Puppy Update

All the puppies from Pearl's March litter are now placed. Abram, the male with the kink in his tail and to-be-service-dog is just a stunning boy. He reminds Gerry and me a lot of his uncle Simon from his puppy pics. Although we don't have any puppy pics of Max, he and Simon had the same daddy, so I suspect he favors him too. In any case, he is doing very well other than a squeaky voice from spending an hour or two barking yesterday. He weighed 24.3# yesterday at not-quite 13 wks.

I don't consider my dogs smaller than normal, but there are sure a lot more puppies out there that weigh 5# or more MORE than my guys do at the same age. My guys catch up later, but are definitely not what you would call heavily muscled. Our girls run from 60-85#, males 80-100#.

It's important for large breed dogs (anything that will be over 50# as adult) to develop "bone" slowly to ensure soundness in later years, but how fast/slow is best is anyone's guess. Feed a dog food suitable for all life stages (it'll say so on the bag) and don't over or underfeed. If you can see all their ribs, they aren't getting enough. If you CAN'T see their ribcage at all, you're probably feeding them too much. Don't give them a lot of heavily processed treats and make sure they get something to chew to keep their teeth free from plaque. Once a puppy stops nursing, he/she should never be "plump". Once you start training a dog, make sure you back off on the dogfood to compensate for the higher value treats you use during training.

Reba, who is the female we kept to show, is running neck and neck with Abram size-wise, although a pound or too lighter. Her face is definitely female, as compared to Abram's, which is a good thing to me. I am what is know as a "head" freak - I like male heads to be doggy and female heads to be less doggy, clearly denoting a female but also clearly a ridgeback. Sissy's head is the epitome of a standard female head, IMHO. We'll see how she does in the ring...

Fill us in on what's happening with you and your critters...

Mary