I am not dead yet..........................!(actually written 3/13/09)

Hi everyone!!

Well, I realize it has been quite some time since I last posted (last September for gosh sake!). I can only say that it has been crazy busy around here, starting with my youngest, Duncan, being hospitalized in October for pneumonia and continuing with my daughter's 15 1/2 yo dog dying unpleasantly in November. Then came the holidays and a new puppy between X-mas and New Year's. Then I got busy with rehearsals for a musical I was cast in with a slight interruption for a nasty kidney infection.

Rev (14 pounds)
Well, the show is over, the puppy is mostly housebroken, and I finally get a chance to catch my breathe,................and Della goes into heat a month early!!

That's right, Ms. Della went up Tuesday, 3/10, for her 3 weeks at the "spa". I will be posting when she comes back with details on who she was matched with. I wish it was Baumann again. A full 50% of the pups from that litter made it to graduation. At this time, Cecil, Cinnamon, and Cressida have graduated as companion dogs and Cyrano and Clifford have graduated as hearing dogs. Yay Della!

Random "Y" pictures

I realize that I have been remiss in posting photos this litter. I can only plead parenthood and end-of-summer/beginning-of-school business as my excuse. To make up for this lack I have herein assembled a selection of the cutest photos from the "Y's" first 4 weeks. So without further ado, I now present a month in the life of a litter....(backwards from 4 weeks, as I uploaded the pics in the wrong order and am too lazy to fix it.) :-)

Duncan enjoying the litter in their intermediate pen at 4 1/2 weeks of age.


First solid feeding,at 4 1/2 weeks. Doesn't look like they had any trouble figuring out how to eat, does it? ;-)


The day before we learned about solid food, be went outside for the first time!! (but we liked to be inside the play structures the best)

The cube

The tunnel


Wow, what a difference a couple of weeks makes!!!

2 weeks old



With 10 puppies, they start to run out of room to feed at only 2 weeks of age.

One of their last days in the puppy pool.


Amazingly, everyone gets enough to eat in this pile-up.


4 days old







There you have it, 4 weeks of puppydom. Hope you had fun!!

Introducing the "Y's" at 5 weeks

Presenting the not-so-tiny, mighty Y's and their official names!!!

Yorick II


Yaz


Yanek


Yardley II


Yara


Yutaka


Yadira


yakir


Yosef


Young II


So far I have heard from one PR, who will be having Young to raise in Texas. If anyone knows of anyone else getting one of these pups, please contact me through the CCI yahoo group at: cci-people@yahoogroups.com so we can exchange contact info and I can tell you about the puppy you are getting to raise!!

We are the "Y's"

the tiny, mighty "Y's"!!

Here we are, the lucky 8/8/08 Y litter, Della II x Pirie.
Numero Uno, big boy RED


Don't we clean up nice..................


Then there were 2...........


Then 4...................


Casual sleeper already


Being born is tiring!!

We haven't yet gotten the email asking for our name suggestions, but Ashley and I have managed to generate an entire page of Y names we can submit to CCI when we do get the email.
Friday was their 1 week b-day. Most everyone has already doubled their birth weight and there is a whole lot of crawling going on in the pool these days. Monday we start checking for open eyes and the ears will soon follow. Then let the barking commence!!

Puppies Episode III

Well, Della managed to hold off on her whelping to allow us a lucky 8/8/8 litter. She even almost started at 8PM (her first was born at 7:56). We finished off 10 puppies later at 2:30AM. There are 8 boys and 2 girls, all yellow. We do not know their litter letter yet, but I will post that, as well as pictures, when available. In the meantime, since it is now 4:20AM (I stayed up to make sure there where no surprises since Dr. Ruth was so unsure of the litter size) I will now crawl off to bed and hope my hubby is wise enough to not get me up until well after noon!!

??????????

Well, we had our X-ray on Thursday. Dr. Ruth's assessment of the number of puppies was essentially, "well you have 8, no 9, maybe 10, there might be 11 but I can't tell for sure." It seems the puppies are very bunched up and Della had a lot of gas in her intestines which decreased the clarity of the X-ray. I guess we will all just have to wait until the actual delivery to find out. Stay tuned, D-day is still the 8th with a good chance she'll be early.

Once more unto the breach dear friends....

Yep, Della is once again with pups. We took her to CCI for confirmation today. Both my 7 and 13 yo sons were fascinated by the ultrasound pictures. I didn't post earlier about her breeding because there was some question about whether the breeding took ( the boy had some probs the other time he was bred and Della had no morning sickness) and didn't want to get everyone's hopes up until I was sure. She was bred to new breeder Pirie, a yellow lab, so it will be a monotone litter this time around. I also found out while at CCI that Della's 1/2 sister, Litney, was up being bred, so their mom's B/C (and Litney's) will be having pups a month after we will!! Tentative due date for Della is August 8th. This means: a) Ashley will have over a month with the pups before she goes back to UCD, and b) David will be whelping alone as Ashley and I will be in Denver for the World Science Fiction and Fantasy C0nvention (anyone out there going?). Hope he took good notes the last 2 times!! ;-)

Advanced training has begun

As hard as it is to believe, two of Della's "C" puppies, Cyrano and Clementine, have turned in for advanced training already. I guess they just turn in early in South East Region. Cyrano's PR, Lybbi, was kind enough to get pictures of both pups at their turn in for me to share. Quite the handsome pair, if I do say so myself!

Cyrano and Clementine(in the red collar)


Cyrano and Lybbi


Cyrano

So I have now heard from all but 2 of Della's "G" puppies' PR's. They are, of course, scattered all over the country. However, this time there are actually 3 puppies staying in the Bay Area, making it easier to keep in touch, and I actually get to see them once in a while! :-) So, without further ado, here are the puppies' known locations:
Galen- (COC) Oakland, CA
Gaius- ?
Gordan- VI ?
Gillian II- Virginia
Gemma V- Panama City, FL
Gaylor II- San Jose, CA
Ginny II- Fremont, CA
Gypsy V- Colorado Springs, CO
Gilden- Evergreen, CO
Godwin- ? (but I have heard from her PR)

Galen (now called Ginger, so she can have a girl's name) came to visit over the weekend with her new family. I couldn't believe how much she has grown. She is almost as big as our Brittany already! I finally got to check out her mouth. She does indeed have a fair amount of overbite. Her new family is going to take her to a dental veterinary specialist in S.F. to take care of where her lower teeth are hitting her palate. She is doing great and is in good, loving hands.

Della has calmed down from her PPP and is doing great, already back to her pre-pregnancy weight and looking trim and muscular. I think that it really helps her physical recovery having Siri, our labradoodle, to romp and tussle with. Especially in the winter when it is too wet to go to the enclosed, grass (read MUD in the winter), dog park. It is hard to believe, but Della already has puppies turning in this month. Clementine and Cyrano, both in Florida, are turning in. My how time flies. I don't know about the pups in the other regions, but I do know that Cecil and Cressida, both in NWR, won't turn in until May. Still too soon for their PR's, but I know that Angie felt a little better about her turn in date when I told her how early SER turned in.

Not much else to say. I will be sure and let everyone know as soon as Della goes into heat again, or I hear more from her PR's.

P P P!!!

That stands for Post Puppy Psychosis and that stands for Della. I don't know how other dogs in the program react after their puppies go up to CCI, but Della seems to spend the whole next month reverted to puppyhood. She barks, she bounces, she chews up anything lying on or near the ground. She did this last litter too and ate up a number of the kids toys (that'll teach them not to put their stuff away!!). This time I was expecting it and bought her several soft toys that she could destroy. Still, I would love to know why she does this. You would think she wouldn't miss the puppies. She pretty well ignores them once they wean and she is very jealous of the attention they get when they are here. Then she gets all crazed when they go. Go figure........