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10/24/08 |
         
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Aug. 1 News: Caught up in the intensity of the moment as the pups were born, we made a slight error - we actually have three boys and three girls!
7/28
7/29 7/30
7/31 8/1
One week old! 9/1 9/2 9/3 9/6 Six weeks old! 9/11 9/12 9/13 9/14 Seven weeks old! 9/16 9/18 9/20 Eight weeks old! 9/27 Nine weeks old - and our final group portraits Happy Birthday, little Flatties!
August 4, 2008 - one week old!
LATE BREAKING
NEWS!!! The green girl (aka Little Brown Bear) opened her eyes,
just barely, tonight! No photo though, as we didn’t want to
blind her with the flash. A virtual amusement park awaits the day the puppies are big enough to meet the minimum ride heights. Flat, square board in center has a ball on bottom to make it teeter. With the pups in lockdown while their box is cleaned, Annie sneaks closer for a peek. She has decided they are some kind of weird cross between gophers, moles, prairie dogs, and aliens. They certainly CAN’T be dogs!!! It’s been a couple busy days as we have had a break in the heat and have scrambled to catch up on outdoor chores. In the meantime, the puppies are growing like weeds-well, fat weeds actually. Poor Gusty is beginning to feel like she isn’t much more than a milk bar! But her generous faucets are most appreciated, and the green girl is now a whopping 3 pounds. Bat Girl has just about caught up, now weighing only one ounce less than the pink girl. As invariably happens, all the pups now seem to have earned a nickname. Besides Bat Girl we have Little Brown Bear (green girl), Miss Rosebud (pink girl), Big Red (red boy), Orange Flash (orange boy-quite ironic, as he is the easy going guy of the bunch and anything but a flash!) and the moniker for the white boy is White Fang, going back to my childhood days with Soupy Sales. (OK, admittedly sleep deprivation does do strange things to your brain.) Tomorrow we will once again make an attempt at an official portrait session, so stay tuned. But don’t get too excited- Ansel Adams we aren’t! August 11, 2008 - two weeks old!
"Mug shots" on August 14, 2008
Today the puppies exploded into activity. Suddenly they can all walk and have discovered each other. By this evening, they had their first play session with one another. It was a wild and crazy five minutes…well, sort of. Then we had to take a nap. All that recreation sure takes it out of you. Earlier in the day, I put the gang in their former incubator while I cleaned out the whelping box. Gusty walked in, which caused someone to start yelping. She came over and laid on the dog bed next to the box. I soon discovered that the yelping incited a riot, and we had a prison break as all six puppies bailed from the box for a quick snack from Mom. Guess the incubator days are over! Time to start the weaning process. Pups are being introduced to other forms of nutrition besides Mom. Some take to it better than others! Weaning continues with an introduction to "puppy gruel" - a mixture of ground puppy chow and Esbilac. Clearly the are enjoying big kid food but end up wearing as much as they ingest! OK, we admit we forgot the comparison photo when we did the 3 week portraits. So we thought we would catch up tonight. Now that the puppies are eating gruel (or swill, depending on their opinion) we thought they would be well fed and sleepy, making photography easier. We would just line them up in a row and take a quick shot. HA HA HA HA HA! It was like trying to photograph marbles on a hill, only with fur and legs. After 6 dozen times of…ready…NOW!!! QUICK!!! Darn it!!! – we gave up. What you see is what we got. No wonder Ansel Adams took such great photography. Mountains don’t move.
After a short trip out of town, we returned to a group of puppies that were toddlers no more! Our puppysitter was quick to inform us the plastic tub no longer holds them when cleaning the whelping box. She tried putting the puppies in it, but then Gusty walked by and all hell broke loose. There were puppies everywhere! Gusty walking down the hall, then puppy green after her, then puppy pink, etc. etc, rapidly followed by the puppysitter with a mop in one hand and pick up papers in the other. I think you get the picture….. It was incredibly hot and humid today but cloudy, so we thought we would introduce the kids to the Great Outdoors. In less than 10 minutes they made it perfectly clear they much prefer climate control. After much yelping we brought them inside even though their box wasn’t quite dry. No problem! They found the cool floor quite to their liking. Life (in air conditioning) is good! August 25, 2008 - four weeks old
This picture taking stuff is so BORING....
OK, unfair. Yesterday life was good, we were snoozing on the floor, playing with new toys, enjoying ourselves. Then today…the people said we STINK! Can you believe it?!?! What’s wrong with a little Air De Poo or Swill #5??? The next thing you know, were taking a BATH!!! Today, life is definitely not so good.
During the outdoor photo session, those left inside executed a prison escape. If you think Hurricane Gustav is scary, you should have seen the aftermath of their adventure!
September 1, 2008
We're big kids now! First we had gruel, then puppy mush and today we graduated to Puppy Crunchies! Our mealtimes are really getting a bit noisy.
The webmistress takes takes the liberty
of adding a picture of her hound, the
puppy's Uncle Toby, resting from a long day
of puppy sitting.
Today we had some GREAT adventures. First we did a wilderness walk! There were lots of great weeds and stuff to chase and drag around. And then (this was the greatest thing we ever ate in our WHOLE LIVES) we had an ice cream treat!! It was so delicious and we even licked every single spot where it melted on the porch!
Puppies at play!
We went on a BIG wilderness walk over hill and dale. There were great new stinks, flowers to eat, and a puppy stampede through the grass. It was great fun, but boy, did we sleep well afterwards!
All of the kids went swimming today and all took to it like ducks...um....flatties to water!
Today was incredibly hot and humid, so our outdoor adventures occurred in the morning at the edge of the pond. The big discovery of the day was cattail heads. One fuzzy stalk can be converted into a gazillion pieces of fluff in a matter of seconds. How cool is that!?! In the afternoon it was too hot to play outside so we enjoyed “rumpus room” activities. The two toys that made the biggest hit were an empty McDonalds cup and a cackling Halloween witch toy. Poor witch- she never had a chance……
Beach babies!
Today was very exciting as we went on a major adventure. We all took a long walk, through the bottomland pasture, across the dry creek to the wetlands, then way up onto the high prairie hill. We are now official prairie dogs! It was full of great discoveries, like dead crayfish (tasty!), deer scrapes, rabbits, plastic ducks, and all kinds of flowers and weeds to tear apart. We even jumped a buck bedded down in the prairie, and he must of known how dangerous we were because he ran off really fast. When we got back we were full of creek silt and slimy mud, and had a gazillion desmodium seeds stuck all over our fur. A great time was had by all. Then we had to sleep for 6 hours to recover and get ready for our next adventure. Today the prairie, tomorrow the world!
Big day. Many adventures. We are big dogs now. We are the terror of duck decoys, frogs, and old sticks. Be afraid. Be very afraid………
These are not actually pictures from today but from the archives. In the flurry of activities of getting everyone ready to move to their new homes, no time to take pictures. We continue to work on socializing the pups and running the puppy kindergarten so that they will move happily to their new homes. These were taken on 9/19, a particularly hot day and prove that all kids love to play in the sprinkler!
October 3, 2008 Friday was the last chance for most of the pups take a wild heathen run together. So for a last adventure, we walked the Songdog property over hill and dale. The kids took advantage of it by getting themselves filthy, wet, and seed covered before their "going away" baths. They must have brought out the kid in Gusty and Annie, too, as you can see. An added bonus was their first field training, as Gusty and Annie flushed a covey of quail several times. The kids found the bird scent in the cover VERY interesting. Big Red, now Cork, showed he is ready for a future of agility. He decided to check out the big bridge over the dry creek bed, almost 6 feet off the ground. With a little encouragement from Brian, he led the way across, never looking back! They ended their time together with a major brawl in the dust for old time sake. Pink was especially enthusiastic--- it must have been the pirate coming out in her!
October 6, 2008 The remaining kids, Blizzie, Tess (formerly Green) and Jazz (formerly Orange Flash) were quite miffed when they heard the other siblings were pictured on the website with their new parents. So, in fairness, we took a break from the evening play session and snapped a 10 week old portrait of each. Keep in mind that although the kids insisted we take the photos, they had bigger and better things to do. Hence they are neither clean, well behaved, nor decorated with seasonal props. Hey - you can't have everything.
Jazz was the first pup to enjoy motel living in his own suite. Jazz had a personal escort to his new home in Michigan, traveling to Indianapolis for the handoff. He did some bonding with his temporary grandpa and showed the typical Flatcoat interest in all things sweet, especially flourless chocolate birthday cake. He also proved that you don't need to buy expensive toys - he had a long battle with a roll of paper towel that wore him out. He was a perfect gentleman and gave sloppy kisses to everyone who stopped to admire him.
The Columbus Day holiday was a perfect time to do some autumn gardening. Tess and Blizzie certainly did their part in helping to do some transplanting. And there is nothing better than a nice cool mound of fresh dirt for a nap!
Well, the saga of the Wally-Gusty litter comes to an end. Tess, formerly known as the Green Bear, is now safely at home in Minnesota with her dad Wally. Her last day with us started with a long walk around Songdog, followed by some playtime with her sister Blizzie. After a good roll in weasel poop and a romp through pond muck, a bath was necessary to make sure her new parents didn’t send her back when she got off the plane! Sharing a blanket and the favorite chair was a great way to round out their last day together. We miss all our little Flatkids so much, but know they will leave long, happy lives with their new families! All we ask is that you give them an occasional hug from us. We will never forget the joy they brought us in their short time at Songdog.
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This site was last updated 10/24/08
