Introducing Cheese

Well it's been a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time coming, but please allow me to finally introduce you to my boy..........

We visited the puppies on Thursday and, thankfully, the family who had first pick of the boys had visited the day before so we finally got to meet OUR boy. He is just wonderful, as are all of the puppies. He's a bit of an independent munchkin who chose to mostly spend his time interacting with one of us or pootling off on solo adventures.....

....whereas his brother and sisters preferred to pal up for adventuring or wrestling.

He REALLY liked Jacob and that was where he headed as soon as the pups were released from the conservatory  :o)

Next on the Cheese agenda was chomping of the Mummy toes!  :oO

It took him a while to make his way to Sophie but he soon discovered that she is fun  :o)

                

 

After spending over an hour in the company of the litter and watching Cheese in action, I'm 99.9% sure that he is the pup that has been the odd one out in the group photos - the upside down one, the one on Connie's legs. I'm also 100% sure that had we been given the pick of the litter and spent the time observing before making a decision, then he would still have been the one I'd have picked.

Unsurprisingly, he was the last pup to fall asleep when nap time came around!

It was so hard to tear ourselves away, but everyone was snoring and it's only a little while now until he comes home. 10 sleeps! That's all!

Here's an added bonus of a little video of the pups playing. Cheese is the puppy in the last few seconds who goes over to Jacob, bellyflops, then chomps on Jacob's fingers  ;o)



Hopefully, these photos and the video will just about keep me going until Coming Home Day!! After so long, it's still very hard to believe that there will be a puppy here, in my house, in such a short amount of time! I really and truly cannot wait!

We've been given a List of Essentials so, unfortunately, that means that I have to do a little more puppy shopping. Oh dear. How awful! ;o)

You may have noticed, as I had, that some of the more recent group photos have featured 10 puppies and not 11. I assumed that this was because somebody kept wandering out of shot but, tragically, we learned that another little girl was lost at just 10 days old  :'(  I cannot begin to imagine the distress that caused for everyone, but I hope she's having fun playing at the Bridge with her 2 sisters who went before her xx

We are starting to plan the Cheese Tour 2014, so he may be visiting a town near you at some point throughout the year. If you need a squidge, just drop me a line and we'll see what can be arranged  :oD

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.....