New Year's Eve Day - 2 days and counting down

Dennis, my husband and one extraordinary breeder/caretaker!

Halor, extremely patient breeder.... imagine being her! She will let the pups attempt to nurse, even though there hasn't been anything available for almost 4 weeks.

Cheryl, friend and CCI breeder/caretaker - look at the size of that pup!

Cheryl with her grandson Max - I think he expected them to be smaller

Cheryl's friend BJ ~ just try and take photos with pups eating your shoelaces!

My son Chris and I weighed the pups today. The biggest pup was 21 lbs, four were 20 lbs, one was 18, one was 17 and one was 16. I thought I was joking when I said we had 160 lbs of puppies here - we're just 8 lbs short. One of the girls weighed 21 lbs and the other 2 weighed in at 20 lbs ~ so much for dainty and petite little girls!

Puppy Socializing ~ these babies love people!

CCI Breeder/Caretakers Sandy Gorter (left), Kathy Zastrow (right) and Kathy Albrecht (front/center) visit the pups and me.

Kathy Zastrow ~ she got me into this whole CCI thing!

Leslie Jose-Baldwin, a friend from work.

Cassie Black, two time CCI puppy raiser.

Lizzie and Meg play with the pups.

Ana and Gabriela, big-time puppy socializers.

Crate Training

Top photo is Izzy, middle is Ike, bottom row pups are Ingrid, Ira, and Ikris

Peaceful Pups

Man, are these guys heavy!

Whitney, LeeAnn, Heather, Megan, and I tried to emulate the earlier photo of Chris, Hooper, Jon, and Jack holding 8 puppies. Obviously, the pups were too heavy for us weaklings to get organized and line them up facing the camera.... We're probably just lucky we didn't drop anybody! At nine weeks, the pups all weigh between 15 and 19 lbs. The squirming factor didn't help us, that's for sure.

litter photos gone bad...

This is how most of the litter photos turn out...

How'd he do that?

So, how did that giant puppy get away from that big empty spot in the top row without knocking anybody else off the bench?

christmas day litter pix

We have some good friends who are breeder/caretakers and they got us started on taking a group photo of each litter (or at least attempting to take one). It's always the absolute most frustrating and entertaining session (not to mention the sweatiest) with the puppies that can be experienced. The guy behind the camera spends a lot of time waiting to take the perfect shot - and sees a lot of this view... which I thought would be fun to share. Here's how we spent our Christmas day afternoon.

new fun things

This morning, we brought the pups into the house either one or two at a time. They explored the tile floor and wanted to nurse on Hallie. In an effort to keep them from nursing, we put a shirt on Hal and a leash on the babies. This was their first exposure to a leash and we just let them wander. This photo is a good example of how mom-dogs keep their babies in line. Other ways she demonstrates are to put the pups head in her mouth or to growl/snap at them. They get the message really quick.

Here is a quick example of how these guys work together. I put the skateboard in with them about 3 minutes before I shot the video. They immediately ran over to the new thing and started trying to take it apart - bite by little bite.

twin children of different mothers

Today, Dennis and I visited Auburn and Baja/Korbel's H-litter that was born on 10/25, the same day as Hal's litter. Auburn is Piniella's daughter so these puppies are distantly related to our i-pups because Halor is Piniella's granddaughter. Hal's father is Kittredge, half brother to Auburn. I'm not sure what that makes them~ second aunts and uncles? These pups are so cute - all eight of them look like these shown here.

Today, we took our Christmas portraits! The I-Pups are 8 weeks old on Thursday!

This is happening less and less often - while I used to have to struggle to get a photo of the pups awake and doing something, they are definitely sleeping less and playing more. We try to introduce something new for them periodically so they don't have to look for things to take apart. The pups weigh between 11 and 14 lbs now - two weeks and two days to turn in!

Here is Ike getting some early crate training. We have all of the different parts of the crate in the play area, somewhere. This part doubles as a toybox, nap area, and wrestling mat. The toys never stay in the box for long!

This is Inca carrying one of her toys. She's a big, beautiful girl who will be staying right here in the Sacramento area. At 7 weeks, these pups are proving themselves to be smart, creative, and destructive (in a puppy sort of taste and chew on anything sort of way)! All 8 of them are happy to go to work on anything new in their play area!

It did not take long for the pups to check out every square inch of the Clifford slide. They went over it, under it, pushed it around, fought for position, and had a ball.

In about 8 days, the pups grew this much!

Today, we're living in a cloud....

Dennis took this photo at our house in-between puppy tasks.

Hallie really appreciates the bigger area where she can now play with her puppies' toys (which is what she likes to do best!). She pretends to enjoy nursing them and she dutifully takes on the job of establishing her position as high priestess of the pack, but stealing the toys and talking me into playing is really what she's all about.

On Saturday we moved the pups to their new home and they have lots of new space. This is about 1/2 of the indoor space and they have just as much when we let them out into the outdoor space. They love to run, explore, play and chew on everything they can get their little teeth on: clothes, shoes, leaves, x-pens, doorways, litter boxes, etc.

The pups outgrew their indoor space of 4 feet by 8 feet in more ways than one. Half of the area was the sleeping/playing area and the other half, the bathroom. As you can see in this photo, the bathroom was starting to get pretty crowded when everyone woke up and had to go.