pUpdate - September 16, 2022

Today marks our last full week with all five pups.  Parting will be bittersweet but we’re looking forward to seeing where the pups go from here.  We’ve had a lot of fun with them and are looking forward to our next litter, whenever that may be.  Stay tuned…!

pUpdate - August 26, 2022

Another great week with our Fab 5. Between our kids and our adult dogs, the pups have gotten plenty of socializing. Shelby is a hunting machine - as soon as we let her out of the puppy cottage she’s got her nose down tracing every scent she finds in the grass. She has a one-track mind. If you’re not into bird hunting, this probably has little appeal to you, but her drive is insatiable. She has worked our four acres over pretty hard. I mention this for two reasons:

1.    Taking one for a walk, you may find a pup pointing birds on a wire, birds in flight, bird noises - they just have bird brains. If Shelby’s desire to hunt is any indication, these pups will have birds on their mind and will be distracted by them.

2.    Llewellins are a sports model breed. They love to run. We run ours on public land at least four times a week. They cover three times the ground we cover when off leash. This is good and bad as they cover a lot of ground but can overwork themselves if we let them. We don’t - we like them too much! But exercise is a good thing for them. We believe this helps to control the behavioral issues which come with boredom.

As for pup personalities for the week, I think the pups are more cat than dog right now. Just a few observations:

1.    They can fall asleep literally anywhere.

2.    They seem to like napping on elevated surfaces.

3.    They sleep a lot after doing very little.

4.    When wound up, their body movements make no sense.

5.    They’re potty trained (nearly) to a litter box (albeit a giant one).

6.    They prefer milk above all else.

7.    As soon as you clean it up, they mess it up.

8.    Our adult dogs don’t quite know what to think of them.

9.    They seem to be made of razor blades (tiny teeth) and broken glass (toe nails).

10. They attack your ankles, unprovoked.

11. They are remarkably bendy and flexible with an insane ability to nearly escape your grasp (bad for puppy portrait sessions as you’ve probably noticed).

Incidentally, we had a cat named Whiskers up until recently. We got her when we had one dog (Stella). Those two were great friends. It was not uncommon to find Whiskers grooming Stella, holding Stella’s lip or nose with a paw while she licked Stella’s face clean. Always seemed odd to us. As we added more dogs, it became evident Whiskers controlled the household. I’m pretty sure we were all slave to her, come to think of it. If she were in a dog bed, the dogs accepted the floor. If she was drinking from their water bucket, the dogs would step aside and wait. She’d eat their food and they never batted an eye. We have an automatic dog door called a PowerPet which is activated by a collar the dogs wear. May be coincidence, but if she hovered by their door, one of them would swing by and let her out. I have pictures of her sunning herself in the frame of the door with dogs lined up outside waiting to come in but not sure how to get by her. Pound-for-pound, Whiskers was clearly outnumbered, but all six dogs never challenged her. All this to say, Llewellins seem to get along fine with cats.

Our neighbors have a similar cat who can make even the most staunch anti feline individual a cat lover. He goes by OJ. He happens to be our vet’s cat and we recently discussed introducing the pups to OJ; undergo a cat scan in some manner of speech. We know the best time to introduce the pups to new things is from six to twelve weeks and we have just the cat for such a lesson on species commingling. We’ll see if we can’t squeeze an appointment in with OJ, although I don’t know how much cat exposure they actually need. As listed above, I think they get it.

We also have four llamas. If the pups start spitting at each other, you’ll know our imprinting has gone awry…

 Other important pup notes for this past week (I got a little sidetracked, sorry). We introduced the pups to canned puppy food mixed with rice cereal and goats milk. It was a gradual process and they did take to it. They still prefer mom’s cooking but I gotta think Shelby’s about done with that. She’s definitely getting smaller so we’ll just keep offering puppy food until it takes. If you’re curious, we’ve been feeding Shelby twice a day a mix of dry puppy food, canned puppy food, and cottage cheese, beginning two days before whelping. We also leave a bowl of her usual food out, free choice, all the time. I’ve only refilled that bowl two or three times so I know she’s getting plenty. She was also dewormed with the puppies’ first dose.

Speaking of, the pups got their second dose of dewormer today. They get this at 2, 4, 6, & 8 weeks. As recommended by our vet, we are giving them Nemex2. Today they slurped it right up from a syringe. Two weeks ago it wasn’t quite so easy…!

Play time has been quite the entertainment experience. Kansas weather has been really hot this summer so the pups’ time outside the cottage has been limited to mornings and evenings. True to her nature, Shelby is generally nowhere to be found when she’s out. Not to worry, we have four others eagerly waiting for the chance to wrestle with the pups. Stella generally stays away. Apparently puppies are not her thing. Skylar, Savvy, and Gloria are all about it. Jolene has been skeptical but getting braver around the little ankle biters. Ultimately, It’s been good for all of them.

pUpdate - August 19, 2022

From taking their first steps to trying their first meal away from mom, the pups are doing great.  We started offering them some rice cereal mixed with goat’s milk.  It wouldn’t be my first choice, but they don’t seem to mind.  The boys, particularly.  Chevy, Champ, and Chuck do not have to be shown twice what waits in the flying saucer.  Claire and Clementine still think mom makes the best stuff. 

This was also the first week we started letting others come and visit the pups.  The pups got to mingle with all ages, although we still kept socializing to small doses.  School started here on the 18th so the socializing has seen a huge decrease, at least with visits from our two.

We did make the decision to switch the pups to a larger playpen in the pup cottage.  At first, we tried separating the sleeping area from the pine shavings by setting the bottom half of a kennel in with them.  Shelby and the five pups barely fit, so for now we have towels on one side and pine shavings on the other.  As you can imagine, it’s about like a peeing section in a pool – the pine shavings end up everywhere.  For the most part, they do seem to head for the shavings to take care of number one business.  It appears Shelby is still cleaning up after them as we don’t find much trace of number two business.  The reason for the transition in diet and sleeping arrangements is to take some of the burden off Shelby.  The pups are gaining size and weight fast.  We’ve also noticed Shelby spends less and less time in the playpen with the pups.  We’ve deciphered this as mom needing a break.  Weaning may be just around the corner.  We’re leaving that up to Shelby, but in the meantime are offering what little assistance we can.  As long as momma’s happy, we’re happy.

We do have a couple anxious babysitters who like to wait just outside the pups hoping for a chance to see them.  Savvy and Gloria find these guys pretty darn cool.  Savvy is from litter V (Vanna) and Gloria is out of litter W (Willow).  The pups are not quite ready to take on their raucous cousins.  Maybe next week.  For now, they’ll have to settle for more of a zoo-like experience.

A couple of words about our website as I’m guessing some of you are as frustrated as we are with how it’s operating at the moment.  We lost power yesterday (Thursday) while no one was home.  As a result, we have to reset everything electronic.  This has happened to us before and is a massive pain in the neck.  It doesn’t affect the website, just everything else.  We also know Litter BB needs to be updated with actual pictures of litter BB.  We have all the information; it just needs to be finished.  I mention this because Litter BB is also Shelby and Duke and you might want to see how those pups changed over time.  We’ll get ‘er up and running as soon as we can.

That’s all for now!  If you’re ever in need of more information or have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Jeff or I.