Here are the photos of fun in the sun...er snow!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Shea and Kane at 12 Weeks
Well Michigan sure has had its fill of old man Winter already...and the puppies love it!
Kane and Shea are developing into wonderful boys. Neither appears to be dominant...they play equally with one on his back one minute and the other, the next. They are doing quite well at pottying outside and have only messed their crate overnight once in the last ten days...so I am very proud of them!
We went on our first walk on leash the only sunny day we've had that was above 35 degrees. We went to the downtown of our town and walked in the park where children play...puppies had loads of fun with a family of three little ones...was very difficult getting them to separate so we could go home.
The leashes provided their own set of challenges...maybe next time!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Stop Puppy Mills
I have been reeling from the news last week that an English Shepherd breeder in Montana had her kennel searched after complaints of the horrendous conditions her 200 plus dogs live under. The police removed twelve dogs in dire need of veterinary care and thirteen dead ones. The puppy mill owner, said she hadn't had time to bury the animals.
Two links to the news story are:
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/12/12/news/local/20-dogs.txtbut they are not pretty so prepare yourself.
http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=9508818&nav=menu227_5
With this story in the back of my mind I am also including a link to a petition by the Humane Society of the United States on Facebook asking that Petland stop selling puppies which supports puppy mills.
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/beneficiaries/59?m=b5e52638
Bottom line is KNOW your breeder and THINK TWICE about buying a puppy at a pet store.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
And Then There Were Two
I am so thrilled with the families that have adopted pups from our latest litter. For the first time most of Emily's pups will be right here in Michigan. Riordon will be travelling the farthest. He is headed to Toronto today. I miss them all and am thankful for my manic photograph sessions that I can look at and remember each pup.
Shea and Kane have yet to find their forever homes...for pretty random reasons but mostly because they are boys and we had a LOT of boys in this bunch...6. Anyway they are two very beautiful black and white boys who resemble their daddy quite a bit. They are relatively quiet...as quiet as puppies can be. And, Kane in particular, is very curious. They love to play with each other and will entertain themselves, and during my weaker moments me.
Thankfully, they are almost completely housebroken. They have a very predictable routine and when I stick to it (difficult sometimes during the holidays) they never mess inside. Pretty good for 10 week olds!
I'm posting photos for everyone to enjoy!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Help in the Kitchen...pix and video!
The puppies played in the snow today for the first time...wish I had my camera. Will get some pix later today. We have found wonderful homes for six puppies and are looking for two more for Shea and Kane, both black and white males. They are both very energetic...what puppy isn't?
Kane is unabashedly curious and a tad devious! Shea is more affectionate...will let me hold him indefinately!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I recently finished reading a fantastic novel, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski.
Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.
But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.
The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.
Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’
Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.
Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.
From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.
For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.
After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”
In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.
Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”
That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”
Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.
Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.
But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.
The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.
Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’
Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.
Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.
From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.
For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.
After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”
In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.
Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”
That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”
Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Chocolate and Dogs
The November 2008 National Geographic Magazine online has a chart to help you know how dangerous the amount of chocolate your dog ingested can be for him. It has categories for several kinds of chocolate as well as the weight of your pet. It is very user friendly. Thought you all might be interested.
You can access the chart with the following link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/pets/chocolate-chart-interactive.html
You can access the chart with the following link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/pets/chocolate-chart-interactive.html
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