May 30, 2024
Today we took a new set of headshots and stacked photos. Everyone is developing very nicely!
May 31, 2024
We had a very special visitor today. Grammy Chris came to check out the puppies and have puppy playtime of her own. She the breeder of Kimber’s mother Hope (who is the great grandma of these puppies). She seemed to enjoy her visit and catch up with us too!
The puppies also explored a new room today and were introduced to a new object that Chris brought with her. They seemed to have a good time with it too! They can crawl inside of it when it is in bowl form and on top of it when it is in dome form. They likes it a lot!
They were able to explore the living room today and ran around all over on the carpet. We will be making more trips in there for sure!
Part of raising a litter is desensitizing them to things that they might find to be scary in the world. One of those things is an umbrella. I opened the umbrella and set it in the pen for them to explore and check out on their own. They were very inquisitive and pushed it around on the floor. I also stood it up in opened form, spun it around, stood it up in closed form and spun it around, and stomped it on the ground a couple of times lightly.
June 1, 2024
Today’s new object was the walker and the cane. I walked a couple of laps around the kitchen island with the puppies both watching and playing. Some of them followed and even walked under and around the walker as I was making my laps. I guess they are starting to get over all of my weird antics.
They also had a very special visitor named Mary. Her grandmother and mother were with her too for her play date with the puppies. They are good friends of ours from our local Dalmatian club. They have had Dalmatians for many many years. Mary’s favorite puppy was Charlie!
I don’t know who enjoyed their visit more, Mary or the puppies!
The puppies also ate out of individual bowls today for the first time. They all did well with the change. We will continue to pet them and periodically move the food in their bowl around until they go home. This will be the start of resource guarding around their food dishes. We will also add good stuff tot heir food as they are eating to make them associate a hand in their food to good treat being added to their food. This will need to be continued for a good while after the puppies go home to keep the relationship between a hand in the food dish solid.
June 2, 2024
Good friends Barb and LaDonna came for a visit today to evaluate the puppies and get their puppy fix. We enjoyed their company very much today. Barb owns a boy named Maks (CH Stocklore Mystic Maks TT) who is behind a good bit of LUA dogs. LaDonna is Kimber’s breeder who is the granddam of the puppies being that she is Tripp’s mother. Kimber was very happy to see her today!
The puppies liked their visitors today too because that meant that they would be able to be stacked and get lots of extra treats! We had a slew of puppy evaluators these past few days to help us decide and give their input on who should be put into the show ring.
June 3, 2024
Today the puppies learned about using a ramp. They all did very well and even played around on it on their own. The first step to making this a success is laying it flat on the ground and scatter feeding treats to the whole litter on it. This associated something good (food) with the new obstacle.
The second step was listen it up on one end to create the idea of walking on an angled platform. We only raised it about 6 inches for them, which is enough to get the idea of how to use a ramp. This will also be useful for some agility obstacles for any of the puppies that take agility classes or compete in the future.
Lastly I sat back during puppy play time and watched them explore it on their own. Willy was having a blast walking up and down it!
We also headed outside for the first time. They stayed on the patio for now just to get them aquatinted with the sounds of outside. Lawn mowers, birds, the wind int he trees. Those are all things that they need to get more used to hearing and they are olde enough be outside now.
June 4, 2024
The puppies love to be outside. It seems to be their favorite thing these days, so we try to spend as much time as possible out there. They are pretty funny too. Sometime you will see 3 or 4 of them waiting by the gate to go explore and run around out there. They see it as an extension to their world! Here we are listening to loud car motor revving from a video on my phone.
Pretty soon we will be able to explore the rocks and grass that are just beyond the patio, but that will likely be a two person job to keep an eye on all of the pups. The older that they get, the more and more they are developing into their own little beings. They are all pretty outgoing in general, a couple are more on the quiet side and a couple are more of the attention seekers with a few being middle of the road types of puppies. That is pretty normal to have a spectrum of personality types in a litter.
Here is Violet taking a nap!
June 5, 2024
Today we started to prepare the puppy packs and get all of their paperwork organized. We have a vet check, Dalmatian Club of America Foundation (DCAF) blood draw, and vaccines coming up. That means that we have a trip in the car to plan for. In order to make the coming days go smoothly, we will have lots and lots of paperwork to prepare.
We also did something called the barrier challenge with the puppies. We block the puppies off from some sort of food, leaving one side of the gating open. The goal is that the puppy figures out that they cannot get to the food and they look for new ways to achieve the main goal of eating the food.
This can sometimes take a while (30+ seconds) but all of the pups did pretty well will moving around the barrier. We had one puppy that did very well with the barrier challenge (Augie), but the others were not too far behind.
Part of raising a litter is creating problem solvers. How do you create problem solvers you may ask?? The best answer that I can give is to let them figure life out on their own. Do you need to coach them at times.. yes, but usually they can figure out how to fix what the problem at hand is. For example, if a puppy get stuck somewhere and is not in distress, we let them figure out how to get out of the situation. Think about it, if you went down a dead end road, no one is going to be there to turn your car around for you. You will have to do a three point turn (or more if there is not much room to wiggle out) to leave. That is basically what the barrier challenge is and why we help the puppies become problem solvers by not helping them is they are not in distress.
Here is Veruca having her barrier challenge!
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