Puppies

Just before Christmas, our dog Skye gave birth to seven puppies. We were taking bets on how many. As she is so young and little I hoped for three or four puppies. Peter thought five. We were both blown away when it turned out to be seven. But they were all healthy thank goodness, and have grown into seven beautiful pups.

I've never seen baby puppies before. They were so adorable with their eyes closed and unable to walk. It took about four weeks before they were running around and now you can't stop them.

Victoria was absolutely besotted with the baby puppies and inseparable from them. We had to physically shut the door to keep her away from them, but even then she figured out how to drag the stool out from the bathroom so she could reach the lock and open the door.

However once the puppies got mobile they have been spending more and more time outside. I'm not really very interested in cleaning up their messes. We kept them in a cage at first however soon discovered they didn't really want to stray very far from the house. In fact the hot weather meant that all they wanted to do was lie under the house and stay out of the sun. So no worries about them wandering off which is good.

With the puppies out of sight, they have dropped off Victoria's radar a bit. But she still loves them to bits. The puppies are all very compliant at being carried around by her.

In order to be able to tell them apart we gave the puppies all nicknames based on their looks. There were two grey/white puppies, one male and one female. The male one is called GreyBoy, the female Squeaky as she was definitely the loudest when they were tiny (now they're all yapping loudly). There are five black/white puppies, two male, three female. The males are Stripe (who has a white stripe) and Circle (who has a white circle shape on his forehead). The females are Diamond (who has a white diamond shape), Kinda (who kinda looks a bit like all the rest), and Skinky who was originally named Kinky because of the kink in her tail but Victoria renamed Skinky.

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GreyBoy - Squeaky - Stripe - Circle

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Diamond - Kinda - Skinky

Skinky is Victoria's favourite. Diamond and Squeaky are Kathleen's favourites. Squeaky is Peter's favourite. GreyBoy is my favourite. Parting with them is difficult.

Peter put the puppies up for sale on Trade Me when they turned six weeks old, and within a couple of days they were all sold. We got a call about GreyBoy within minutes of the ad going up, from some people in Christchurch who had been looking for years. They will pick him up at the end of this week.

The first to actually leave were Diamond and Kinda, both on Wednesday. Diamond got taken away while Kathleen was at school (her first day) and I was devastated and didn't know how I would break the news to her that her favourite puppy would not be there when we got home. I cried in the car driving to school. This made Victoria think it was a big deal and the first thing she did when we got to school was to tell Kathleen that Diamond was gone. She shrugged it off and said "oh well, I like Squeaky too". I guess it helped that since day one we've been telling the girls that the puppies will be going to new homes one day.

However I was still dreading the day when someone wanted to take Victoria's Skinky away from her. Luckily the couple that decided to take her said they couldn't take her straight away and would come back at the weekend. That gave us a couple of days to prepare Victoria for it. In the end she was also rather blase about it. She gave Skinky a goodbye hug and kiss and handed her over cheerfully. Both Skinky and Squeaky are going to the same home, which makes Peter and I happy that they will be together.

So Diamond and Kinda left last Tuesday, Skinky and Squeaky went yesterday. That's the four girls gone and the three boys left. Circle and Stripe are due to go Monday and Tuesday, and we get to keep GreyBoy until Friday (ironic that he was the first to be sold but the last to leave).

I will definitely miss them when they're gone. However they're now at that chewing on everything stage and so in a way I'm glad they're going. Timmy and Skye are both handfuls but I'm happy to say they are both past that stage now. Their only problems are that Timmy pees on everything and Skye jumps on you and constantly wants your attention (worse than a child!). I'd like to take them both back to obedience school at some stage and I also think Skye would do really well at agility.

At the end of the day, we've got two pretty good dogs. And now six other families have also got some pretty good (and cute!) dogs.

Megz