One hundred and one dalmatians---or rather, English shepherds

Okay, moving on.
 Puppies!
Yesterday morning at five! fourteen little sable colored babies. There are...um, you ready for this number?
I hope you are, for here it comes.
No, it's not one hundred and one, thank goodness.
There are twenty six English Shepherd puppies---in all--- at our place.

NOTE: We are not a puppy mill.

Twelve were born a few weeks ago and are ready to for their first set of puppy shots and fourteen were born yesterday morning. We are going to get their parents registered so that we can give these puppies to new homes for about $350. each.
Except, the older puppies may be gone before we do that.
I have a dog blog---(I know, one blog is enough, isn't it?) And when it is ready to be presented, than I will post the address here. I will post stories and things of my experiences with these dogs, and my dog, Emma, will be the main star.
I love English shepherds. :) And puppies. They are all SO cute!

Mom says they look like sausages

Here is Emma and her one week old puppies. They are 3 weeks now though and look a lot more fluffy. They have started to develop their own characteristics too. These aren't good pictures to see them with all their cute faces, but its what I've got right now. One has a name, but I am still thinking what the other puppies names should be until they go to their new homes... maybe Peter, Johnny, Guinevere, and Jasmine or something else. The one puppy that does have a name is Oliver. He is the one on the far right in both pictures with a "y" white marking on his neck. I want to see the others personalities more before I name them. Aren't they cute? Wait till I get some pic.s where you can see them better.

In the basement...

... are 5 new residents living in our basement. Five fuzzy residents. Emma, my English Shepperd had puppies on the fourteenth of September. Just seven days before her own birthday. There are 2 girls and 3 boys. they were born near my room or, actually in my room. All of them are bob tailed except one boy. The bob tails are from Emma's side of the family. She really doesn't have a natural bobtail, more like naturally tailless. Not even a stump.
Aiden is their father, pictured above. I'm not able to put up recent pictures of Emma or puppies because Dad and I are still looking for that Camera cable. Oh, cable maple

I diapered the wrong baby

A couple weeks ago, my mom said '' Tali, will you please diaper your baby sister?'' ''sure.'' I said, shutting my book on training puppies. I got up and went to the Bathroom to get a diaper. I came back and told my little sister to lay down. I began to stick the diaper the tabs, when I realized that I wasn't diapering my sister, I was diapering my puppy.
And she was laying there on her back pretty still so I guess ... well I don't know why I did that. Everybody says I was thinking to much about my dog. It was pretty funny.

Another time I was doing something else, and Ducky said, ''Emma's got something in her mouth'',
When I went to investigate; I found Emma with a pacifier, perfectly set in her mouth the way you would put one in a baby's mouth.

Emma's first weeks

Emma's Here!

We brought Emma home on the thirteenth. Since then I've been busy, busy, busy cleaning puppy messes, training, ect. She's a lot more dominant then I expected, trying to command Aiden to play with her. The picture on the left is of Me and Emma, when we picked her up. We took Emma to several parks to socialize her with people and other dogs, but all the dogs we met weren't very nice, so were still working on it. But the main thing I'm trying to get done is house training. Aiden is very tolerant of Emma for all the jumping and playing, though we wish he'd show just a little more alpha. Emma is incredibly smart and learns very quickly, loves to play, go on adventures, and hates to be left alone.

My dog to be

After coming home from CA, I was wondering what to do with all the money I earned. Should I leave it in the bank and use it for some sort of future grand investment like college? Or this or that...a camera, a crompound bow and hunting licence, angora bunnies, art supplies, a dairy heifer or goat, a canoe, an older horse or a barely broke one, (though Dad said no absolutely, so that was out of the question), a little beagle dog(to hunt rabbits) a laptop for writing my novels,....well, I better stop right there.

Mom talked to me about spending my money on something that would be a seed to earn more money. So I brainstormed all the business type things I'd like doing, like pet portraits, milking and selling ice cream (my homemade Molly-Jersey icecream sold for 35 to 60$ a gallon at the YW auction last summer:)) And then one day Mom said Aiden was sad and that after his midnight wild creature run-in and injury, he's never been quite the same. And that he would need to be replaced someday, and how hard that would be. I said that it was about time to get a puppy as we planned to breed him in order to keep one around like him someday when he's gone, and I started looking around at the different farmcollie possibilites.
I told mom that if she could be mine, I would love to train and take care of a puppy. And unlike our farm-fresh kitties, dogs good around other animals are in demand here. I wouldn't have a problem finding homes for the other pups besides the one we would keep from her litter someday. So that's where my future investment comes in.
Our family loves the capabilities and the history of the English Shepherd, and the beauty of a not-too0-imbred, not too narrow skulled rough collie. Which is exactly what Aiden is. So we decided to try to continue this. We've always liked the looks and working habits of these dogs, http://www.cedarcreekenglishshepherds.com/ES.html and one day I found a live "we've got puppies" link from those beautiful and smart dogs( who also 'own' katadin sheep, like us) and I emailed.
Turns out the puppies are related to this farm, but also to the Cimmaron farm line in nearby Oklahoma, Aiden's Dad's (Cimmaron Buccaneer, or Buck) home. And the Butcher farm dogs that have been the top English Shepherds in the nation. And that the puppies actual family was one of the Butchers, who don't live too far from us, and they were real nice to talk with, back and forth.
So to try to make my still-long story short, she saved a puppy for me!!!!, "the most outgoing sable of the litter, sweet, most playful and slightly bossy".

She's named D.J right now, but I am looking at scottish names to match Aiden and her celtic ancestry... maybe Jamie, Emma, Kira, Guenevere or Gwen for short, and I can go get her anytime we get the logistics figured out. Here are some pics of her, and you can see her mom and dad above. You can see her tiny puppy pic as part of her litter here at http://www.cedarcreekenglishshepherds.com/bjcallie09.html
Below are some 7 week old pictures of her that the Butcher family sent me to see if I approved of her. In these pics she is in the house suspiciously sniffing wood floors for the first time, and being held by 'her girls' "who think she is one of thier favorites and have given her lots of love." She does have a naturally bobbed tail like her mom, (my mom wanted a long tail, cuase they make such alert or happy waving flags) and a little bit shorter hair than mom would like, but I am glad, for tick picking's sake, "the better to see you with, my dear"! Dad is sceptical, (maybe he's thinking of the furniture, toys and rug casualties) but he'll see how wonderful a family and work companion she is going to be....


I can hardly wait !!!! (((((Isn't she cute?))))