Sunday, January 17, 2010

Adventures in puppy sitting /our week at the ranch/Crickets NEW ears!



For the longest time Cricket had one ear or the other that would stand up, and one that would hang down pointed forward. So what a suprise last week all of a sudden we had a new ear set, and I have a feeling this one is here to stay???? It is very cute on her, the ears sort of stay straight and point out sideways, a flying nun look, but it looks adorable on her. It has stayed that way all week.


Well, we were gone puppy sitting from Monday-Friday at the Contact Point Ranch. Fame had pups by Batman we were puppysitting-Batman is a litter mater to Zing who some of you know and he is a litter mate to my Breezie-and half brother. Batman is owned and does agility with Kristie Netzer. They have four gorgeous puppies that were super easy to take care of. Fame is a super good mama. Euro was expecting pups by planned csection so I got to take care of getting her there and taking care of her youngsters the first few days. Euro was such a trooper and did terrific and delivered 5 girls by Csection on Wednesday afternoon. The pups are from Euro/Zing cross, Zing is a littermate to Breezie and Batman, and is Breezes half brother. Zing is owned and does agility with Gabrielle Blackburn. Should be really interesting to see how these pups turn out. Euro is a real live wire, a really tiny girl, and Zing is gorgeous and a tug monster and a wonderful agility dog.

Karen has let me hang around during the birth of a few of her litters the last few months-being a labor and delivery nurse for the human type newborns I find that all very interesting, and Karen has really taught me a lot about taking care of moms/pups, so it was fun to fly solo and put what I have learned to work, LOL. The part that made me the most nervous was keeping the pup cam up and running. I would forget it was going and would be cleaning the whelping box and I am sure stuck my butt in the camera more times then anyone could count, so if anyone saw that, I am truly sorry to put something so scary out on the internet.

Free TV : Ustream

Mama and pups right after the csection when they brought in the first batch of pups to get started nursing.





We got to do some herding practice at the ranch while we were there. This is the path to the herding pen.

First you go past the milk goat and this sheep on your left



Then you go down this path. How could someone not feel peaceful walking down this path?



Duck pen on the right



some more orange trees on the left



The garden and then you see the round pen where Liz/Breeze practice herding





The sheep-there are lots of little lambs right now




This particular morning it was raining-I put Liz and Breeze into one crate that was full of water, whoops, and I told them they needed to cowgirl up and be tough, if they want to be sheep herding dogs they have to be tough, LOL.




I put all the dogs in some big pretty yards with trees and toys, in some smaller kennels, where ever they went Breeze and Liz just wanted to sit at the door waiting for me to come and get them. Poor Cricket kept trying to get them to run around and play, but when they wouldn't she would end up sitting by the door for hours staring. You can tell my dogs are not used to being kenneled, at all! By the last day Liz was HORRIBLE, she barked constantly no matter what I did or where I tried to put her. She was AWEFUL, and I am sure everyone on the ranch was happy to see her go, LOL.



Cricket spent some time playing with 2 pups that are 2 months older then her, but it was puppy play power. Fleur is a Nel/Zing pup and Glee is a Reddy/Bluff pup.


6 comments:

Sara said...

I've been wondering what you've been up to! Hanging out with all that black & white sweetness I see. The puppies are gorgeous!

What a beautiful place, a little bit of herding dog heaven on earth. Puppies & baby lambs? How cool.

Cricket's ears look absolutely adorable!

Chris and Ricky said...

Yes, what a beautiful place to hang out and how awesome to get to puppysit like that! A dream job!

Cricket's ears are super cute - really think they will stay like that now?

Diana said...

What a week. Sounds very exciting. Boy that kennel puts out a lot fo pups. Cricket is still very cute. Diana

Sam said...

Thanks for the looooooong comment about 4otf, Kathy! It really got me to thinking about the 4otf from a technical point of view rather than just a "I'll tell my dog to down at the bottom of the frame and we'll be good" point of view. I did a little bit more researching online (found a Croft article from 2005, but nothing more recent than that), and I'm actually going to give the 2o2o one more shot. I just feel like her criteria for the A-Frame is all messed up right now, she was getting SO stressed doing the 4otf, totally disengaging, and since my concern is with her front end rather than her back end, I'm not sure how much it would help her.. besides, I'm not sure if you remember but Marge can have issues with wet grass, so I don't think laying down on wet grass once we got back out to the field would go over well. If 2o2o really doesn't work out I'll give it a shot, especially since I have more info on it, but the maintenance aspect of it seems really scary and I'm not 100% sure it's right for us. Since Marge hits the contact zone naturally I'm hoping to eventually be able to switch to a quick release 2o2o and that will take the pressure off her joints.

As for this post, wow! I was actually going to come over to your blog to see where the heck you were, and you sure had some big adventures this week. Thanks for sharing all of that with us, I love seeing little baby puppies..

Sam said...

Kathy,

You know I love your long comments! Always such a wealth of info. We can't cover everything in class or even at private lessons, so coming on here and getting insights from others is REALLY helpful.

I really like the idea of the 4otf, but like you said, I kind of went into it thinking it was an easy contact to teach, and the more I read about it the more I see that that's not true.

So I'm definitely going to try to teach Marge to rock back her weight on the A-Frame, maybe I should lower the A-Frame first to help her out with that? I'm also going to work on the DW, her contact is much better there, so hopefully that'll help. I'm going to shoot for her doing a 2o2o and being as close to the bottom of the A-Frame as possible, with her weight rocked back, and hopefully that'll make it a little easier on her.

Karen said...

Diana- actually not very many puppies if you compare to other BC breeders - Lockeye, Hob Nob, Rising Sun, On Target, etc.... 3 litters in 2008 and 2009.