See How They Grow....

I am so grateful to Amanda for keeping the litter photo page updated. She's very kindly been posting photos every few days (including on Christmas morning!) so that we've been able to watch the pups grow from tiny little creatures into gorgeous small dogs  :o)

Here they are:

1 day old and snuggled up to mama Connie

4 days old and one clever pup has managed to get some extra Mummy snuggles

7 days old and a special kiss for Mummy

8 days old and everyone is sleeping

9 days old and the milk bar is open again

14 days old and they've all grown so much!

17 days old and weaning has started

18 days old and one pup is just.............too............tired........to...........keep..........feeding

19 days old, eyes are open and they're looking like proper little dogs

21 days old and there are two very special gifts under the Christmas tree

23 days old and it looks like the sheen has come off for Connie  ;o)  but her babies still adore her

23 days old again and how cute are they?? Look at the kissing couple at the back 

25 days old and the two pups snuggling up to Connie are just TOO cute xx

25 days old again and they're looking for trouble  ;o)

25 day old cutie-pie

Ok and now for some new important information:

1. One family have been waiting some time for a Tamazan boy so they get first pick, but we get the other boy

2. Boy family 1 are visiting the pups on Wednesday 8th January and will pick their boy that day

3. We are visiting the pups on Thursday 9th January so we will get to meet OUR Cheese pup on that day!

4. Amanda is letting the pups go to their homes between 7 and 8 weeks of age so, after some inner turmoil and debate with myself, I've decided that we're going to collect Cheese at 7 weeks as he'll be coming home to canine company and we're more than capable of managing a youngster. I think the fact that he'll be that little bit smaller will help with the terrierists too.

5. We'll be the first family to collect our pup, so Master Cheese will be joining us on the very day that he turns 7 weeks - Wednesday 22nd January  :o)

6. We're waiting on confirmation from the Kennel Club, but Amanda has submitted KC registrations for the litter. Cheese will hopefully be Tamazan Wensleydale! If the KC say "no" to Wensleydale, then he'll be Tamazan Wallace  :o)

7. Cheese's first weekend holiday away is booked for Nottingham and Leeds in mid-February where he will get to meet lots of our special friends (2 and 4 legged!).

After such a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg wait for our puppy, it still seems like an unbelievable dream that he'll actually be here in just 3 short weeks!!! I may not be sleeping much between now and then  ;o)

All Change!

It was only inevitable that nothing was going to run smoothly with the length of the timescale that I started working with......

Back in October, Sophie and I spent a lovely weekend in Nottingham with Laura and Luna and Tucker and met up with some of our fabulous friends. As we were going to be passing fairly close by on the way back, we arranged to pop in to see Kate for a coffee. During our conversation that afternoon, it turned out that I had totally and utterly misunderstood the timings that Kate had in mind for Kalli's litter and she will not be having her pups any time soon.

After nearly 18 months of planning, I finally felt as if I was absolutely ready for Cheese to come home and had been anticipating his arrival in the Spring, so had a bit of a "world falling apart" moment when the realisation hit that he wasn't going to be an Ardenbrook pup after all  :o(

I spent a little while licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself, then started on the road to finding another breeder. After having such fabulous input from Kate and my wonderful little team of experts from the very beginning of my search, I knew exactly what I was looking for and exactly what I was prepared to compromise on. Luckily, I hit gold (again!) very very quickly!

I found out about a litter that were already on their way, had fantastic parents with stunning pedigrees behind them and a brilliant health background. I made an appointment to visit the Tamazan residence within the week.

We had the absolute delight of meeting some of the older residents who would be Cheese's older relatives and discovered that they were cracking girls. We also met his great-great-uncle who, amazingly, is called Branston  :o)  During my research into the breeder, I discovered so many links between names of the dogs they have and have had and my own dogs, my ex-foster dogs and the special dogs in my life that I was already fairly confident that I'd found the right family for my puppy to come from, but once I met most of those dogs in the flesh, I was positive!

Amanda was just wonderful and answered most of my vast array of questions before I even had a chance to voice them and made us feel so welcome and comfortable. So much effort is put into raising fantastic puppies that I couldn't believe my luck in finding such a fabulous breeder for a second time.

When Connie (Cheese's mum-to-be) came into the room, I was literally breathless as she was SUCH a beautiful dog. The photos that I had seen of her on the website did her no justice at all! She is also an incredible character and an utter princess

Mummy: Tamazan Rising Star aka Connie

Daddy: Bilbo Baggins by Baileydale aka Bill

We left the Tamazan household with big grins on our faces after receiving the news that we would be welcome additions to the waiting list.

And then the waiting game started properly!

Two weeks after our visit, we received the news that Connie had gone in to be scanned to try and get an idea of how many pups she was carrying. Amanda had said that she'd not been showing (in her figure) that she was pregnant at all so was amazed to hear that her girl was carrying in excess of 10 puppies!! At this point, I let out a huge sigh of relief as it hit me that with that many puppies expected there were bound to be boys and plenty of pups to go round, all being well.

Photos were eventually added to the website of a very large and uncomfortable looking Connie who still had 2 weeks to go before she was due to start whelping!

No sign of the sleek figure now  ;o)

As Connie looked SO big in the photos, I was not in the least bit surprised to hear that she delivered her babies 5 days early! On 4th of December, Connie safely delivered 9 gorgeous girls and 2 bouncing boys. Sadly, she also delivered 2 girls who left for Rainbow Bridge  :o(

Mama and her babies

All 11 puppies present and correct

I am so utterly and ridiculously excited that I'm not sure I'll be able to contain myself until the pups are old enough for visitors and am ecstatic that I only have to choose between 2 boys and not 9 girls! I'm already thinking that the obtuse, upside down little chap on the far left of the photo above is looking rather Cheese-like, but we'll see  :oD

Thank you all for the kind words and support and shared excitement on this mammoth journey so far and I hope that you all get to have a Cheesy cuddle at some point so that he can thank you too. It's incredible to think that we are very close to being a 3 dog household again and that, finally, someone will get to make use of the ginormous stash of "stuff" that is waiting here.....

No more shopping!

So now we're on the final countdown, at long long last, to Cheese coming home, but we have a few exciting adventures to have before that special day as we get to meet our little boy and his brother and sisters  :oD

The Ardenbrook Family and a teeny tiny little change to the Cheese plan....

We have been having an eventful summer with the pups still on rest and with continued ops, but finally they are both officially fit and well with fully functioning legs  :o)  Sadly, we also passed the first anniversary of Bran's leaving us  :o(  We've been able to meet up with lots of friends and we had a couple of FABULOUS afternoons, thanks to Kate.

As I probably explained way back in the beginning, Faith was always due to have a litter this year as she is slightly older than Lara. Kate very very kindly allowed us to visit the pups first when they were 4 weeks old and again when they were about 7 1/2 weeks old. I cannot begin to tell you just how much this meant to me as it meant that I got to see some Ardenbrook puppies in the flesh and see exactly how a litter were raised before it was the Cheese litter. It really brought home to me just how importantly Kate views her "job" with the puppies before they go to their homes and I was gobsmacked at just how wonderful they were becoming because of the efforts that she'd already put in.

Anyway. Our first visit. I was ridiculously excited and was most definitely not disappointed. As you can see, they were terrible, awful puppies that we couldn't bear to snuggle.......much  ;o)

Jailed! Their crime? Being too cute!

Play time

Bundle

Mass play time

Shhhh! Sleepy times

Time for zizzes all round.....but there's a pup missing!

Hmmmm. Little yellow boy just HAD to have a Sophie cuddle

It was an incredible privilege to spend time with these fabulous pups who were bright, healthy, confident little creatures and amazing to identify their personality types. We were sure that we could already see what sort of dogs they were all going to grow up to be. Kate, however, knew better and kindly said nothing  ;o)

We got to spend some time with Lara, Kalli and Summer after puppy and coffee time and I was utterly bowled over at how beautifully Kalli had matured in the 8 months since we'd last seen her. She was absolutely stunning and took my breath away. She was a wonderful personality too and made me laugh with her antics as she played with her mum, Lara. It made me excited to imagine that my Cheese could be as fabulous as this gorgeous girl. A lovely end to our special visit  :o)

4 weeks later and we returned. This time, we were going to help by wearing hi viz jackets and big hats to help desensitise the pups to the strange things. Before the dressing up started though, we got to spend some time with all 5 of the growed up girls and that was just wonderful. There's nothing quite like walking into a house, sitting on the floor and being mobbed by kissy labradors.....bliss! We then went outside and caught sight of the puppies and.........oh my word!! I'd thought they were cute and adorable before but they were even more so now! And they all had names, so Kate introduced us to each of them and pointed out the girl that she was planning to keep. I was a bit taken aback as I'd thought she was planning to keep a pup from the Cheese litter so when she uttered the words "Ah. Yes. I need to talk to you about Lara's litter" my heart hit the floor  :o/  However, being the easily distracted sort that I am, I thoroughly enjoyed the next few hours playing with wonderful puppies (watching in awe as almost all of them sat at the same time waiting for their lunch to be put down) and then had a delicious lunch with Kate and Abi.

Kate getting mobbed and nibbled from all directions!

Handsome little yellow boy

Sophie getting munched on

Handsome little black boy

Nomming on the play box

Yowch!

All six getting involved in a play bundle

Gorgeous black pup

Incredible ears!

Tyred pupster  ;o)

Beautiful little yellow girl

Lunch eaten, playing done, it must be sleepytimes

Of course, Kate's instincts proved to be spot on and our's were shockingly poor as the personalities had all completely changed in those few weeks. It was fab to see just how well Kate knew each of them and how the right pup had been matched up with the right family. It also illustrated perfectly to me why Kate had advised not picking THE puppy until 7/8 weeks (no matter how badly everyone wants to know which is their pup at birth!) simply because they do change so much.

I managed to get some photos of the big girls this time too  :o)

Connie taking it easy

Summer trying quite hard to earn a treat

Momma Faith showing off her svelte post-pup figure

Trouble 1 and Trouble 2 aka Lara and Kalli:
most definitely NOT disobeying their mum and, once again, dragging their beds around ;o)

We had a delicious lunch with Kate and Abi, then Kate took a deep breath and said "so we need to talk about Lara"......

This Lara. The Lara who was going to be mummy to my Cheese pup.....

Beautiful Lara

Except......Kate had been thinking long and hard about the planned litter and wasn't sure that the Ardenbrook line had a lot to achieve from another Lara litter. Obviously, when we'd started talking about puppies, Kalli had been too young to consider as a potential mum and hadn't been health tested. We now knew that she had fantastic hips and elbows and was becoming an incredible dog. I told Kate how impressed I'd been by her on our last visit and we all heaved a sigh of relief as the decision was mostly made that Kalli would be Cheese mummy instead of Lara. All that needed doing was for Madam to be eye tested and EIC tested (Lara is a carrier) before we could definitely say "all systems go".

Of course, clever Kalli sailed through the eye test and proved to be EIC clear  :oD

In many ways, I am even happier with Kalli than I was with the adorable Lara because Kalli was born at Ardenbrook and I know that she has had Kate's incredibly intuitive input from day one. Also, she is 50% show bred and 50% working bred so it means that whether Kate chooses a show or working sire, Cheese won't be 100% of anything, but a nice 75%/25% mixture.

Of course, Lara is still a spectacular dog and I am still considering ways to smuggle her into my car without Kate noticing  ;o)  but seeing how beautifully she still interacts with Kalli, I have no doubt that she will be a wonderful Cheese granny.

The next big step is finding Cheese daddy. Kate has decided that he will be a working lad (yay!), but we have a few months yet before any big decisions need to be made. The timings should all be much as I'd been hoping with Lara and Cheese should still be coming home in Spring 2014.

I *may* camp out in Kate's paddock for his first 8 weeks  ;o)

So. With that little tiny change announced, I'll leave you with some of the photos that I took of beautiful Kalli back in October.....

Cheese's "Big" Brother and Sister-to-be

I thought I'd just tell you a little bit about Cheese's doggy family to be, especially as they are doing a very good job at the moment of reinforcing my belief that my time with rescue dogs is done!

I posted a brief background introduction to Moss and Casey back in my very first post so, to recap:

"On a cold, snowy day, Fi received a call to ask whether Lizzies Barn could take a litter of puppies that had been found abandoned in a cardboard box. "Of course", was the answer. The litter turned out to be just 4 day old tiny black and tan scraps and there were 6 of them. Sadly, within just hours of starting a handrearing regime, one little boy was lost. For the next 2 weeks Fi's life centred around the puppies and they thrived. Fi had a holiday booked over Christmas so two puppies came to us to be fostered and the other three went to another foster home together. From the start, it had been decided that if one of the little boys survived then he would be Sophie's next terrierist so she had got to name Moss at 4 days old and then just hoped and prayed until he arrived with us at 2 1/2 weeks of age ~ eyes not long open, just starting to move, tail just starting to wag. His sister, Casey (named by Jacob ~ my son) came to us to be fostered alongside Moss so that they could keep each other company until she went to a new home at 8 weeks. Sophie and I spent Christmas 2010 bottle feeding every few hours, cleaning puppies, changing newspaper and napping as often as possible! The puppies continued to thrive though and eventually it transpired that Jacob and Casey had bonded too tightly for her to be rehomed so both pups stayed with us! Moss has been to training classes with Sophie and is now a KC Bronze Citizen and Casey has attended several clicker workshops with Jacob where she has shown that she is more clever than the rest of us! Both pups (they'll always be "the puppies" even as they approach their second birthday) had been sickeningly healthy until just a few weeks after we lost Bran, when we discovered that Casey has quite a severe flea allergy. Unfortunately, the flea allergy triggered a full body skin infection and, whilst we've been managing that, we've also discovered that she has luxating patella and will probably need surgery to fix it *sigh*  It doesn't bother her though and the pair of them are like little tasmanian devils whipping through the house causing noise and chaos and laughter most of the time."

Allow me to introduce you properly  :o)

Casey weighs about 5.5kgs and has straight, quite thick fur (unlike any of the others in the litter!). She is incredibly bright, adores learning new things, loves people and cuddles more than anything else in the world and likes to hold your finger or thumb in her mouth if she gets so excited that she doesn't know what to do with herself! She is also VERY bouncy and springy and we had hoped that she'd enjoy agility, but actually it's just FAR too exciting for her to cope with, so maybe we'll try again when she's older.

Posing in the garden

Our beautiful girl

With her bestest friend, Mika

Cheekiness

Being a girl, Casey has taken it upon herself to be the protector of our family and will generally be the one to decide whether other dogs are allowed to greet us or not or whether visiting dogs are allowed to sit on the sofa/play with the toys/have a drink from their water bowl, etc etc. 

Casey also has a rather impressive vocabulary and tries very hard to communicate with us by speech. The noises she can make have to be heard to be believed!

Her bestest friend in the world is our big ginger tom cat, Mika. He gets very frequent Casey kisses (thankfully, the cat version of these which are just butterfly kisses on his face, whereas the people version of these involve her tongue being shoved up your nostril!!) and they are often to be found snuggling up together.

Casey's favourite person ever is Jacob, my son, and she has a special inbuilt Jakeradar so that she can hear when he opens his eyes in the morning. We then have to listen to the "Jake's Awake" song until he comes down to greet her. Fortunately, he adores her too and they spend a lot of time together.

Casey's favourite hiding place!

Casey's favourite trick ~ placing her head right against your mouth so that you HAVE to give her kisses

We worked very hard with the puppies from a very early age to ensure that they developed very separate identities and didn't bond so tightly to each other that they became difficult and that has been successful enough that they actually just to spend little time together now. They will occasionally have a little play, but we never find them sleeping snuggled up together the way that they did when they were tiny. They both used to love snuggling with Bran or Flora, but not each other.

We think that they are probably yorkshire terrier x chihuahua but Casey and Moss look SO different to each other and have such different personalities that nobody ever guesses that they are even related!

Little and Large. Well. Not exactly "large" but "larger than Moss"  ;o)

Moss' turn. He weighs about 2.5kgs and has very very fine long, straggly fur that is incredibly difficult to manage so we trimmed it all off recently and now he has thick, soft short fur. We've not quite worked out whether he is incredibly dim or incredibly clever because we can teach him almost nothing! He did pass his Kennel Club Bronze Citizen test on his second go but it was all very much on his terms. Two and a half years in and we STILL can't get him to do a "down" on command! Moss is toy obsessed, particularly with his beloved reindeer. He would quite like to have someone on hand to play tug with him allllllllllllll day. His favourite victim to badger is Mika but he hasn't quite realised that Mika is a cat and will never play tug with him! 

Just before his first haircut

Looking very cute

Being the Mossasaurus in his favourite fleece

Trying to make Mika (the cat) play with his reindeer through the window

 Moss tends to be very aloof with people, which can be difficult when we are out and about as he is so small and cute that everybody wants to make a fuss of him and he just couldn't care less! Moss' favourite person in the world is Sophie, my daughter. As long as she is with him, then his world is ok. If she goes out, then he will become the loveliest, quietest dog ever and sleep on the sofa until she comes home. 

Moss has the most irritating bark on the world ~ the sort that brings out the same effect as nails down a blackboard ~ and we hear it A LOT! However, of an evening, he was worn himself out playing and becomes very very cuddly and it is how adorable he is at night and when Sophie is out that enables us to tolerate the noise and pestering the rest of the time  ;o)

Giving his mummy kisses when he was a tiny boy

Where Moss will be found when Sophie is poorly

So. Anyway. That's Moss and Casey. They are dogs number 6 and 7 for our little family, and they are rescue dogs number 6 and 7, and they are dogs number 6 and 7 who need rather hefty medical care  :o(

As I mentioned back at the start of this post, we discovered that Casey had luxating patella in her right leg not long after we lost Bran. 2 days before her 3 month check up with Joe (ortho vet at Highcroft Vets), she stopped using her left leg. When Joe examined her he found that her right leg was marginally worse than it had been, but that her left leg had deteriorated terribly and that she would need surgery within the next few weeks. It was all a bit of a shock, but we booked her in and the surgery went smoothly and she immediately started using the leg when she came home. 3 days later she had her first post-op check up and she had an infection brewing so was given antibiotics. 3 days after that she was back at the vets because she had a bad reaction to the antibiotics and needed a whole new batch of meds to stabilise her stomach. 

Whilst Casey was on strict crate rest, we started to realise that Moss was displaying many of the symptoms that had brought us to take Casey to see Joe about her legs in the first place, so we added him to her appointment for her 2 week post-op check up.

Joe was pleased with Casey's progress, then checked Moss and found that he was also suffering with LP in both legs. And needed surgery. The first lot within a few weeks. So Moss was booked in and his surgery went smoothly and he promptly refused to use the leg at all. 1 week later and Moss started to pass blood so was admitted to hospital for 3 days. That was put down to a bug and a few days later he had his 2 week post-op check up and he had just started to use his leg properly.

1 week after Moss' check up, Casey was booked in for x-rays and her second op. However, the x-rays showed that she hadn't healed sufficiently to have her second op and it was put back 5 weeks, which brought her to the same point as when Moss needed his second op and they were booked in for the same day. By the end of that week (after Casey's x-rays), both dogs had a tummy bug and had several days of vomiting and diarrhoea. 

And so second op day arrived. Casey's x-rays showed that she'd healed well and went on to have her second op. Moss' x-rays showed that he hadn't healed sufficiently and couldn't have his second op for another 4-5 weeks. This time, Casey didn't use her leg for several days, but passed her 3 day post-op check with flying colours. 

However, Moss then stopped using his fixed leg properly. We took him to see Rachel (lovely lady vet at Highcroft) as Joe was on holiday and she was worried that she could feel the kneecap still slipping, which shouldn't have been happening when it was pinned in place. Moss was rested up until he could use Casey's 2 week post op appointment the following week.

2 days before the appointment, Casey started being sick. Moss still had the evening appointment with Joe and we were delivered the news that, as he was our dog, Joe had been extra cautious and used two pins instead of the usual one to hold Moss' knee in place but that they had come loose: either because they had just worked their way loose or because the op site wasn't healing properly and the bone was being separated. So. Another op was needed. There were 2 options: if it turned out that the pins had just become loose, then the old pins would be removed and replaced with one new pin (not enough room for another two) and some anchor wire; if it turned out that the pins had become loose because of poor healing, then the old pins would be removed, a bone graft would be needed, and then the pin and anchor wire. We mentioned that Casey was being sick and she was booked in for the following day.

Casey, it appears, is intolerant of metacam. A short course of stomach settler sorted her poorly tum out.

Moss is in having his op redone today. I've just taken a call from Joe who says that at the moment the x-rays are saying healing has started so a bone graft may not be necessary and the measurements seem to indicate that the pins haven't become very loose, so the pain may just be down to the skin moving over the pins. The knee will be opened up and he'll have a good look to see what's what but on top of the other 2 options, it may just be that the old pins need removing. If that's the case, then recovery should be swift and Moss can have his second op in a few weeks. If new pins need putting in then we're looking at another 10 weeks of recovery before the second op can happen.

(Brief update 30/04/13: It turned out that somehow the skin had thickened over Moss' pins and was rubbing so making him sore, so the old pins were removed, along with the thick skin, and he SHOULD be able to manage without them now! If the bone chunk doesn't snap off and make him lame, then he has a check-up in 2 weeks and we can then get his second op booked in. Phew!!)

Every single time something happens, I'm so very grateful for finding Highcroft Vets because they are just incredible, but I'm tired of the "something happens" and am quite sure that there will be no more rescue dogs in the Hendy house. So Moss and Casey are the end of a traumatic and emotional 9 year rollercoaster ride and I am now just hoping beyond all hope that we can get these pesky ops out of the way and the pups back to full fitness before Cheese arrives and then that will be it! No more repetitive vet visits PLEASE!!!

Moss with his newly fixed leg after the first op

Casey with her healing leg after her first op