6 weeks

Can you believe they are 6 weeks old? They are finally acting like puppies. It's hard to take your eyes off of them because you might miss one of the many cute things that they do.

Everything they do is adorable. Well, almost everything. When they see us, they start screaming to be picked up. And of course, when they see their mommy, who only wants in their pen so she can eat their food and really doesn't want any of their sharp little chompers near her, they start screaming again.

They are officially weaned and are eating food and drinking water like pros.

Uno - now named Trixie.
Jared wanted to name the girl Trixie. So I'm tossing the formal name of "Kishi's Tricky Trixie" around. What do you think? Guess that means I'll have to teach her a few tricks to live up to her name.







Dos
Over the weeks littlest Dos has really evolved. Initially he didn't like being held at all, and never licked or kissed you. He has always been the quietest but not necessarily the calmest. Beginning last week he started jumping up to be the "chosen" one, and he seems to enjoy being held. At times Dos still hangs back and lets the others play rough and tumble, but lately I've seen him diving in for some good play times.




Tres
Tres is a charmer. He's cute. He does adorable puppy antics like running and hopping around. He is not shy at all and he and Kona are vying to be the top dog in the litter.





Tank - Now Kona
Kona is the bravest one in the litter. He loves to investigate and will try anything new - even the agility teeter totter in our yard. I turned my back for a minute and before I knew it he was part way across. I grabbed the end of the teeter before it slammed down because I didn't want it to scare him. And he waltzed on down it like he had done it a million times. Considering that I just got Timber to go over it by himself, I thought that was a pretty amazing thing for such a young puppy.

And speaking of Timber...

Timber was feeling a little neglected on this blog. So I thought I'd give you a quick update. He's doing great learning agility. I fixed up, painted and bought some new equipment so now we can do a little more practice at home. He learns so quick.



Last weekend we went to the PAWS Walk and performed some of Timber's tricks. He did "Put your toys away" and "Get the mail from the mailbox" perfectly. We set up a little Rally Obedience course and he even did part of it off-leash. And then, still being the puppy brain that he can be sometimes, he saw a squirrel in a tree nearby and ran off to chase it. Here's two photos of him that I took today.

Dog Pile

It is time to start introducing the puppies to the other dogs in the house. I was a little nervous about introducing them to Timber. He's such a big dog and he still has hyper aussie puppy brain. Amazingly he was very calm with them. He played gently and let the puppies climb all over him and chew on him. I can't say the puppies were as calm with Timber.

Don Juan takes one whiff of their puppy breath and heads for the hills. Maybe he'll be better with them in a couple weeks.

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.