Almost 4 weeks

It's a couple days early, but it was a good day to take some photos, so here are the puppy's 4 week old shots. We ventured outside after a little rain storm and I let each puppy sniff around and check things out. Please ignor the weeds in my garden. I've been a little busy lately with these adorable four.

Here's Uno! She has a very sweet personality. Jared carries her around everywhere and she's happy to be along for the ride. If he sits down, she crawls right in his lap. He started calling her Ono... as in "Oh No" she peed on the floor.




And Dos. He's still the spirited one of the bunch. He's slightly smaller than the other two boys, yet he's the more opinionated of the three. When I took them outside to take photos, he wasn't really willing to venture off on his own. He was content to just stay where I put him.




Tres. Tres likes to play and to investigate new things. He's usually the instigator in playtime in the puppy pen.




And finally Tank. Tank will follow you anywhere. He's a tough one to get a good photo of because as soon as you move away, he moves toward you. He's also very curious and likes to check things out.

It's a big day for the puppies

It's the first time they tried real food. Well it's almost real food. I make a combination of baby rice cereal, goat's milk and meat baby food and I serve it up as puppy gruel. They loved it! The last litter took several days to figure out the eating thing. They just wanted Tama. But not this little group. They dove into it and looked at me as if to say "What took you so long?"

Here's a few pics of the messy little eaters.

Can't get any cuter than this.

Uno and Tres were napping on their backs this morning. I couldn't resist taking a photo of the two of them.



And since it was such a beautiful day out today. The puppies got to spend a few minutes in the grass. This is the first time they've been outside our house.

This is Uno being cute for the camera



Here's Dos exploring his new world



And this is Tres.



And here's Tank.


And isn't this the cutest face you've ever seen? (It's another photo of Tank)

Two Weeks old!!!

All the puppies have their eyes open now.
They have all had their first nail trims.
They have all doubled their birth weight.

11 days

Wow are the puppies growing. They are getting bigger each day and alot cuter. Their eyes should open next week. They are already starting to develop little personalities. Here are a few photos that I took today.

Uno (the girl)

Dos

Tres

Tank

One week old today!!!!

It's hard to believe how fast these puppies grow. Let's let the photos show the difference in a week. Since the puppies don't have names yet, we've nicknamed them Uno, Dos, Tres and Tank. Uno is the girl.

Uno (girl)
Uno has adorable heart-shaped striping on her forehead. Ed was the one who noticed it and has been kicking around calling her Heart-y. We're sticking with Uno for now until something better comes along. Uno weighs 1 lb 5 oz


And now for the boys...


Dos (boy with white paws, biggest blaze on his chest, and white tip on his tail)He weighs 1 lb 2 oz


Tres (boy with white paws, smallest blaze on his chest, and white tip on his tail)He is 1 lb 5 oz


Tank (no white on his paws, very small blaze on chest. He's the biggest puppy of them all) Tank weighs 1 lb 7 oz

They're here!

First is our little girl. Weighing a petite 8.9 ounces. Cute little white toes.



Next is Dos. He weighed 9.0 ounces. He has the biggest white blaze on his chest. He also has a white tip on his tail.


Tres is the third puppy. He weighed 9.7 ounces. He has a white tip on his tail.


Last but not least is Tank. He weighed 9.8 ounces

And the vet saw...

4 puppies!

Tama had her x-rays this morning and there are 4 puppies. It's less than a week until we meet each one of them.

Is she? Isn't she?

She is...

In the words of an 8 year old boy, "Mom, she looks like she's going to explode."

See the pretty white sparkles all over her? You'll have to look close. That is sleet. It is almost May and we're still having dreary, cold, crappy winter weather. I can hardly wait for summer. I miss my 300 days of Phoenix sunshine.

Timber at 1 year

It doesn't seem like it could be a year already. Where did my puppy go?

Now starts the fun! Since Timber is a year we can start focusing on agility. He has the drive that I was hoping for. We're taking baby steps into agility hoping to not repeat some of the problems that I had with my other dogs when I was competing. Actually it wasn't the dogs as much as it was the way I trained them to do certain things. I'm not making those same mistakes with Timber. For instance - Contacts. Farley, my last aussie and Dakota, my border collie, would only stick their contacts if they felt like doing them. Or if I was right by them telling them to do it. Not this time, Timber is going to know his job before we start going over the full contacts even if it means spending the next year doing nose touches to a target plate at the bottom.

This past year Timber has focused on obedience, and I've been teaching him some tricks. The tricks that he can do are:
• Bang - play dead
• Roll Over
• Shake paw, other paw, high five and wave
• Speak
• Weave through my legs
• Pick up and put away his toys in a toybox
• Open a mailbox (we're working on him bringing me the letter)
• Beg
• Walk backwards

So, happy birthday Timber.

Do shibas shed?

I can't tell you how many times I'm asked that question. I always have to giggle a little to myself when someone asks. They really have no idea. In the cool Pacific Northwest climate, these dogs have good coats. This is the 3rd time this week that I have brushed Don Juan, and each time I've had a pile of hair equal to what you see here. There is at least one more pile worth of fur ready to brush out tomorrow.

Bath time is coming soon and then he'll be done until the fall while all this hair regrows. Fortunately, this amount of shedding only happens a couple times a year. But all year long if I'm dressed up and wearing black pants, you'll find me sporting a nice coat of shiba hair from the knees on down.

Tama meets her new boyfriend

Tama is on vacation this week. And because of it, hopefully in about two months we'll have little shiba puppies again. After her last litter turning out so nice, with the help of Tama's breeder, we picked a nice moderately-sized male to breed her to.

Champion Piggy

It has a good ring to it - doesn't it.

Piggy Finished!!!

Pending AKC verification, Piggy finished her CH today with her final major!!!!! Two years and a day after she was born.

I was on the phone getting the blow by blow from friends at the show, and I think I broke their eardrums with my scream. It should be a 5 point major. It was 4 years ago at the same show that her mother, Tama, finished her show career by winning a 5 point major. Like mother, Like daughter.

Official photo to follow as soon as I get one!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a couple of photos of my two boys on Christmas morning. OK, I couldn't resist when I saw that Hanna Anderson had dog pajamas that matched Jared's new Christmas jammies.

Happy Howl-o-days

Here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

First snow of the season

It snowed! I took Timber out to play in it and very quickly he got the hang of chasing snowballs and running wild and crazy through the cold wet stuff. He tried to dig in it like he used to do in the sand at the beach this summer, but it wasn't quite deep enough. No matter, he enjoyed it for at least a little while. The snow has already turned to rain and probably by the end of the day, it will disappear.

Happy Halloween from Yoda and Anakin

The sun decided to come out...

especially for Tama's birthday.

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you... Ok, we all know the drill by now.

Happy Birthday Tama. She's 5 years old today. For some reason, they've brought the birthday party inside under my desk. Here's Tama and Timber being really annoying as I'm trying to work:

Blue Isle Shiver Me Timbers, CGC

Yesterday Timber received his AKC Canine Good Citizen award.

There are 10 parts to the test that we took together. He had to pass all 10 in order to get his CGC award.
Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger
Test 2: Sitting politely for petting
Test 3: Appearance and grooming
Test 4: Out for a walk (walking on a loose lead)
Test 5: Walking through a crowd
Test 6: Sit and down on command and Staying in place
Test 7: Coming when called
Test 8: Reaction to another dog
Test 9: Reaction to distraction
Test 10: Supervised separation

After my last aussie being the only dog in my household without a CGC (he wouldn't let the tester touch his feet), it's awesome to finally have an aussie that has passed. Especially one that is so young.

Timber and I are working on pre-agility and rally right now.

For more information on the ACK Canine Good Citizen test, go to http://www.akc.org/events/cgc/training_testing.cfm

It's a month full of canine birthdays...

Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday dear Jazzy.
Happy Birthday to you.

Tama's is next week.

And another miracle milestone...

HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY, KISHI

It's really hard for me to believe that my girl is 10 years old.

How is she doing?
Looking at her, I'd say better than ever. She has a gorgeous coat. There are still some small areas with blackened skin which I doubt will ever fully heal. She had an ear infection recently and I took her to the vet. The vet saw no signs of yeast, treated the ear infection topically, and I can tell she's already feeling better. Kishi is adjusting to the loss of her eyesight, and gets around pretty well. She'll follow our voices when I take her outside, and in the house she just knows the lay of the land, so to speak.

6 months-6months-Where has time gone.

My squishy little puppy is now an adolescent. But look beneath the cuteness and you will see a counter-surfin', toy-destroyin', knock-em-over-with-full-body-slams dog. We're working on those, but it's part of his aussie charm.

Aussie Retriever

Sit, Stay, Smile

While working on sit stays, I thought it would be a little fun to see how our buddy Timber handled sit stays in a crowd. And of course it was too cute not to grab a camera and capture. It's not easy to get all the dogs to stay in one place, and to all look in the same direction. They all seem to have their own agenda. And when one dogs moves, they all think they can bolt. So, after about 20 minutes of trying to get them all to look good, I think this one photo the best.

Doesn't Kishi look good? If you look back at my posts from a year ago, you'll see that she's made remarkable improvements. She looks better than I've seen her in a long time. Except for her eyesight, she is doing fantastic.

Shiba Veteran Website

This is a really great website if you want to see how well Shiba Inus age. There are some beautiful dogs here. Most of them are 9 years old or older. And one that is almost 17!

Shiba Veterans

Water Dog

Are you bored of pictures of the puppy yet? Tired of me gushing about how wonderful he is? Well, here's one more photo and post of him and then I promise I'll post something of substance.

Here's our water dog. We took Timber to the beach today for the afternoon. He can swim pretty well. It didn't take much encouragement to get him in the water. He just followed us in. He's not thrilled with areas with waves. He'd prefer the calmer areas. His favorite thing is picking up shells.

Role Reversals...

Farley was always the trainer of shiba puppies. He was a good play buddy for them. Now with a new aussie puppy, Don Juan has become the play buddy. What a role reversal.

THE NEW



THE OLD