The calm following the puppy storms

Over the past two weekends, eight of the Ppups have left for their new homes. Little Pistol is still here with me, and I am crate and house training her and evaluating her for what sort of home she will best fit into.

Still, the change from 9 puppies to 1 is drastic for both of us. I've slowly moved, cleaned, mopped, laundered, scrubbed, folded, shuffled, and otherwise put away the whelping boxes and puppy play area and moved around the dog crates that I had shoved aside to make room for puppies.




Around her siblings, Pistol was quite the fierce pup--on the offense and no-holds-barred. But by herself, she is a real sweetheart who likes to sleep at my feet and cuddle in my lap while gazing liquidly into my eyes. I am NOT.KEEPING.HER. Really.




For a few weeks, I was quite worried about her health--she was comparatively small relative to her siblings, although she ate well and had plenty of energy and attitude. At 7.5 weeks, she was 10 pounds, though, which is well within the normal range for a GSD pup. (Biggest brother Panther, now Panzer, was 17!) So, now I am getting to know her, not just her defending her every bite of food and tug on the toy. And, she is a love--she likes to carry all of the dog toys over to the dog bed, then curl up next to Nike or Xita and fall asleep surrounded by toys.

She's been very smart about house training, slept through the night last night in a crate, even.  Although during the day yesterday she got so wound up about the crate that she was biting the bars and screaming... then she threw up. Poor baby. It really wasn't that dreadful--she'd been outside for an hour and I was in the room not 10 feet from her the whole time. I think she is like an over-tired 2-year old having a tantrum. Too much change, too much DO.NOT.WANT.

She spent pretty much all of today by my side--either on walks outside or in a puppy pen a couple feet from my office desk and she asked to go out 4 times--very understated whines and commentary from the pen. When she got thirsty, she signaled clearly by banging her metal bowl. When she has to poop, she starts digging on the floor--like a cat!

For the rest of my dogs, puppies, weather, and heat cycles have thrown training all of course. Hunter came into heat on April 1, and both Lynx and Coal promptly lost their brains on April 8th. They went missing for most of last week--asking Lynx to practice weave poles was pointless--and it kept storming on us! Then the grass started growing. Not just little bits of growth here and there, no, not here in the land of green. The grass quickly got so thick that it was hard for me to walk through and Pistol and Flint (he's still bigger than she is, this week, at least!) had to hop frantically to keep up.

Also last week, I ran up to Pennsylvania with Hunter and bred her to Bandit--the sire of the P litter. I will talk more about this breeding when I know whether it took--but it should be an excellent combination. I've had this breeding planned for 6 months. [It was luck and timing that sent Xita to Bandit first (the original stud I had planned to breed Xita too was suddenly unavailable when she came in heat)--a fortuitous stroke of inconvenience.] Bandit x Hunter should make some wonderful dogs--lots of drive (prey and hunt) with a lot of trainability, very social personality, and a really nice off-switch.