Puppy Journal

I am so tired I could cry.

I am so tired that I called in sick today so I could sleep in until 6:20 a.m. and catch up on the whirlwind of events from the last two weeks. :-)

Someone please remind me to file my taxes this week!

On Saturday, April 1st, I had my van serviced. After I paid the bill, the attendant reminded me to come back in 3,000 miles. I said, “I guess I’ll see you in about three weeks”. Foreshadowing events to come. :-) The puppies adventure that day was visiting at the home of some friends. They got to go to a new place, meet new people, and even meet a new dog (6-month old goldie cross).

Sunday was the puppies 7th week birthday. We celebrated by taking our first walk in the desert. Usually puppies are unsure of themselves on that first big walk in the wilderness but these guys just trailed behind me with a “where are we going now?” attitude. They slept the rest of the day.

Monday was another big day for them. Temperament testing was done that evening by a friend of mine who owns a boarding kennel and breeds or has bred goldens, Bostons, and Aussies. I like to think of temperament testing as a puppy party. It is a test to see if I have properly socialized the litter. In a nutshell, I have. They handled all of the tests very well. No one exhibited any extremes of aggressiveness, dominance, or shyness. As Sharon said, “These puppies could be talked into doing anything”. That is what I am after. Sound and trainable puppies. 150 miles round trip for the PATest.

I took my last two of three personal days last Friday and this Monday. BIG trip to Portland for their structural evaluation. I stayed with a friend in Salem and kind of took over her house. When I came in I said I wasn’t traveling with a baby, I was traveling with sextuplets and proceeded to bring in load after load of stuff the puppies would need. What a great friend to allow 8-week old puppies into her home. What an even better friend to provide three grandchildren to entertain said puppies. :-) My two favorite comments of the weekend came from 3rd grader Madison. She said outside to rough-housing puppies, “Here! Here! Settle this over a game of tug of war!”. Then later she came in the house, leaned against the wall and said, “I can’t take it anymore. They are so mean to each other”. :-) She got over that later when they fell asleep in her lap. The only downside to the weekend was that it was in Oregon. You know, wet and soggy, the sun rarely shines in Oregon. It could have been worse. It could have “rained”. We only had “showers”. :-)

That Saturday I took the puppies up the road to Aloha for their evaluation by Pat Hastings. I am very pleased with the results. According to her, there are four show quality and two pet quality puppies in the litter. She rates their structure only (not breed type) on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best and 3 being average show quality for the breed. Any score less than 3 in any single category designates a puppy as pet quality. Purple Girl received a rating of 2.5 to 3 on her rear and that labeled her “pet”. Well, she is a darn pretty pet.

On Sunday, I again drove the puppies up the road to Portland this time to be one of the litters used in Pat’s “Puppy Puzzle” seminar for the Boston Terrier national. The puppies had a great time there. They have a bit of their grandma Juno in them and would scan the crowd from their x-pen until they made eye contact with someone. Then they just “reeled” them in. I found the seminar to be very interesting because of the questions people would ask. People sometimes have a hard time accepting faults in dogs. I think if you don’t know what faults your dog has, then you might think that your dog doesn’t have faults. All dogs have structural faults and all dogs deal with or compensate for those faults. A fault is a deviation from perfection. I was happy with the evaluation in that my puppies have one or two structural faults each instead of having collections of faults. None of them won’t be able to lead active, physical lives. My job now is to put all of the pieces together to match temperament, physical structure, and breed type and match puppy to puppy buyer. I am having the toughest time picking for myself. LOL

1300 miles round trip for the structural evaluation.

Today we went to Elko for their first set of shots, worming, vet check, and microchipping. Thumbs up all around. 150 miles round trip.

On Monday, we travel to Reno for eye exams. That will be 500 miles round trip. After that, the puppies are ready to be released to their new homes. All of my hard work with the litter will pay off when they get to develop their individual personalities and potentials with their own family.

Yup, should be time to service the van in another week or so…

Well, they are not afraid of the lawn mower.

We had two sunny days in a row so I figured I better mow the backyard while I had a chance. I started the mower (it actually started!!!) in the corner of the yard away from the puppies' kennel. They didn’t blink an eye. In fact, every time I mowed in their direction, they would rush up to the chain link to greet me. What an ordeal cutting the lawn was. I don’t know how you who live in the lands of regular rain do it. The long, wet grass kept clogging up the mower causing it to stall. My backyard only has a 50' by 60' patch of lawn but it took me almost two hours to cut half of it. Almost to the halfway mark, it choked on grass and died. I cleared the muck out (I could actually squeeze water out of it), pulled the cord, and the cord snapped. I can’t win for losing. :-(

Last year one of my math students drew me a little picture of how you attach a new cord. I attached the cord but didn’t save his directions. I brought all the dogs in for dinner and tried to remember how to do it. I knew it had something to do with a wire and winding the top part of the mower. With the big dogs crated for dinner, the puppies got the whole backyard to play. Do you know six puppies can all fit on top of a lawn mower at the same time IF that lawn mower is taken apart and someone is trying to fix it? They weren’t much help and thankfully with their short attention spans, they were eventually bored with the whole lawn mower thing and left me alone. I did manage to reattach the cord, wind it up, and start the mower (but the darn cord wouldn’t recoil). I held the excess cord in one hand and hurried up and finished mowing the lawn. Did that scare the puppies? Heck no. Just like with my adult dogs, I had to finish mowing to the tunes of “Get the hell out of the way!”. :-)

They ate way too much grass and are now crashed in the kitchen floor. No doubt later tonight we will experience the revenge of the green grass.

I DO have new pictures of the puppies. Head shots taken this weekend. Gosh they’re beautiful. Gee I hope I find time to upload them to the list file. :-)

Don’t let me forget about those taxes!

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

sdmiller@the-onramp.net

http://www.wolftreeacres.homestead.com