Lisa

A couple of weeks ago when I was walkng with the dogs and after they had all jumped out of the car I noticed Lisa was limping.

She did not want me to touch her leg but she also did not want me to carry her the rest of our walk so she just ran and had fun on three legs.

The next morning we went to the vet because next to that she did not want to use her leg it had also gotten very swollen and felt very warm.

I was scared she had teared a tendon or something but according to the vet this was not the case as everything felt very stabil and he gave some painkillers.

With the painkillers she started to use her leg a little and we agreed upon another week of painkillers to see if it would get better.

Unfortunately it did not get any better than it was so went back to the vet who made x-rays this time.

The X-ray showed a broken bone under her hock joint and it had to be operated.

With the help of a few friends we found a vet that was willing to operate it and gave us a good feeling so we decided to have it done here.

Lisa was operated on last week Thursday and this is how it looks right now:
She is doing fine and hopefully in a couple of weeks she will be able to join the others again on our walks.

Big thank you to all my friends who helped me out with this last week as without you I couldn't have gone to have Tempo mated!

We have BABIES!!

We finally have a litter again :-)

Last year July we had a singleton puppy from Tinsel and this year she gave us 4 lovely puppies. Our last 'real' litter was June 2007 when Gale had her 5 babies by Trae.

Last Wednesday Tinsel gave birth to 4 puppies, it was a difficult birth but we have:

A blue merle male:

A tricolor male:And two tricolor females:
This litter is a repeat of Dawnville Gotta Love My Looks which we had last year and we hope they will grow up just as beautiful :-)

Proud

Yesterday we went to the International show in Zwolle (Netherlands) with a car full of Shelties ;-)
Friday I drove down to Thea to help her bathing the dogs but it turned out she already had done 4 of them so it was only 2 left to do.
After a short night we drove to the show with 8 Shelties in the car (2 of mine, 5 of Thea's and 1 from a friend who couldn't make it to the show) and arrived there before doors opened.

Took some time to unpack everything and get it on the trolleys but somehow we managed and it didn't even look too bad, we even got it into the halls without loosing anything ;-)
Getting it all set up to the comfort of the dogs took some time and than it was time to hurry and get all the dogs ready for the ring, I had to do the 8 we brought plus another one from a friend.

Forgot to mention that the judge was Mrs.A.Wyse from Rivvalee Shelties in Scotland.

It was interesting to see she did seem to like the dogs with American lines, she put up Thea's young tricolor dog from America in junior class, another American import did win the openclass and several from US/Canadian lines were placed well.

In bitches this continued and Thea won Best Puppy (and 5th puppy in show) with her lovely blue girl Abby.
In Intermediate Ruby got 2nd, in openclass I handled Thea's tricolor girl Nina because she was in the same class with Boots, Nina won the openclass, Boots got graded excellent but wasn't placed.
Our own tricolor girl Flirt got Excellent in championclass and Gale got Excellent in veteran, both had to come back for Best Bitch.
Flirt won this challenge and gained her 2nd Dutch CC and her 6th CACIB, Nina got the reserves.
Best of Breed was also for Flirt but unfortunately by the time the group was being judged she had enough of it and decided to go on strike :-)

I am extremely proud Flirt gained a CC under an Scottish Sheltiebreeder because although we try to keep away from the never ending discussions about type it does give us a good laugh when things like this happen and you see those faces around the ring :-)

Long time...

Due to several circumstances I haven't posted anything on this blog for a while.
Hopefully things are a little more relaxed now and I have some time for less stressfull things :-)

We had our little blue girl Tinsel mated in England by Mohnesee Mr Palmer. This is a repeat mating that gave us a singleton puppy last year: Dawnville Gotta Love My Looks.
Hopefully we will have more than one this time, Tinsel appears to be in whelp so fingers crossed I will finally have my tricolour!
We only seem to be able to breed blues for the past years....

We also had Flirt mated using A.I.
We had no other option as Flirt could not yet enter the country where the male is living and came in season already so we decided to use chilled semen.
It was a stressfull situation when it looked like if FedEx could not deliver the package before the weekend but luckily they managed to do so and delivered the semen Friday afternoon.
Flirt was inseminated Saturday and Sunday and now it's keeping fingers crossed we did not go through all this for nothing.

If it works out than maybe we will try another time with frozen semen as so many more males become available that way ...
But just let us wait and see what happens with this mating :-)

New family member ;-)

While I was unpacking my stuff yesterday I heared a sort of squeeky sound and although I first didn't paid much attention to it it got my attention when it got louder and louder.

I went over to the birdcage where we have two Kakariki males (who believe one of them is a female) and at the bottom of it there are 3 little Chinese quails.

They have been laying eggs for ages but none of them ever took the trouble to sit on them and usually we take out the eggs and get rid off them.

As they were laying so many eggs this time I decided to leave them there and hopefully this would stop them from laying new ones all the time.

Now when checking out where this little high sqeeky sound came from I noticed a tiny little Chinese quail was running around. It must have just came out of it's egg but none of the adult quails seemed to take care of it and because of the big Kakakriki's showing more than a little interest in the little 'fella' I decided it was safer to take him out and make sure he can grow up safely.

He's now in a little box with a little stuffed duck friend and seems to be OK.

He's so tiny it's amazing to see how self supported he already is. Couldn't resist making a picture of him while being on my hand to show how small he is

Make no mistake, it's quite a noisy little thing!

Long trip but well worth it

We did not have much to report the past few weeks and also just have been too busy for putting some minor things on this Blog.

We have been to another show last weekend, they were the 2 International shows in Portoroz (Slovenie). The first of these shows was a qualification show for Crufts 2010 and Albert Wight from England was supposed to be the judge.
I thought it would be nice to try and qualify Flirt under him or maybe our young girl Spooky so entered them both as well as our Australian little madman Trae.
Shortly before our trip I found out the judges had been changed and there would be no Albert Wight judging but a lady from Russia.
I decided to take the trip anyway and luckily I did!
All 3 of the dogs qualified at this show! Ch.Scotsdream Still O'thNite was CACIB dog and Best of Breed, Ch.Newdawn What's Up got the bitch CACIB and Dawnville Gotta Love My Looks got 1st Excellent in Junior class and therefore they all qualified for Crufts!!

The next day at the following show there was a judge from Rumania, Trae took 2nd place in champion class behind the lovely Ch.Mohnesee The Spellmaster (Res.CACIB dog the previous day) and in the end Trae ended up with becoming Reserve Best Dog (Reserve CACIB).
Flirt got another CACIB and again had to leave the Best of Breed to the dog. We had not entered Spooky at this show as in junior class she could not win anything, she was only there the previous day to try and get her at Crufts :-)

It was a long trip home again but the trip was well worth making, we have 4 dogs qualified for Crufts 2010 already now....

Here are some pictures of the trip:
Just a snapshot of Perry (Dawnville U Show Them How) who came along as a supporter and Flirt on the bed relaxing while I was unpacking the stuff.

A shot which I made while driving through Austria, it was raining and the clouds were so very low around the mountains.

The trip was almost 1300 kilometers one way but the roads are lovely and would have been even better if there were not so many roadworks slowing you down ;-)

This is Germany, great roads overthere and...... NO speedlimits!! :-)

Our youngest blue girl

Yesterday we went to another show.
Our youngest blue girl Dawnville Gotta Love My Looks (Spooky) was entered here by Sandra with whom she lives.

Sandra asked me to show her Australian Shepherd Jangles for her and we decided I would take 'Spooky' in the ring as well.
It was a long day and Sandra's Aussie was the first of these two to enter the ring. Now for an Aussie Jangles is not the most active of dogs and it is quite hard to show her but we found a way with Sandra being outside the ring with her most favourite toy doing nothing more than standing just there :-)
Jangles took out Best Bitch and won her 1 CC !!

Than after hours of waiting it was finally Spooky's turn, already before entering the ring I had some difficulties with Spooky coming with me and although with standing she showed quite well, she refused to walk through the ring with me :-(
I couldn't really decide which was the best way to handle it and got all sort of advices from outside the ring.
I just hoped for the best and much to my big surprise Spooky did win the Junior Class and with t her 1st Junior CC.
She had to come back for the challenge but with behaving like she did with me there was no chance she would get any further so we decided Sandra should take her into the ring.

Spooky decided to co-operate with Sandra and moved better than she did with me but was still being naughty.
Apparantly the judge liked her because she also gave her the CC !!
Ofcourse she did not stand a chance for the BOB against the mature dog from the open class but maybe she did get more than she had already deserved :-)

Here's a picture of Spooky taken in the ring, I think she is awesome and we're hoping to have a great time in the ring with her.

For those interested: Her official name is Dawnville Gotta Love My Looks and she is sired by Mohnesee Mr Palmer out of Ch.Dawnville All That And More.
We certainly do like her looks!
We're going back with Tinsel to repeat the mating this year, Spooky was only a singleton baby and we were hoping for a tricolor from this combination so will give it another try :-)