Utility

Today I took Brandy through the utility exercises. Boy, do we have a lot of work to do! I am hoping to put a foot into the utility ring before 2012 runs out, so hopefully it's doable.
Articles: I had to shorten the distance drastically. I think I might have to send her to articles without a turn for a while:-(
Directed Jumping: I was able to pick this up almost at the same place where we left, maybe it's because we really never had the finished product.:-)
Moving stand: will have to build up the distance, currently at the full distance she is coming to front rather than heel.
Signals: Down and Sit are not too bad, but we lost "come" and "finish"
Gloves: I didn't do the utility gloves exercise, instead we worked on the "clock". I think, and I am scared to say this, we are getting close to the "light bulb" turning on in Brandy's head.   Several times in last few times we worked on it, she went to where I was pointing although I knew that she couldn't see the glove I was sending her to and she could definitely see a glove next to it, so maybe there is a hope for us here after all.
Go Outs: we ran out of time to do go outs, but I am pretty sure that this one is in pretty bad shape also.

How do you longe line a dog that simply runs around you in circles? I've been wondering about it for a while now. I've started "formal" training with Mozart when he turned 4 months, started it very casually with longe line work for a few weeks, before I had even attempted anything else.
So far I think I absolutely failed to make a dent in the longe line training or heeling for that matter. Probably part of the problem is the time of the year. It's dark in the morning and dark at night and very hard to find any decent distractions. Another part of the picture is his age, probably. He is just not here at all,  you put him on the longe line and he starts galloping around you tossing sticks, leaves and whatever else he finds in the air. Clinical ADD case in my opinion:-)

Today I've decided to use Belle's assistance - tied her to the fence as I was doing longe line work. That worked much much better, so I think we made a tinny bit of progress in this department.

Back on Track

Puppies are gone and I figured it's time to get back on track with life in general as well as dog training. I've been doing some formal training with Mozart for a few weeks now, but I couldn't get to Brandy. I had a great hopes for the past weekend, but the weekend turned out to be another weekend from hell - nice but very very hectic, leaving me more tired by the end of Sunday than I was on Friday morning:-)
Charlotte was neglected because of the puppies and her birthday party was month and a half overdue. She wanted to have a sleepover with her friends so we scheduled it for last Friday night. Well, that was pretty stupid of me, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't even foreseen all the difficulties. The party was schedule on Friday night due to one girl not being able to make it on Saturday. It was nice of my boss to let me leave a bit early so I could get the house in to somewhat decent shape before people would arrive. So I rushed home, tried to finish my stupid self-eval that was due before the end of the day, pick up the stuff laying around, vacuum etc. Of course that meant that poor Mozart was locked up all day.I took him out briefly but it was not even close to being enough for him. By the time the girls came he was about to explode in his crate with excitement.
Because I Mozart's size and lack on any self control, at this point, he couldn't be allowed in the room with five 7 year old girls. So I ended up juggling between 5 girls and 4 dogs 3 of which were not house broken. I finally ended up telling girls to keep their shoes on in the kitchen as one managed to step into the puddle left by one of the puppies. Although by the midnight I was barely standing girls had a blast. The Saturday morning we spent decorating the gingerbread men, then I had to send the last puppy home, then we were invited to a party where Charlotte petted a hamster and she had a such a horrible allergic reaction to it that it took her 24 hours to recover completely, that included dose of claritin, and benadril on top of that for every 4 hours. I am thinking we should stay away from hamsters in the future:-)
SO FINALLY MONDAY I put my foot down and did some training we Brandy. We did articles in the house. I was debating whether I should start with a full set or small set. I've decided to do a full set and she did great! We also did some gloves in the dark outside.
yesterday I pull out the jumps and did almost complete open run, except the figure 8. She did really well, but we need to work on heeling again. It seems that we always have to work on heeling and it's hardly getting better:-( I am sure the figure 8 that I had forgotten about will look horrendous. Brandy was very proud of herself though! This morning I took articles outside as it was warm and I didn't have to worry about her tong sticking to the metal article:-) I started with the full set and full distance to see where we were. She wasn't even going to the pile but rather going in some bizarre direction, I suspect she was looking for number 1 glove, so I had to shorten the distance to 6 ft. I am sure we will build it back up fairly fast, but I am glad she still did the full set of articles. But reality is that I need to come up with a plan and the biggest part of the plan is to tackle those out of sight stays that gave us so much problem this year, because without the stays nothing else matters, so I'd better get to it fast if I want this CDX ever.

Portraits

My friend had a photo shoot for kids for the Halloween and we had decided to take some pictures of the dogs as well. Here they are:
Brandy, the queen:

Mozart, the handsome one:

Week 6

Puppies had turned 5 weeks on Friday already! Yesterday they all had their first bath, than they got to experience the blow drier and in the evening they got their first cut. Now they look more like Kerry Blue puppies and not some kind of maltipoo:-) here are some pictures. Belle:

Bologna:

Rosie:

Brownie

Sunny:

Lilly:

T-Rex:

Fun pictures:

Flying puppy:

There is a lot more pictures. You can see see the rest of the pictures here

blog hop

Week 3

by Sunday puppies eye were completely opened. I think ears are mostly opened as well. They are growing like weeds. Brandy now can finally take a break from them and relax on the sofa. They also are trying to play with each other now:-) So far it looks like T-Rex and Bologna initiate all the commotion:-)

Decompressing Mozart

Mozart is a very active puppy, he is like an energizer bunny just going and going and going. With everything that is going on during the week days Mozart only gets about 1.5 hours of exercise 30 min in the morning, 30 min during lunch time and 30 min in the evening. During walks we do short sprints in the grass or up the grassy hill. We also play ball in the house few min here and there. All this is just enough to take the edge of Mozart's desire to be busy. So on the weekends I am trying to do a bit more with him.
Unfortunately I've been sick since the day before puppies were born and still dragging my feet around and by the time I finally got ready to get out of the house I didn't have enough time to do what I wanted to do.  When my obedience instructor teaches puppy kindergarten classes she gives a paper that called "Treasure hunt", this paper has a list of things that should be done as part of puppy socialization. We've been checking some things off that list but we still had lots left. One of the things I had been wanting to get to for a while is "meet a goose". I took Mozart and we went to Rio - this is an area nearby that has a pond with ducks and Geese, restaurants, people, kids and dogs. To my huge disappointment all the geese  were too far in the water so Mozart couldn't really see them. I really should have done this a while ago when Mozart was much smaller, I wanted to see what his reaction would be when he sees the huge bird, now I am sure all he would want to do is to chase it.
As we couldn't find any geese, we just went to walk around the pond. Mozart got to greet and get petted by a few people, so we got at least something out of this. Then I had decided to try my luck in the office park where I work. I was always full of geese and was only half a mile away. I guess it wasn't our day to meet the geese as usually there are tons of them there, but today there was not a single one inn sight. I guess they had a day off, maybe they have the same schedule Mon - Fri. Then I had another idea, another thing on our list was "to ride on the elevator". So I thought I can take Mozart on our elevator on the weekend, I bet no one would object to it. But I didn't have any luck either. The building is closed on the weekends and I didn't have my security card to open the door, and I didn't see any of the cars that belong to the people I work with, so they could let me into the building:-(
Although we didn't get to scratch anything off my list, we still did about 1 worth of walking around and seeing new places, but it was time to go and pick up Charlotte from her Russian school. Ha, one thing I can actually do! We live in a townhouse that has first floor, second floor and the basement. Mozart lives on the main floor. I do not want him to go up the stairs so I never encouraged it . I didnt really wanted him in the basement because we have bunch of stuff laying around and with his constant desire to chew on things I was worried that he might find something that he shouldn't have eaten. Today, however, I decided to take him down the stairs, we had walked up and down the stairs before, but last time it was about 3 weeks ago and Mozart refused to go down or up the stairs today. I did convince him to make a trip, so I was planning on taking him up and down the stairs where Charlotte goes to her Russian school.  There is a good size stairwell outside the building and I was was planning on using it. We walked up and down the stairs a couple of times, so I felt that I had accomplished at least something today.
The weather today was absolutely beautiful and I just didn't want to get stuck at home for the rest of the day, so I asked the kids if they would like to go to the playground. The kids were very happy, but I had ulterior motive. Since this morning I wanted to go to the play ground so Mozart could practice his "long down". you can read about "long down" here.. We went last Saturday and I wanted to get back to it.
The goal of the "long down" is to have dog to lay quietly by your side for 30 consecutive minutes. Knowing that I have kids with me, I figured I have about an hour before they will get bored and will want to go home. I also was pretty sure that I will not get 30 min out of Mozart in that timeframe, but I figured it;s better than nothing. Yes, ideally someone should sit in that chair as long as it takes to get 30 min out of their dog, but lets be realistic. I would probably need to spend 3 hours sitting in that chair before I get those 30 min under conditions with so many distractions. I do not have 3 hours, so if I were to shoot for this goal I would simply give up and say "Oh well, maybe some other time I will have the time needed". I think it's better to go and get what you can, and then work on gradually increasing the time, than get discouraged and quit. My main rule when doing the long down  is: " never stop the exercise when the dog is sitting. If you spent an hour and finally your dog went down, but then right before you were about to get up the squirrel ran by and the dog is standing again, I would wait for as long as it takes to make sure the dog goes down again, then I will finish the exercise.
I brought a camping chair, a book to read and a rug for Mozart to lay on so he doesn't have to do it on the cold ground. I have to say that the camping chair is really bad for doing the long downs, because the leash would simply slid under me, so I had to secure it to prevent Mozart from moving farther and farther away from me. I really want to stress that doing the long down in a camping chair is really really bad idea. If I had a larger dog that wanted to take off after something, I would not be able to stop the dog form doing it. The only reason I was able to get away with it was Mozart's size and I think I will have to come up with something else for the next time. The main goal for doing the long down near the playground is to make Mozart get used to the sound of the screaming children and teach Mozart to relax when bunch of them are running and screaming. 
I put my chair right across from the tire swing. I do not know how kids can stand it, I get dizzy just by looking at it, but it sure was providing plenty of screaming:-) As soon as I sat in the chair Mozart got comfortable on the rug, but as expected the lasted for maybe 30 sec. A kid ran by kicking a soccer ball and Mozart was ready to chase it. Then a person with a dog went by and Mozart was ready to go and visit them.  Every time Mozart would go down, 30 sec later something would happen that would cause him to jump up.
Finally as the hour was wearing off, he became more relaxed. I maybe got  5-10 min of him doing down, but I saw that he was mentally exhausted from all that commotion around him and was getting closer to started to tune it out. Also, as expected, the kids came and told me that they are bored and ready to go home. Hmm, maybe next time I will try to organize a play date for them at the playground, to give myself more time. Although, we didn't get even close to the 30 min goal, I felt that we made a lot of progress, will try to go back next weekend if weather permits.
Mozart was really tired because as soon as we got into the car he was asleep.  But two hours later when he came out of his crate he was crazy as if he was locked up the whole day!

Day 9

Puppies are growing, they are almost doubled in size from a week ago! They also started stretching in their sleep and some of them are closer to walking than others. Their muscles twitch win their sleep. I read somewhere that that twitching helps to strengthen the muscles and prepare them for walking, I thought that was pretty cool!
Here are few new pictures pictures:
Belle fell asleep while eating

Bologna:

 Lilly is sleeping on top of her mom:

Puppy Pile:-)

Rosie is sleeping on top of her mom:-)

 Charlotte and Belle

Mozart

Before I write anything else today, I have to say that I absolutely hate whatever blogger did with the site. I cannot find anything, all the buttons changed and got moved around - very frustrating!

I thought that it;s time for Mozart to make appearance  on the blog, poor puppy had been neglected long enough.
Mozart currently eats kibble. I think both of us dream of the day when he can start eating real food. The reason he eats kibble is because his breeder said that she had a problem with the litters from Mozart's damn that puppies were growing too fast on the raw diet. I have to learn whole bunch of new stuff, just because I got myself a dog of a different size. You see, the large size puppies, unlike mid size or small dogs, have to be raised with special care to protect their joints. It's very bad for any puppy to grow too fast. When puppy grows too fast it damages puppy's joints and if not corrected quickly will mess up the dog for the rest of his/her life. This is why you should never feed puppies the puppy kibble, if you feed kibble you can just feed the adult version of it.
Anyway, Mozart is taught to sit politely and wait for his food to be prepared. For that purpose, I put a small bathroom rug in the kitchen. When it's time for Mozart to eat, I ask him: "Are you ready for your food?" and place him sitting on that mat. Then I pick up the dish, put kibble in it and add some water to make it moist and then drain the water before I feed him. If Mozart gets up and wonders around while I am doing it, I just put him gently back on his mat in the sitting position. Unfortunately Mozart decided that he will not only get up and walk around, but he thinks that he should be jumping on me and barking so I would hurry up with his food. I get really annoyed with it, at first I would just put the dish down and put him back on the mat, but it didn't seem to get the point across, so I finally decided to do the following: as soon as he starts jumping and barking at me, I would put the dish on the counter and walk out of the kitchen. After the barking stops and he looks at me with great confusion, I would go back, place him on the mat and start working on his food. If he barks again, I repeat the same thing. After doing this just a couple of times, he figured out that he better keep quiet if he wants to eat any time soon.:-)
It looks like yesterday, or rather day before that Mozart ate something he should not have, so I took him off the food for 24 hours. Every time I would walk into the kitchen to do stuff, he would sit himself on the mat, in hope that he would get his dinner. Poor puppy. But today he is back to normal self and eating well.

Day 5

Miss Brandy is miss picky eater. So far she only eats tripe, that I have to cut in bite size pieces and goat milk mixed with egg. I told her to enjoy it while it's last, because as soon as she is stops nursing she better stop this nonsense and eat what is given or go hungry. I have bunch of venison in the freezer, I am not even trying to feed it to her at this point, grr-r.

I let mama dog out of the box and now she is laying on one side of me, while Mozart is sleeping on the other side, love it!:-)
 
Here is the video of puppies sleeping. There is not much going on, but they are so darn cute!


Belle got lost today. She was eating, when Brandy saw me and decided that she'd rather spend time with me. Alex is right, they move like baby seals - no feet just flippers and a tail:-)

Day 4

I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamed that I had missed docking appointment, that instead I was going to our obedience class( which we never do in the middle of the day:-)  ) and then half way realized that I had forgotten about the appointment.  I was very happy when I woke up and realized it was a dream. I have to say that I had been seriously sleep deprived since Thursday night. I didn't sleep well on Thursday, partially because my throat was on fire, partially because Brandy was digging in her whelping box. After that I am waking up every time puppies start squeaking when Brandy gets up and changes location which seems to be happening every hour or so, so I had been getting no more than 6 hours of sleep in one hour intervals.I think that would pretty much explain my nightmares:-)
We had a docking appointment at noon. I wanted to make sure that puppies will not get cold, so I took a towel put it in the cardboard box, loaded all the puppies and covered them with part of that towel, took Brandy and off we went. Brandy went for the ride because I wanted to check a lump near one of her breasts.
When we came to the vet's office I was still worrying about puppies getting cold, so they brought in a box with a heating pad at the bottom to keep the puppies warm, then looked at me and asked: " Is this your first litter?". I felt quite silly, I guess I looked like a husband whose wife is having their first child and he is just sitting in the waiting room all stressed.:-)
After tails were done we still had to hang around waiting for results of Brandy's needle aspiration. I really like going to this vet's office, they seemed to be pretty relaxed about certain things.  The tails were done right in front of me and then he called me in the back to show the cells under the microscope. This time looking at the microscope was much less exciting than when we went there for pre-breeding tests, I was too worried and just wanted him to tell me what he sees. Luckily he thinks it's just a cyst.
Here is the picture with the tails docked:

Day 3

I took Brandy out to eat and potty, here she is back and trying to figure out how to get down withouth squishing the puppies.



Rosie 10.8 oz
Sunny 10.7 0z
Belle 9.0 oz !
T-Rex 10.1 oz
Brownie 9.7 oz
Bologna 11.2!!!
Lilly 10.3

Day 2

There are seven puppies in the picture. Can you find them all?










Rosie 9.6 oz
Sunny 9.1 oz
Belle 7.8 oz
T-Rex 8.6 oz
Brownie 8.7 oz
Bologna 9.8 oz
Lilly 9.1 oz

Day 1

Meet the puppies:
Rosie - pink girl (9.2 oz),
Sunny - yellow girl (8.2 oz),
Bell - blue girl (7.2 oz),
T-Rex - purple boy (8.1 oz),
Brownie - brown boy (8.1 oz),
Bologna - blue boy (9.0 oz),
Lilly - purple girl (8.6 oz).

Seve-e-e-n, Puppies Seven. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, count them there are Seve-e-en...

Brandy's temperature dropped Wednesday night so I had decided to work from home today to keep an eye on Brandy. My friend Sam came over last night to make sure that she doesn't miss any action:-) All night Brandy was digging in her whelping box, then came and sat almost on top of my had shaking. I was trying to sleep, feeling guilty that I did that to her. Finally she managed to curl up on the floor next to me and relax a bit. All morning went without any changes, Brandy was laying between me and Sam on the sofa, while I was working and Sam was doing her homework.
At noon we ate lunch then went to take Mozart for a walk and take some pictures in the pretty pile of leaves. Brandy decided to go into the whelping box and I closed the boards so that she cannot get out. Twenty minutes later we came back and found that Brandy had escaped from the whelping box ( the wall was about two feet high!), there is vomit on the floor, vomit on the sofa - she managed to get it right between the cushions, shredded notebook on the floor together with two laptops that she knocked off the sofa. Brandy heard us walked in and was coming down the stairs. Wondering what could have she done up there in such a short time I ran into our bedroom and found the big puddle in the middle of our bed! She had decided that the best place for her waters to break would be our bed!
I put her back into the whelping box and started cleaning up the mess so we could at least sit down. As I sat down and picked up my laptop to have some work done, I noticed that her tail was doing something weird, I had decided that I'd better to check on her and saw that the first puppy is on her way out! Looking through the graying sack I was wondering whatever is in it that looks like a warm when I had realized that its a tail and that the puppy was coming out breached.
I spoke with Youlia not long ago and she had just left her house so that meant that she has 2-3 hours before she can get here. Totally freaked out I helped Brandy to get the puppy out, tear the sack, clean the nose, rub the puppy, cut the cord. It's alive!! I was so happy that the puppy was moving that I even forgot to check if its a girl or a boy.:-) The pink girl ( Rosie) was born at 1:50 pm. Almost immediately Brandy started pushing. 1.5 hours later she is still pushing but nothing coming out, but because she didn't seem to be in any distress I finally managed to relax and that's when the second puppy came. The second girl (Sunny) was born at 3:25pm. Kids came back from school right before Sunny was born, they were given the task of naming the puppies:-)Sam was taking pictures and keeping records, so far everything was going well.
Just after I had finished with Sunny, Brandy made a push and another girl arrived. Bell, the smallest of all was born at 3:35pm.
Just after Bell was born Youlia walked in and declared that now we need some boys, just as by magic a first boy T-Rex ( Youlia decided to take part in naming the puppies:-) ) arrived at 3:55. At 4:30 another boy Brownie was born and then the last boy came running. Blue boy (Bologna) was born at 4:56. The sack got torn as he was coming out and before the placenta even had a chance to come out he was running in search for the nipple. The rest of the sack got stack inside and I didn't have enough cord to cut, I had to tackle him so he didn't have a chance to tear his umbilical cord off, while he was moving all four legs with all his might trying to get some food.
After that Brandy was relaxed and puppies were eating and we were sure that we are done. hour and a half later we said, that we are done and I took my laptop so I could order pizza for everyone for dinner. As I opened it, still sitting in the whelping box, I had noticed contraction ripped over Brandy's tummy _ " Oh no!, we are not done yet" tossing laptop to the side I got ready to catch what ever was coming out. The last girl Lilly was born at 6:18 pm.
Now we are done!
All night I was waking up almost every hour, looking into the whelping box and counting the puppies to make sure that no one is missing. one, two, three, four, five, six,
Seven, we have seven...
This song that I remember from the time Anya was a baby was spinning in my head after each count. But I only remembered just few first words until Alex found it for me on youtube!
here it is:

About Me

My name is Yuliya. This blog is going to be about many things in my life such as kids, dogs and other. Its probably going to be mostly about dogs. Does it make me a bad parent? Hmm...:-)
Introducing us:
my husband Alex,
daughters Anya (11) and Charlotte (6). Dogs Brandy, 5 yo Kerry Blue terrier and Mozart 3 mo Giant Schnauzer.
Brandy is expecting our first litter just in 7 days.
We also have two rats Afina and Artemis, but I am not going to write much about them, but I thought that they should be mentioned:-)

The Husband:


Kid 2:



Kid 1


Well, and me..