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.