Rúnar has put together a new slideshow of the puppies from this past week.
But he’s also been busy with the new website. Yes we are still working on getting a better site up and running again, built around the old site but with some improvements.
He has also been working in the yard and it’s finally ready, the grass has grown from the seed that he put down earlier this summer and he’s moved the fencing now so the dogs now have more room to run. Ha it was funny to see a stray cat who obviously didn’t realize the inner fencing was gone. Hahaha He got barked at and jumped so high when he realized that they were right beside him, he shot off like a bullet. I hope it’s the cat that comes in the laundry room window all the time and that now he won’t have the guts to come back. It was also funny to see how Birta at first just stayed at the same boundary until she figured out she was allowed to walk on the other grass as well.
It’s been a busy weekend in other words even though we didn’t venture out to the dog show like most. I don’t believe in going into areas where dogs frequent (especially shows because so many dogs get sick after those because of the carpets) while we have pups in the house. I am starting to wonder though how much our own cautiousness matters when everyone around us frequents them without a second thought when they have small pups at home, then might come visit us or we visit them. In any case I’m comfortable being the worry wort and know that I at least do my best to keep my litters safe and can’t do any more than that. I mean the trips to the vets lately in itself was worrying knowing they could catch anything there! Hófi got her stitches out on Thursday and has healed nicely, only problem is that she hasn’t been wanting to eat anything other than cheap canned food (she wouldn’t even eat raw food) so she has had a bit of loose stools and even diarrhea the past few days and has kept me up at night letting her out every couple hours. Although the pups aren’t keeping us too busy at all. They pretty much take care of themselves, it’s such a strange feeling after having the totally bottle fed litter last time.
It’s so nice on weekends to have some peace and quiet since all during the week the road crew is busy shaking the house and making tons of noise. Looks like they have alot to do yet but here you can see how close they are now to the house, I hope the foundation doesn’t get damaged. Rúnar said it should be okay but he’s away all day and doesn’t know the extent of the pounding. I wonder when I sit here at the computer during the day and the table and floor moves underneath me, it’s worse than the last earthquakes and quite continual. Anyway, the pups should be quite used to stress I’d think.
I will say I still kept an eye on who won the show for curiosity sake and I’m happy with the winner of the Icelandic sheepdog this time. It was our student from the last course who came to us with a problem of barking and lunging around other dogs and after our course was a totally different dog. His owner was extremely good at using all the tools and advice we gave her even though at the start of the course she no doubt did find (like most do and unfortunately not everyone comes back after sessions like that) clicking him for calm and not doing “anything” while all the other dogs were working a bit boring and strange. Most people find the concept of letting the dog make the change from the inside out a bit weird I think, society is so intent on “controlling” everything. This owner was different though and we liked her open and accepting nature! It’s so funny that those who actually continue to do the things needed for the foundation work of reactive dogs instead of giving up and thinking it silly are the dogs that shine and gain self confidence. That in turn makes the owner’s proud and they train them more and end up often making more visually observable progress than the other dogs. It looks like from photos that I’m sure will be shared on DIF that she didn’t show him herself but you can tell by the photos that her training has made him a wonderful calm and happy dog. We had said to ourselves that it’s too bad he is so young we would have loved to use him in our breeding. Well, we’ll see what the next couple years brings.
It’s so fun to say that when she asked us about him at the course and we told her that he was one of the most beautiful ISD’s we’d seen in a long time. Wonderful size, head, proportions, coat and expression that it would appear there was a little bit of truth to that. I’m ecstatic that finally a show where the male and female actually show a very big difference in sex and size where you don’t have to look underneath the dog to figure out which is which.
Here are a few photos for those who don’t want to watch the whole slide show. They have opened their eyes, Patti a few days ago already but little Pési still has a little ways to go, his are still just half open tonight so either during the night or tomorrow he’ll be able to see the world as well. They are starting to play of course now that they can see each other so it’s more fun to watch them now, they do more than just sleep and drink. Hehe
A couple of Perla Prúð the big girl who just keeps getting bigger, unbelievable how much she weighs already and she appears long hair. Over 1130 grams. WOW!
Next Patti who is such a fun guy, he started playing with us because he was the only one with his eyes open for a couple days so we feel like we know him a bit better than the others already. He also appears long hair but not as long as Prúð. Patti is over 1090 grams.
Little Pési is growing sure and steady and is an impressive 740 + grams which is 4 times his birth weight so they are all growing it would appear at the exact same rate it just seems different because of the difference at birth.
As promised here is a slide show of photos. Rúnar put them together from birth to the present. Enjoy!
Little Tinni Alexander is settling in to his new home in Toronto and we are excited to see photos of him with his new family as soon as they have some time. We are just so happy that he has found the perfect home where he will get training and enjoy some sports in future because we think he is a fast learner who will enjoy a little bit of work like his mom and Klói.
The pups are doing well and they are so quiet and content. After the bottle fed litter last time and the hard first few days of little Polli we are enjoying the relaxation of Hófi taking perfect care of her puppies without our help. We’d forgotten how little work they are the first few weeks. Hehe Their character is starting to show a bit already, Patti and Prúð are over 600 grams and Pési is really holding his own and growing just as fast compared to the size difference at birth. He’s up past 325 grams when I weighed them tonight.
Sorry to say it’s been a rough week and after a lot of extra help and trips to the vet’s we had to stop the suffering of one of the puppies. He most likely had twisted intestines or something because he would eat from Hófi and was very strong but he could not relieve himself except to pee. The vet was so sure he would make progress. We tried stimulating him, paraffin oil and the vet did a couple enemas on him. He had ex-rays and ultrasounds to check for blockage but the vet said it was too difficult to see anything on such a young puppy. His belly was so distended that we couldn’t put enough into him because he couldn’t get it back out and after a couple days he started to refuse to eat more so he was starting to dehydrate as well so needed liquid under the skin a few times. The vet said the typical term for what happened is fading puppy syndrome which is a general term for things they can’t really explain. He appeared perfectly healthy and ate like a healthy puppy and he was the one who gained the most the very first day but then started to lose, he hardly slept and was starting to cry regularly. When we realized that it was a lost case and he was crying from pain we couldn’t put him through any more. He was the biggest puppy when they were born and we called him Polli (little boy), I gave him a second name when we said goodbye to him. Polli Pallaton (meaning fighter in Native American) is buried at the family summerhouse along with Rúnar’s grandparent’s little dog Karó who died earlier this year.
There has been so much happening this week we are looking forward to some rest on the weekend. The three puppies are all growing leaps and bounds and are doing so well, Hófi is such a good mother and she has so much milk! Patti Prins (meaning plump or well-fed Prince) is already double his birth weight at 530 grams when I weighed him earlier today. Pési Prúði Grámúli (little boy that’s well behaved with grey muzzle) is still small but he’s growing well and only has 67 grams to go to double his weight, last weigh in was 283 grams. Perla Prúð (quiet, courteous pearl) is huge and just needs 10 grams to double her birth weight, earlier today she was 550 grams so I have no doubt she will have doubled before we go to bed tonight.
We got the disappointing news that for personal reasons Tinni needed to be re-homed, it was a bit of a sudden decision but with his best interests at heart. We are happier that when such a decision has to be made that it’s done while the puppy is still young enough to be able to bond well to a new owner. It is sad for his owners but at the same time we are grateful they trusted us to find the perfect home for him. As fate would have it his new owner saw him and fell in love with him from photos and had asked about him before we knew he needed a new home, there was also someone visiting who was willing to escort him home on the flight. The Lord works in mysterious ways they say. Tinni Alexander will arrive in his new home in Toronto later tonight. He is a sweetheart and we are so glad we got to take care of him for a little while and he stayed with us last night which Klói was quite happy about. We didn’t have the time to take good photos of them but we felt we needed to get a couple of the 3 gens. It’s heartbreaking that his mom wasn’t still here with us to see what a handsome and good boy he is. We got her ashes back today so now she is resting on the shelf beside Freyja and we have her close to us again at least until her former owner comes to get the ashes.
I’m going to see if Rúnar can help me put photos of the puppies into a slide show tomorrow so I can put a bunch of them up from their first week but here are a couple until then. These photos were taken today. First we have Töfra Patti Prins
Next Töfra Pési Prúði Grámúli
Last but certainly not least, their big sister! Töfra Perla Prúð (the first photo was taken yesterday)
And of course we miss him but want him to be remembered so here are a couple photos taken before he died on Wednesday. Töfra Polli Pallaton may he rest in peace.
Birta appears empty at this time so given the difficult time we’ve had over the past week with Polli and the stress that went into getting Tinni ready to go, all the driving, and sore muscles from kneeling and bending over the whelping box night and day we have to admit that we are a bit relieved that we can wait until her next season and hopefully get a full litter at that time. We are going to enjoy the calm, quiet closeness and fun of having 3 healthy puppies that are well cared for by their mom and enjoy our other dogs at the same time who have been patient and understanding at pretty much being ignored for the longest time. How thankful we are for our blessings.
We have had a very eventful few days. The puppies decided they didn’t want to be born on Rúnar’s birthday yesterday even though we spent the whole day waiting and worrying. Four healthy puppies arrived via C-section today August 15th. We will update a bit more later.
Beautiful almost single coloured red/tans which we are so happy for as we had thought we might get pied. Also they all have dark pigment (slate grey) rather than brown so again we are happy. They remind us of their father in colour so far with the grey mask and limited white markings. All have double dewclaws of varying strengths. Content quiet strong puppies and Hófi is milking very well.
They are: Boy 265 gr. – Boy 295 gr. – Boy 175 gr. – Girl 280 gr.
The little guy is being watched closely as he is the only one that has lost a little bit of weight so far. Now to try to get a little bit of sleep. Rúnar has a very early day tomorrow and neither of us slept a wink last night.
Mostly photos for those wondering how things are going. Tinni is awesome and the spitting image of both Skella and Klói in character, he’s a sensitive smart dog so quick to learn that it’s best to be two steps ahead of him as he learns through eye contact as a reward it makes it very important that he not get eye contact except for good things, he seeks out eye contact all day long. We think it’s awesome to train him. He acts more like a grown up dog than a puppy at least at our house we hardly know he’s here and we were worried he’d drive the other dogs nuts during his stay. Hehe Just like Klói he loves to help out around the house and Klói has already gotten him to bring mail to Rúnar. Klói took one letter and Tinni followed him with another, copy cat! He also comes into the laundry room with me and watches everything I’m doing, it’s like we have Klói as a puppy again. Klói is such an awesome Dad it’s amazing to watch him. It is so heartwarming as well to have Tinni here because he has all his Mom’s good qualities and he prances around with the same movements as she had, his ears, eyes and expression is hers. I feel like she is here with us. He’s running around here with her favourite toy (the grey cat), so sweet it brings a tear to the eye, it’ll be hard to give him back.
Having lots of fun with him here and it’s sad the week is already over tomorrow. I’ve been getting him used to TTouch and he’s starting to like that, as well as playing Crate Games (from Susan Garrett) and some other training. We have decided that the next litter will play crate games before they leave us if possible from a very young age! Not just getting used to the crate but love their crate, we never thought of doing the games with puppies although we’ve used them for the older dogs before. I’m curious to know how it goes with pups.
Tinni seems to feed off the energy of the others dogs very well so that when they are laying down sleeping he does too, but like my dogs he also feeds off of my energy and the energy of people so when I get anxious (like when a wasp got too close to me today) then the dogs get excited as well. I must try to control my adrenaline through deep breathing or something. They sure are doing their best to teach me to deal with my anxiety better.
Rúnar helped me put photos into a slideshow, I hope it works. I wonder though if those with dial-up can see them…please let me know if you can’t see them like this.
Here is poor Hófi, I wonder why I thought she wasn’t fat enough. She is finding it very hard to find a comfortable position lately. I feel sorry for her now with 1 more week to go until her due date! Maybe she’ll decide to have them early although I hope not because I’d rather she had them on the weekend when Rúnar is at home. Pregnant or not she still loves visitors and tries to charm them.
As for Birta we think she is pregnant given how she acts and the fact that she also has swollen milk glands but she is still thin (her coat fools you) so we wonder if there is one or two. She still has 2 weeks left until her due date so we’ll have to be patient.
We were thinking of taking her for an ultrasound but it’s expensive and we don’t have time to go now that Rúnar will be going back to work on Monday. We have been SO busy, hardly at home lately and when at home we’ve had guests or been doing other things. Rúnar went into Reykjavík on his own (with Birta and Klói) yesterday and did a bunch of errands including getting puppy food (we use Robur). We still didn’t get everything done that we had wanted to do while he was on holiday but he did get a bunch done in the yard, we took some junk to the junkyard today and cleaned up the puppy room a bit and he used yesterday to build Hófi a whelping box and it’s really nice. The bottom has plastic tablecloth material so it will be easy to clean and we can take the cloth off after the litter and put a new one on in future for the next litter. It cost a bit to get the materials because we wanted a more sturdy one that we can take apart and store better as well. It’s not very big (maybe a little bigger than their wire cage (that 4-5 dogs fit in in the car) but we also got a new lower puppy play pen so that we can take the front off of the box early and just let the pups have the play pen as soon as they start getting too big for the box. It should also help with housetraining as well because they always like to go outside the box if they can as every breeder knows they start that pretty much as soon as they start to be mobile. Hopefully I won’t be injuring myself on that playpen since it’s easier for me to lean over and climb in. I’ll try to post photos of the whelping box soon, although there are a couple photos in the slide show where Rúnar was putting finishing touches on it.
The past few weeks have flown past and we feel like Rúnar didn’t have any holidays poor guy. My chest and lung ex-rays came back already and were fine so that’s good news.
I’ve been getting him used to TTouch and he’s starting to like that, as well as playing Crate Games (from Susan Garrett) and some other training. We have decided that the next litter will play crate games before they leave us if possible from a very young age! Not just getting used to the crate but love their crate, we never thought of doing the games with puppies although we’ve used them for the older dogs before. I’m curious to know how it goes with pups.
