The babies are now a week old, they have doubled up their birth weight, their pink raspberry tosies have turned black and ears are now floppy so they are starting to resemble a Leonberger baby. 

To celebrate their 1 week birthday puppies started wearing their proper puppy collars so it is now easier to see who is who as the collars are little thicker.

Puppies have had their first 2 nail cuts (thats 328 little nails in total cut) and are getting very cuddly with us, climbing all over who ever is sitting with them & learning the positive connection with us humans. 

Ellie has been a brilliant mum and very careful around the puppies so she does not step on or knock her babies. She does have a funny habit of confusing the babies by rolling on her back whilst they are feeding, at the moment the babies can not reach her teats when she does this and get very confused of where did the milkbar suddenly disappear! Of course after next week or so they will be able to see so Ellie will not be able to entertain herself in such manner much longer.

Unfortunately Ellie developed mastitis so she has been little unwell for the last few days with high temperature, but we caught it in time and trip to the vets, hot waterbottles & milking the affected teat have worked and she is back to normal again. 

Mastitis is something they can get once the milk really starts flowing, it can develop very quickly and indeed took less than an hour to do so with Ellie.

Sasha seems to think she NEEDS to go and care for the babies and has this daft look on her face when she  promptly tries to go in to the puppy room everytime she has a chance (of course she is not let in as mums don’t generally feel comfortable with other dogs near by this small babies). Star seems little unsure of all the puppy smells on us and not quite sure how she should react. She has tried to have a sneaky peek through the hatch connecting the puppy room and kitchen of what is it that makes the noise and keeps us there. We let her and Ellie have a little play yesterday, well it was Star going nuts seeing her friend again and Ellie pretty much ignoring "the loopy pup".

Here is a link to a video I took yesterday. 

Orange girl is a very active baby and "runs" around the box all the time, this time ending up checking mums mouth out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v66Mhdd_4Us&feature=youtu.be

 

My apologies for the lack of updates this year.

All the girls are doing great but we have not part taken to many doggy activities due to my ill health (a whole different story linked to a mouldy house we lived in).

I took Ellie to the WW-11 show in Paris.

I had already booked&paid for everything so I thought we should still go even though Ellie was totally hairless and should have been hidden away, not shown to the world!

We were extremely disappointed in the organisation of the show, it took us hours to get Ellie’s passport sorted out which meant I missed most of the Leo Judging – The reason we decided to attend despite Ellie’s condition was to see the other dogs!

Also, I have to say the cleanliness (or lack of it) of the show was shocking.

For a World Show I would have expected some people picking up poop or at least bins to be provided as even those exhibitors who bothered to pick up poop, there were no bins to put the bags in. I understand not every part of the world is quite so vigilant when it comes to dog mess but the conditions were revolting and this was the first day of the show. I have heard dogs getting sick after the show and having seen the amount of mess dogs had to walk on, I’m not surprised! I will definitely be thinking twice before going to a French show again.

This summer we did water rescue with Ellie and Star.

Ellie passed A & B tests which we are very proud of considering she had never done some of the exercises in the B test.

Next year Ellie will be training for her C test which will be fun.

Star baby was just practising swimming this summer, she had no idea about rescuing anything  - As long as she is praised for her fabulous swimming skills she is happy paddling around in circles looking very proud of herself!

Next summer we shall try doing level A with her, weight being on the word TRY...

We are also hoping to get Sasha back to training next summer and get her through the level B as well.

We have only done 1 UK champ shows this year since Crufts.

This is partly because of girls being in season, partly my skill of missing the entry dates and partly because of cost of it all.

Importing first Sasha and then Ellie a year later and then having the litter that ended up being very expensive experience has kind of eaten our showing budget for few years!

The terrible two are now 4.5 weeks old and very very cute indeed.

I have loaded pictures and weights under their own page on the website.