Friday, October 24, 2008

Five Weeks Old! (A Note from the Pups)

We're five weeks old today!

And we've learned that we really, really, really like humans. :) Here we are greeting one of our human friends, Momma Joan's BFF who we call Aunt Kathy:


We're learning to sit and wait for people to pay attention to us, and we're getting pretty good at it, too (this is Mr. Black, left behind the water jug; then Mr. Blue, then Mr. Green)!


And here's Miss Sky, Mr. Lime, and Miss Pink taking their turn at being patient:


It's really hard sometimes to wait because we've become quite people snuggly, too! Here's Mr. Yellow nestled in with Daddy Don:

Momma Joan and Daddy Don sometimes think we're getting really big (compared to what we were a few weeks ago). Then they let us get close to their other dogs and we don't seem so big anymore! Here's Mr. Yellow last night meeting Pinot, Kenya, and Tuc (with Momma Elsie watching closely):


See..., doesn't Mr. Yellow look tiny close to the big kids? Yet he seems quite grown up away from the other dogs. We call him "twinkle toes" cuz he has white toes on his back feet:


Mr. White is looking pretty grown up these days, too:


Sometimes we're so big now that the puppy pile gets too heavy and crowded, so then we all move around and spread out when somebody else climbs on top like Mr. White is doing here (harrumph!):


But we still like being close. Here's Miss Sky grooming Mr. Lime. :o)


Sometimes, when we can't sleep, we go play with a toy by ourselves. We especially like the leggy sheep Momma Joan got for us. Here Mr. Blue takes his turn:


Mr. Black almost always sleeps on or next to the round fleecy ball-bed.


But he doesn't mind sharing, especially with Miss Sky. ;


He'll still sleep there even if some more of us get on it, too. Mr. Blue, Miss Sky, and Mr. Lime kinda crowded Mr. Black off in this photo (below), but he still got his piece of the fleece;


Mr. Red prefers it all to himself (well he almost has it to himself!):


Now that we can see a little better, we all really like to watch what's happening around us, but Mr. Black is especially good at the sneak peek:


Mr. Blue is a little more obvious:


Sometimes it takes us a little while to settle down for a nap. In the picture below, Miss Sky and Mr. Lime are pre-sleeping here (notice Mr. Black on left is already in zzzzz-land):


While they're hogging the fleecy bed, Mr. Red decided he'd go play with the tennis-ball-rope. :o)


But, boy when we sleep, we sleep (this is Miss Pink, left, and Mr. Green, right, both sound asleep on their backs, followed in the next picture by Mr. Green and Mr. Lime on their tummies):


We all like sleeping on our backs sometimes (from left to right, this is Miss Pink, Mr. Green, and Mr. Blue):


We sleep all kinds of ways (Mr. Black's head, then Mr. Lime on his side in back, and Miss Sky in front on her back):


Here's Miss Pink, Mr. White and Mr. Black all in a ball:



For the life of us, we can't figure out why it's so hard for humans to tell if we're boys or girls. It seems pretty obvious to us (GIRL on left, Miss Pink, and BOY on right, Mr. Green):

We still like to use each other as pillows (Pink and Green again, though their heads have swapped!):


But we don't mind sleeping alone (here's Mr. White):


And Mr. Red:


All in all, we're sleeping about 75% of the time still. And we are just pipsqueaks. Momma Joan says she's going to introduce us the something called "the outdoors" later today when it gets warmer. She'll have lots more pictures to show you then.

Aren't we growing up?!!

Just three more weeks and we'll go to our new homes. Wow. That's scary. But Momma Joan and Daddy Don will try to help us get ready for the change, and we'll do just fine.

We think.

'Til next time,
Joan

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for brightening my day with the cutest puppies around!!! Are you guys planning on keepnig a puppy from this litter? Not that you don't already have your hands full :-)
Sarah Austin, TX

Joan said...

Hi, Sarah,

Nope, we're not planning to keep a pup this time. We kept Pinot from last year's Elsie/Ridge litter, and she's gorgeous and developing nicely, so we don't really need another pup from that gene pool.

We WILL however, probably end up keeping one of the Kenya-Ridge females from the spring 2009 litter if all goes well. The long-term plan is that Tuc would eventually mate with that pup once she's grown and cleared on her certs (we're planning to retire Ridge).

That's the plan for now (there really is a plan!), provided all goes well, but we'll see.

The MOST we plan to keep permanently here with us as our dogs will be six (that's what we've been slowly building toward, carefully watching the bloodlines and gene pools), so the Kenya-Ridge pups would be the last we'd keep for a long, long time.

All, of course, depends on how the pups turn out. :o)

And we'll still only do 1-2 litters per year (if we do more than that, we wouldn't be able to invest in them the way we'd like).

Thanks for asking!

Joan