Right on time!!!!

Beautiful heads, in my book!

Longsuffering Touille, again.  Sweet mama and sweet babies.Can you see how much bigger than some others are?!!!

Cute, cute, cute!

Eyes opening.  Last night, blue boy Mr. IQ had his left eye open.  This morning Percy has an eye open and a few slits are showing on some of the others.  I will get face pictures when I can.  Bonnie is coming for the weekend, so we should be able to get good face pictures, some with eyes OPEN!  Right now, they still mostly have their eyes shut since the sleep most of the time!

What else is there to say?  Well, it is getting to the fun time, when they open their eyes and start more to interact with the world around them.  It is amazing to watch them learn.  I love it!

I also love watching them become mush buckets.  They are already calming down when I put them on their backs and stroke their chests.  They calm immediately when mom licks their tummies, but are learning the chest trick too.  Also, if you ever want to smell puppy breath, my favorite perfume in the world, stroke the  side of their face and they will open their mouth....

Enough from the Old Curmudgeon today.

Guess who is starting baby growls!

The little rascals are pretty much on time, growling with a hint that eyes will be opening in the next day or so.  They are terriers!!!

From 0759 this AM.  Can you see growth?  They all weigh over a pound and some almost two pounds!

1:21 today.  Hot off the press!  Their favorite activities, eating and sleeping!

Patient Mama Touille.  She's a great mother.  Soon she'll be playing with them.

They are eating a lot so that they can grow up.  They are doing a good job of it.  Soon they'll start tearing up the world of the kitchen.  I don't know how many times Karl, my handy man, has remolded the moulding and painted the cabinets, etc, when puppies have gnawed off the corners and any other place they could gnaw.  It will happen again, undoubtedly.

There will be a gap in the blog from Jan. 10-24 while I visit my son, daughter-in-law, grandsons and my house in Hawaii.  I will also get to see my brother and his family including his two grandsons, Naulu and AJ.  How fun to see how those little boys are growing.  I'll get to see some Border Terrier friends there too and at least one Border Terrier.  My grandsons will show me how they have advanced in their swimming and, who knows, maybe I'll even get to see a competition?!  

I hate to miss that much of the babies upbringing, but Nancy will stay with them, and if there is anything Nancy loves, it is puppies.  She is good at sitting on the floor with them like I do and at this age.  She will provide them with the educational toys, etc. that I will give her.  That is the most important thing at this age, loving them and making them mush buckets. 

I will try to post some pictures from Hawaii when I get back.  It will be hard, I'm sure, but I'll do it!

Meanwhile, I'll post more puppy pictures until I leave.

Hasta la vista,

Curmudgeonville

One week old FAT squeakers!

I suppose that you would like some more pictures!?  Well, here they come.

This is from a few days ago.

Taken this AM, about 0841!

Believe it or not, there ARE seven fat puppies in that pile!

Touille protects them from me or the camera, who knows which?!

She also cleans them constantly.  It is a wonder they still have hair!!!

I did remove dew claws two days ago and everyone seems fine after that trauma.  It REALLY traumatizes me to do it.  I can't stand hurting them!  I lessen the hurt by injecting numbing liquid, lidocaine, each time I do it, so the injection is all they feel and that is less than the dew claw removal would have been without the lidocaine.  I figure that in the long run though, the hurt is less than making a dew claw bleed over and over when clipping nails over a lifetime.  I do nick a dew claw on one of mine that hasn't been removed once in awhile and feel horrid after doing it.  Dew claws are a pain in the neck or leg, depending on one's point of view!
Their next trauma will be when I implant their ISO microchip.  I HATE doing that too!  That is a microchip that is recognized all over the world now.  These babies will be able to go to Crufts, Canada, or Hawaii with less rigamarole than otherwise!  VBG
Well, enough blabbering.  How's that, Angus?
The Curmudgeon needs to get to work. 

Traveled babies!!!

This is their second day coming to work.  They don't mind it.  I heat up the heating pad, put it in the carrier bag, put all seven of them in on top of the warm heating pad, zip it up and wrap the bag in a warm blanket.  Then we hop in the car and come the three miles to work.  They are quiet and content, not cold.  No screaming, which is what they would do if they were cold.
They are doing well, nursing most of the time.  They are fat and their coats glisten like seal fur.  I love how their coats look at this age.  Little boogers that they are, they do wiggle lots when I pick them up.  I have already started the rubbing their chests when they are on their backs in my hands.  That calms them right down. 

Touille is a good/great mom. 

Can you tell how much fatter/bigger they are?  They are really filling out!  Again, the grizzles are kind of bunched together!  You can see their brown heads.  The blues have heads that are black and one can see their brown eyebrows.

How did that Hawaii picture get in there?!!!!!  Cute little house.  I hear that there are at least five bunches of bananas in that banana patch!

OK.  The Old Curmudgeon is being called back to work by her conscience and other things!  I'll get more onto the blog soon.  Fat babies unite at the milk bar!

Doomsday or The End of the Mayan Calendar!

Today started out with a bang, but a constructive bang instead of a destructive one!  At close to 3:00 AM Touille had her first boy.  She ended up, by about 6:10 AM, having SIX boys and one lonely girl.  She did an amazing job.  What a great little girl!

Touille and her team and cheerleader.

They seem to be healthy and eating.

There are four blue puppies, of which the girl is one.  Betty says that the boys will have to watch out for that sister, but six against one is pretty hefty odds!
Touille is always a bit protective of the babies at first.  She is even afraid I will eat them!  All the good mamas are like that.  See how her front leg is kind of shielding them?  I put the blanket over them and that makes her happy.
They came to work in a bag with a heated up heating pad in the bottom and I placed it on the heated front seat.  I ran the car for awhile and had the heater on full blast.  We are having a bit of a cold snap.  Luckily, after today, we will have about four days at home.  Yippee!!!!!
Clicking starts soon, as well as the neurological stimulation exercises.  These puppies will never get car sick because of going back and forth to work every workday.  Scientifically proven!!!!
Enjoy the pictures.  More to come!
Don't worry.  I'll kiss them LOTS.
The Happy Curmudgeon with the terrible cold (I need rest!)

OK, more brags and not about puppies

So, the weekend of Oct. 27, 2012 we went to Ridgefield, WA to dog shows down there.  Saturday was OUR day!  I took Zinger and entered her as a champion because she had finished her championship.  That day she took Best of Breed and there were nine specials that day, meaning nine champions competing.  That was a very nice win.  She then went on to win a Group 3, and she was handled by Caleb Campbell, a junior handler.  Pretty nice win.
Ono took the boy points and that was a major win, and that finished his championship.  Pip won the girl points and then was proclaimed Best of Winners so she also got the boy major.  A major means that the dog has beaten a pre-set number of other dogs.  AKC doesn't want a dog to just beat one other dog fifteen times; they must beat a number of other dogs to be considered good enough to become a champion.
Elwha Border Terriers did well that day.  We didn't do as well the next day, but we did well.

Zinger winning Best of Breed  She is a very nice little girl and I am excited about her.  She is doing fantastically at Nosework too, she, Betty and Bonnie.

Pip, sideways, getting her first major.  I don't know how to rotate this picture, even though I tried. (Don't look at the doofy breeder in the picture!!)

Zinger's Group 3.  She looks mighty nice there with Caleb, doesn't she?!!!

I don't know if I ever added Zinger's Group 2 that she got.  This was even better as she was not yet a champion, but took the breed over champion and went on to get a Group 2, even better than the Group 3.  Like I said, nice girl.  Sweet girl.

That was at the nearby dog show in Sequim at the end of July.  Zinger turns two years old tomorrow.  Sorry about the rotation here too.

Finally found Ono's win picture.  Is your neck stiff yet?  Sorry.

On a very sad note, Zinger's brother, Norman, who took Select Dog at this year's National Specialty and Winners Dog at last year's National Specialty under a British judge, was lost from his backyard on Oct. 30th.  My heart is broken as well as Star Ott's and Joni Gibson's hearts, besides all the people who wanted to use him as a stud.  I have learned at least one thing from this tradegy, and that is to have TWO fences around my dogs, so that someone would have to stupidly leave open TWO gates when leaving a yard and maybe that would keep them from leaving any gates open allowing my dogs to escape.  I have boarded up my gates so that this doesn't happen to one of the ones at my house!!!  I will take those boards down when I get the inside perimeter fence up.  What we do to protect our loving companions!!!!  It will keep me from having a broken heart again, hopefully.

Enough.  The Sad Curmudgeon, and The Proud Curmudgeon.

How boring can I be? Or, can I put you to sleep while I brag?

I was in Hawaii for two weeks moving the contents of my house back into the house after the inside was painted.  I also was buying a few more things it needed.  It will become a vacation rental, starting today!  I get to "rent" it myself when I want to see Frank, Michelle and the boys and all the other sweet people there who mean so much to me.  Kathleen threatens to move there to be near her brother, so I am happy I could find a little fixer upper!  ANYWAY, back to dogs!
I arrived in the Seattle airport from Hawaii on Oct. 18th at about 10:00 PM and drove home, arriving about 0130 on the 19th.  I worked on that Friday, and Saturday the 20th, the dogs and I went to Whidbey Island.  I had signed Pip up for a MOCK Nosework 2 trial, despite not having practiced for the two weeks I was in Hawaii.  I will tell you that Pip has not yet done much in the Nosework world besides passing her ORT for birch.  ORT stands for Odor Recognition Test and tells the governing body that the dog can at least recognize and tell the handler that they recognize an odor.  Then, when that is passed, the team can enter a test.  We passed the ORT, but have not had a test to enter since we passed the ORT.  Note the "we."  I should have said "she."  Pip is a "sniffaholic," for sure.  She LOVES this game.  I love to watch her play the game and am as delighted as I can be at how much fun she is having.
So, our instructor told the judge that Pip had never practiced "containers," which means Pip telling me where the scents are in spite of there being distractants planted inside some of the containers to stymy some of the dogs.  The judge told her she'd tell me where the distracting things were and Pip could practice finding the birch and anise smells since she has practiced both.  We had only just started on anise a week or so before I left.  The distractants were things like bacon grease, cinnamon rolls, bison treats, etc.  That is what the judges told us afterwards anyway.
When we went into the gymnasium, I told the judge that I would just like to see what my dog would do, not to tell me anything.  She motored through the gym and told me right where the anise and birch were and we passed!  Then we went outside and passed half of the vehicle search.  I was happy, but happier yet at lunchtime when they announced the best dogs and Pip came in fourth for the morning!  I cried I was so flabbergasted and pleased.  This novice dog with her love of sniffing and playing the game made her mom proud, proud, proud!

No pics of Pip hunting, but some of the house in Hawaii!

The front porch, a room in itself!

Backyard, looking toward Maui which we see in the AMs before the clouds roll in.

Some of my sweet, favorite people in my living room.

The banana patch Frank and I planted a year ago.  It is forming its first bananas right now!

Another view toward Maui, in the afternoon!

For the afternoon we did average, meaning she did not find the scents outside where the bunnies distracted her.  Another story for another day!  She did great on the inside finds and the judge even gave us a "pronounced" designation, which means that she thought we were a great TEAM.  I was pretty pleased with that too!
So, I just got to bore you.  Now you know what makes me cry, besides the fact that Zinger's brother, Norman, Select Dog at this year's National Specialty, is lost.  Someone left a gate open Oct. 30th, where he lived in Temecula, CA.  I'm sick.
What I REALLY want to tell you in this blog is to go out and do Nosework with your dogs!  They LOVE it and have a blast doing it!  Old dogs, deaf dogs, sick dogs.  All can do it and have FUN!