Pistol Goes Off

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Pistol has her topcoat coming in slowly, creeping out from beneath the fuzzy puppy coat. At this point, it's a matter of feeling the new hard coat rather than seeing it. It's particularly distinct on her face, where soft puppy fuzz is slowly being overcome by sleek adult hairs. A friend remarked that it's like watching a picture on your computer slowly get cleaner and more distinct.... it's a puppy being rendered, live action, slo-mo!

Pistol took a plane to her new home in Texas this morning, and it nearly broke my heart to say goodbye. She snuggled deep into my heart in the last few weeks, and I will miss her greatly. If I didn't know where she was headed, I wouldn't have been able to send her off. But it is a super-fantastic home with someone who has been doing SAR work with a girl from my B litter. And I KNOW PISTOL WILL BE WELL LOVED AND VERY HAPPY. 

I'm usually pretty good at not getting too attached to my puppies in their first 8 weeks. I mean, I love them all, but it is a generic sort of love. But in the last 4 weeks, I got to KNOW Pistol's little heart and she followed me from room to room every day, and she would tell me when she thought I needed to feed her and when she thought I needed to sit down and give her a snuggle, and I knew what the whines in the crate each meant (if it had a howly tone, it meant she wasn't just fussing, she really did need to pee, but if she was screaming and biting the crate bars, she was just mad that she wasn't out free to sleep under the coffee table and/or steal my shoes, and if she barked, it meant that I should pay more attention to her and maybe she would like snuggle/pee/eat). It even made me laugh every time she would grab my shoe, look over her shoulder to see if I was watching, and trot away from me, head and tail high. So, I will miss her hugs where she crawled into my lap, tucked her head under my chin, and snorfled me in sleepy happiness.

But now she gets to go be a big kid, gets to learn to do a job, gets to have a whole family of her own to love and entertain her, and, well, gets to finish rendering into a marvelous, beautiful girl.

Puppy at Work!

Blackthorn's Pathfinder, aka Scout (puppy name: Pandora)

Pistol Plays

The heavy breathing is Lynx--he kept wanting to cross between me and the puppy, so I am holding him with one hand while trying to film with the other. Apologies if you get vertigo from the moving camera. :)

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.

Learning to Play

In the video are Pandora (black and tan girl), Pagan (big sable girl), and little Petunia (soon to be "Pistol"). These 3 girls are still looking for homes, so I took some video of them playing with a new toy in a new location.

The Horde Rampages...

Some pictures from Thursday, romping in the house....

Panther

Pagan (left) and Panther

Peregrine and Pollux

Pollux and Peregrine

Pollux tries to "kill" the dog bed

FINS TO THE RIGHT!

Peregrine and Pagan

Primus is in belleh rub heaven

Pagan

"Petunia"

Pele and Pagan played tug with this rope toy across 3 rooms for almost 20 minutes

Pandora

Pollux and Pagan

Peregrine and Pele have a good game going

Pollux--it's not easy being awesome

Sunday Morning Routine

Meal Time

So, to make up for no individual pictures this weekend, I have video!

I got a neat little inexpensive vidcam, a Kodak PlaySport Zx3--it's waterproof! So come summer, I can make pool videos!

I put together my first little movie of the puppies getting their lunch today, so, enjoy!






Pardon the mumbling commentary--next time, I'll turn up the mic and mumble less!

First Day Outside

all 9 pups

These pups are precocious! At four weeks old, they are very active and forward and quite confident. They're rather rough with Xita when nursing--she seems to grit her teeth and then will growl at them and leap into the other half of the box, leaving them to catch up.

The milk bar is FULL!

The wobble boards and wiggle seats have been crawled, walked, and climbed over--they are completely unfazed by changes in surfaces or moving footing. And they make good pillows!

Panther

He looks so sweet and innocent here.

Agility training is hard work!

Yesterday was warm and sunny and clear, so I took the pups outside for their first time. Normally puppies seem kind of lost and worried on their first adventure outside, but not these guys--they were only worried about the heat of the sun--and spent a fair amount of time trying to squeeze into the shade.

Look at little Pandora out there trying to get Oda to play with her!

Oda was in *love* with the puppies. She ended up pressed up against the wire, kissing puppy faces and playing footsie with any puppy who would come her way.

Peregrine checks out Oda.

Pele looks for the exit

The puppies have been starting to show more and more of their personalities. Pagan and Pandora are living up to their names--Pagan is really rough and tumble and bold and showing the beginning of prey drive, grabbing and shaking blankets.

Pagan checks out Oda

Pandora is quite the explorer--she gets into everything! Pele is a sweetie-she makes really intense eye contact, demanding you pick her up, then she calms quickly and just enjoys being snuggled.

Petunia

Petunia is right much smaller than her siblings--but she's still very confident and adventurous--but also really likes being held--she's quite the kisser if you pick her up.

Panther is big and stout and very forward and so is his brother Pollux (who seems to be hiding from the camera this day!)--they don't hesitate to tell me when they're unhappy--big mouths! I think both of them are going to need working homes. (Which is good, because that's where they're headed!)

Puma

So far, Primus and Peregrine aren't showing me their personalities--they seem to be asleep a lot of the time. And Piglet.. err, Puma... well, she's still living up to her name--very confident and food motivated.

Puma, Primus, Petunia, and Panther

See the rest of the pictures from this week.

Precocious Ppups

Petunia, Panther, Puma, I think

The ppuppies have gotten precocious. Pandora has gotten out of the box twice today and Xita is a bit distraught. They were clamoring and swarming all over the box, obviously hungry and Xita just wanted me to fix it all. So I made her lie down and feed them and stroked her head and told her she was wonderful and then the oxytocin buzz kicked in and her milk let down and there were 8 gulping babies moaning in happiness. (#9 was Primus, the black boy, who was sound asleep in the corner--guess he got his belly filled earlier!)

Pandora

I've been watching and thinking about the service dog puppy training videos--they have very young puppies learning complex commands--such as to carry and tug. They do very prescriptive handling routines (like the military "bio-sensor" program for puppies) to stimulate the puppies every day. But then their puppies are born and spend their first weeks in a kennel situation. There's quite a bit of daily exposure that my puppies get just from being in the same room with me for 8-12 hours almost every day (my at-home office).

Petunia is very serious about her food!

 But I was intrigued by the early puppy training and decided that I would play with seeing what we could teach very young puppies. So I had my friends Andrea (my puppy picture hand model!) and her husband D. and her mother come for a visit on Saturday. I mixed up some puppy gruel and we all proceeded to feed puppies off our fingers.

 

Petunia is really into this hand-feeding thing!

Peregrine has Andrea in her sway.

The puppies loved it and we humans got ridiculous amounts of enjoyment from interacting with the puppies and having them try to toothlessly devour our fingers. Almost immediately, we could see their response to us change--they were moving toward us more and climbing on us to get to our fingers. Yesterday and today, I can tell that this has carried over--they are more active and moving toward me. So, I am sold on at least some of this.


We will continue! Next Saturday will be another "training" session--we'll see if we can get the 3-week-old pups to do some baby sits and climb over some obstacles. Who knows what they'll be doing by 8 weeks!


For most of the puppy finger feeding frenzy, Xita was crated with a bone, but she let us know after about 30 minutes that she needed to make sure her puppies were OK.

Puma (aka "Piglet") is not going to let that finger get away

Xita is extremely protective of her puppies, and even with Andrea and Daniel, whom she likes very much, she was wary. She only allowed them to interact with the pups according to her rules. Some of those rules are that you're not allowed to stand up near her, and you're not allowed to leave the room and come back, and you're most definitely not allowed to have a puppy crying. She doesn't get frantic or bark--she gives extremely direct looks and will growl very clearly. For a dog without language, she is remarkably clear in her communications.

Pele, the solid black female, worn out!

If you're following the rules but she thinks you're paying too much attention to the pups, Xita will "hug" you--that is, she leans her chest against yours and puts her head over your shoulder. It's very affectionate--and very good at keeping you away from the pups. She lets me do anything with her and the puppies (she's never, ever growled at me or given me that hard look), but even I get the the Hug of Doom sometimes, when she thinks I should stop messing with the pups.

Panther, the black sable male

I was reading someone's blog and they talked about having "Puppy Potlucks" for those interested in helping to socialize the pups--I think that is a wonderful idea. So I am hoping to implement that for these pups. By the time the pups are 4 weeks, I think Xita will be less intense about guarding the puppies, and it will be good for more people to come visit and help us in our puppy training and socialization.

Pollux, the red sable male, is crazy handsome--he's got a huge head and rich red coloring already

Primus--solid black male. We decided after these pictures that he should really be named "Playboy"

Primus, aka Playboy

Pagan, black sable girl

Peregrine, aka "Pippin"

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