Answer to the puzzle

Below is the radiograph with the skulls and spines marked up.  How many did you find??

Seven Pups!

Rosie had her x-ray today.  We counted 7 pups.  The radiograph is below.  It is a bit small, but it can be like a game - can you count the skulls and spines??  The trick is to look for the small white circles (skulls), then trace their spines like snakes and ladders.  Five of this litter are already reserved, so that means we have 2 available.  If you click on the image it will enlarge.

Studs, studs, and more studs....

Roma, from DragonRam Doodles, and I have banded together to buy 4 (yes 4!) studs in the last few months.  Not only does it give us much more control of our breeding programs, it is also a lot less stress when it comes to mating our girls.  The daily progesterone tests, the guess at ovulation, the made dash to the FedEx office (and fingers crossed it made it overnight), the race to the Vet office, and then the insemination process - will generally be things of the past for us.  Our oldest boy, Magnum, the chocolate and tan phantom, will be 'mature' around January.  I will mostly use Magnum with Guinness and Eclipse to produce chocolate and tan phantom pups.  But Guinness and Eclipse also carry for parti, which means that matings with our caramel and white parti boy, Aspen, will produce chocolate and white parti pups as well as solid chocolate.  Aspen has a chocolate nose, which is so cute on his white and caramel face!  He will reach maturity around June, 2012. Zip, our red and white parti boy, is an excellent match for Rosie, Maple, and any Rosie or Cassonade offspring that I hold back from future litters.  None of my cream girls carry parti, so none of the pups will be parti, but I could get some nice reds and apricots.  Zip will be ready to go by March, 2012.  Kodiak, our solid chocolate boy, works great with all our girls too, but is particularly perfect for Juno, Hershey, and any of their future offspring to produce solid chocolate pups.  Kodiak is our youngest boy, although he is only two days younger than Aspen so we too will reach maturity around June 2012.  With these 4 boys, the possibilities for me in terms of colours, markings, sizes, are endless!  It is so very exciting.....

If you want to see photos of my boys, check out Our Labradoodle Studs page (http://www.doodlepuppies.ca/labradoodlestuds.html).

The only thing outstanding for these boys is forever homes.  We are looking for guardian homes for Aspen and Kodiak, and possibly Zip.

Starting Regular Updates!

I haven't been active on the blog for quite some time because my house was empty of pups.  Life just isn't as exciting without pups.  But now that we have Rosie's litter coming within the next 4 to 7 days I will start posting regularly.

Rosie is looking very pregnant.  She's got a nice round belly and that glow in her eyes.  We are going to the Vet on Friday for an X-ray to confirm the number of pups so that once she goes into labour we know when to stop expecting more pups.

Five pups have forever homes already.  Once we have numbers confirmed on the X-ray we may be able to accept a few more reservations.

Juno's ultrasound, to take a first count of pups is scheduled for Tuesday, October 4.  Quite exciting!