gentle with them. I guess it is good that they have an indoor friend and an outdoor friend.
This week’s video was actually shot at the beginning of the week, when they puppies were about 6.5 weeks old, but it has been yet another busy week and it took me a few days to get it uploaded from the camera and onto youtube. It features the puppies playing in the yard: running around, chasing the lure, and generally wreaking havoc, and believe it or not, all in a light rain, which you really can’t see in the video. The puppies are pretty immune to the rain at this point, which is a good thing because otherwise they’d never get out to play. Unfortunately, they do eventually turn into real whippets who disdain the rain and are quite sure it will cause them to melt. Enjoy this brief immunity while it lasts…
It has been an insanely busy week and I am sorry to be posting a few days later this week than I have in previous weeks.
The week started with WWWA’s Versatility Weekend in Roy, WA. The puppies attended with me on Saturday and Monday and had a wonderful time. The weather was the pits, though of course it could have been worse: it could have rained non stop rather than just on and off all day. Oh well. There were moments of actual sunshine amidst the liquid sunshine, and we just made the best of it. I set up the puppy pen under a canopy and made a little shelter from the wind in one corner with a tarp, and the puppies were little troopers and did just fine. They got tons of heavy duty socialization with all kinds of people and dogs. On Saturday, they quite enjoyed sharing the pen with Susan Heiniger’s litter, which was one day older. It was a great experience for them to meet and interact with puppies the same age and all 15 puppies piled on my little blue dog bed and huddled together to keep warm. They were set up right next to the paddock, so they are now pretty immune to barking dogs, generators, the ATV we use to restring the lure, and all the horse trailers bouncing past on the potholey road through the Polo field.
I spent the rest of the week desperately trying to get caught up, and also had workers clearing the blackberries from my property. The puppies got to go out and watch and listen to the heavy machinery. They also got to hang out and watch while one of the guys pressure washed the back deck. These puppies are pretty well bomb proof by now!
This weekend I made a quick trip to BC to do a home visit and visit our friend Janet’s litter of 11 puppies born the same day as the baked beans. Sunday we had a puppy party at Mary Downing’s house on the other side of Monroe. The puppies ran around in the yard, met her chickens, played with two of Mary’s very patient adult whippets, Bally and Tyler, and got tons of handling from all the attendees. We also stacked the puppies for photos, which are posted in the litter’s photo gallery. Thank you Mary and Christine for your expert puppy stacking!
Phew! What a week. I do apologize that there aren’t really any cute candid photos this week, and no video. I had hoped to get some video of the puppies playing with the lunge whip today at Mary’s but unfortunately we got rained out and spent most of the afternoon in the house. I’ll try again soon…
Well after the last post on Monday about how nice it is to raise puppies in the sunshine, I think we’ve had about 20 minutes of sun the entire rest of the week, and the puppies really haven’t had a whole of time outside. I raced them out on Wednesday for a few minutes before the rain started again and unfortunately cut short our photo session. Consequently I only got a handful of photos this week, which have nevertheless been posted to the litter’s photo gallery.
To make up for it, I shot more video! Here are three clips for your viewing enjoyment.
This weekend is WWWA’s annual Northwest Versatility Weekend, and the puppies will tag along at least Saturday and Monday, and will get some heavy duty socialization! We’ve got all our fingers and toes (that’s a lot of puppy toes) crossed for nice weather…
I took the puppies for their first trip out to the yard when they were three weeks old, and have had them out every day or two since then. We’ve had typical May weather here in Western Washington, with brilliant, beautiful sunshine alternating approximately every 10 minutes with torrential downpours, and obviously that makes it challenging to introduce puppies to the great outdoors!
The day before yesterday, the sun came out in the late afternoon so I quickly packed them all outside, at which point the breeze picked up and the clouds rolled in and it suddenly got quite chilly. Poor puppies were miserable. So I packed them back up and back in the house they went.
Late this afternoon the sun came out and seemed to want to stay out, so after the big dogs had their playtime, and the grass had really dried out, I took the puppies out and what a difference a little sunshine and two days’ maturity can make! This time they were running and playing like big dogs, and clearly having a wonderful time. They loved running after their mother as she meandered around the yard browsing for tasty dandelions. What fun!
This is my first spring/summer litter and even though the weather isn’t quite perfect yet, how nice it is to raise puppies in the sunshine! I’ve added some photos of the puppies enjoying the sunshine to the litter’s photo gallery.
Happy 4 week birthday to the baked beans! I took a bunch of photos today to celebrate their big day and added them to the litter’s photo gallery.
The puppies have grown so much this past week. The changes from 3 to 4 weeks are so dramatic. Practically overnight they transform from uncoordinated babies who could barely walk into little monkeys who can not only effortlessly navigate that 4″x4″ fence post into their potty area that gave them so much trouble less than a week ago, but can now climb out of their crate bottom. I can no longer use their little transport box to park the puppies while I change the bedding in their pen; now they climb out of it without even trying very hard. I can still use it to move them en masse out to the yard, but they really won’t fit in it for very much longer! I had the opening to the puppy pen blocked with a 12″ metal shelf which was quite easy for Lark to jump over, and until today, it contained the puppies too, but when a couple of them were pretty close to figuring out how to scale it too, before anybody actually learned they could do so, I quickly raised the height to 18″ which should contain them for another week or so.
Just a few short weeks ago I was trying so hard to capture a few moments of play on video, and now all they do is play. If they’re awake, they’re playing. They run around like little circus ponies, carry their toys around, and can almost, but not quite, open their mouths wide enough to pick up a tennis ball. Their play sessions are rowdy, with lots of biting, growling, posturing and knocking each other down. They’re starting to learn from each other, their mother, and me, that they can bite too hard and nobody likes it when they do that!
First, I took a few more cute shots of the puppies the other day and have added them to the 3 week gallery. Here is a teaser of uber-cute #9 boy who is vying for the cutest puppy ever award.
I shot some video of the new puppy pen set-up, which has a section filled with shavings in which the puppies go potty. After my first litter, when I swore I would never use newspapers again, I did something different with my second litter, and was so thrilled with the results I can’t imagine raising puppies any other way.
This time, I put the shavings in about a week earlier than I did last time, and I’m pleased to say that even with the puppies only 3-1/2 weeks old, after just two days of practicing the new arrangement they are about 90% reliable about pottying in the shavings and not anywhere else. Since I put the shavings in on Saturday I have not seen a single poop anywhere else, and am only finding a few pee accidents on the potty pads, or at the edge of the crate near the opening as if they weren’t quite able to get all the way out into the shavings before they couldn’t hold it anymore. I am confident that by the end of the week they’ll be 100% reliable.
Love this set-up! The puppies and the puppy pen stay so clean, they don’t smear and track poop everywhere, the shavings absorb and contain the mess and are so easy to replace as needed.
Oh in the video I had a momentary lapse of reason and said the pen is 9′x9′ but really it is only 6′x6′.
This was a busy week for the puppies! Though it is harder to get good photos of them now that they aren’t so cooperative about holding still, I did get some new photos and I added them to the litter’s photo gallery.
On Monday, I moved the puppies out of their “nursery” (the 500 crate bottom located in my tv room) and into an ex-pen in the front room, where they’re exposed to all the hustle and bustle of the household. They adjusted very well to their move, and now that they’re more reliably able to move away from their sleeping area to the opposite edge of the pen to eliminate, tomorrow I’ll expand their pen and put in their potty area with shavings to get started on their potty training. I’ve also had them out in the sunshine a few times over the last few days and they’re getting used to the feel of the grass under their feet.
Yesterday on their 3 week birthday, they had their first solid meal. I feed a raw diet so I start my puppies right onto minced raw beef mixed with goats milk. These puppies knew just what to do when I put down the bowl for the first time, and polished off their first meal in no time flat. It looks like these puppies are taking after their mother and father in the chow hound department!
Their little personalities are really starting to emerge, and so far I’m pleased with how uniformly outgoing they appear to be at this early stage. Of course, some are more outgoing than others (notably #3 boy, who REALLY reminds me of his Uncle Tiercel at this same age, and #7 girl), but all in all, none appear to be shy or retiring. They all come running and wagging when I come over to the ex-pen and clamor to be picked up. They all like to be handled and enjoy their one-on-one time with me every evening when I watch TV.
I shot a couple video clips documenting their “firsts” this week.
First trip outside:
First meal (complete with maternal editorial commentary):
Hopefully the first of many! 
You will probably wonder why there are no photos or video of fawn boy #2. Unfortunately he sprained his leg a few days ago and was very uncomfortable during the photo shoot so rather than torture him we decided to leave him alone. However, he looks pretty much the same as he did in his 7 week photo.
