Striker, Paula’s little pied boy that Tula is fostering, is having a few problems. He’s losing weight, and is substantially smaller than Tula’s beefy little boys (who’ve gained 30 grams or so each, in less than 24 hours, while Striker has lost 15). The differences are even more striking when I remind myself that he’s almost three days older than the boys.
He’ll be getting some extra nursing time, and is also receiving subcutaneous fluids – which is a nice way of saying that a few times a day I’ll be injecting fluids into him with a needle that’s longer than he is. The fluids go in ‘subcutaneous’, meaning ‘under the skin’, as opposed to injected into muscle tissue, so he rarely does more than squirm a bit while I’m hydrating him. I’m the one who’s being a big baby about it.
Hopefully, we’re just playing catch up with the ground he lost while he was being bottle fed. If you didn’t cross your fingers for us yesterday, it would be nice if you did so today.
https://i0.wp.com/www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Brindle_pied_frenchbulldog.jpg?fit=662%2C662&ssl=1662662Carolhttps://www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/bullmarket-logo.pngCarol2010-02-28 10:59:442010-02-28 10:59:44First Video - Tula's French Bulldog Puppies
Not much time, but here are some photos of Tula’s newborn French Bulldog puppies – two boys, one black masked fawn, and one black masked silver brindle. It was fun getting to and from the vet’s office – we’re under a severe winter storm warning, and the roads I drove on were basically slicks of ice, in several places.
Everyone is doing well, but Tula has some rather worrisome cyst like growths on her uterus. We’ll be spaying her in ten weeks, per the vet’s instructions – she was reluctant to do it now, and prefers to wait for the uterus to be less engorged before she removes it. Hopefully, the spay will take care of whatever the growths are – but some crossed fingers wouldn’t hurt.
Tula is, as always, being a doting and attentive mother.
https://i0.wp.com/www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Brindle_pied_frenchbulldog.jpg?fit=662%2C662&ssl=1662662Carolhttps://www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/bullmarket-logo.pngCarol2010-02-26 16:01:162010-02-26 16:01:16Just Born Babies
Are you all out shopping? I bet you are. I hope you got in line early, early early and scored some good stuff.
In any case, here’s something to be thankful for – Frenchie babies and kitty cats.
https://i0.wp.com/www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Brindle_pied_frenchbulldog.jpg?fit=662%2C662&ssl=1662662Carolhttps://www.bullmarketfrogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/bullmarket-logo.pngCarol2009-11-27 16:46:432009-11-27 16:46:43Friday Moment of Zen - Frenchie Takes on Kitten
The AKC just released their annual registration figures for 2007. The list contains all of the usual popular breeds, with one exception – for the first time since 1935, the Bulldog has entered the top ten most popular breeds list. Bulldogs are most popular in Los Angeles, where they are second only to Labs.
This popularity has made Bulldogs one of the most commonly used dog breeds in wire transfer (or ‘phantom puppy’) scams – this is the scam where ‘breeders’ offer cheap or free puppies, with the prospective owner just paying for the shipping. Fees are to be paid by wire transfer, and once the scammer has collected fees from a handful of people, they disappear, leaving the victims with no puppy, and out the shipping fees they’ve wired. You can learn more about phantom puppy scams here –
French Bulldogs have exploded in popularity, more so this year than any other. Many of us remember when Frenchies were so little known as to be almost a rare breed – this year, San Francisco and Los Angeles include the French Bulldog in their Top 10 lists.
The increase in popularity of Frenchies is staggering in such a short period of time – they’ve increased +404%, second only to Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, at +406%. This means we can look forward to more puppy mills pumping Frenchies into pet stores, more backyard breeders tossing untested dogs together to make quick buck puppies, and more cheap imports flooding the market and swamping rescue.
We can only hope that this surge in popularity is the crescendo, and that Frenchies can now slip quietly back into obscurity, becoming once again the dog most people assume is a Boston, a deformed eared pug, or a Pot Bellied pig on a leash.
Email Woes
I’ve been going through my semi-semi annual bout of frantic filing, desk re-organizing, correspondence answering and cord sorting out (where the heck do all of those electrical cords and chargers come from that end up buried in my desk drawers? Are they multiplying on their own?). This has all put me rather behind on my email answering, especially since everyone and their brother seems to have decided to contact me about Mae.
If you’ve emailed me, be patient – I should get caught up by Friday.
Puppy Photos
Some new photos of my dapper little brindle man, Dexter. I tried to take some proper body shots, but he’s still at the ‘stop, you’re freaking me out’ stage of table stacking, and shots taken of him on the table show a cowering wreck who looks nothing like the pup I see standing on the floor, at ease. There are a few body shots in here, but in the best one Penelope decided to turn her head and block out Dexter’s. So, if you can ignore the fact that he’s headless, you get a pretty good look at his body.
Like a lot of people in Ontario, we suffered through some crazy windstorms yesterday, resulting in a day of sporadic power outages. From about five in the morning on, our power was on and off throughout the day, causing me some major inconvenience, and not a small amount of worry over keeping my puppies warm. With Bunny’s kids in one room, Solo in another, and the balance of the dogs split between the dog room and our family room, there was a lot of space to be kept warm, and just one airtight wood stove to heat it.
Thankfully, Sean had the foresight to purchase a gasoline generator a few months ago, in anticipation of days just like this. Hooked up to space heaters, it was sufficient to keep the entire house warm, and the pups content, if not thrilled about the darker than usual rooms. I’ve never been more thankful that we heat our house primarily with wood than I was yesterday, although I’m thinking of investing in a few kerosene heaters as back up. After all, people in the Muskoka area are still without power, and might not get it back until Saturday. That’s a long time to run a generator, and a lot of gas used. We have a pond out back for utility grade water, but we just noticed yesterday that our pump is hard wired into the house, and so can’t be run off of the generator. We’re going to invest in a dozen or so really big bottles of drinking water. After all, Sean and I can use up the bottled drinks in the house, but the dogs aren’t as keen on Diet Dr. Pepper.
The entire situation was made more hectic because it was the day Harley and Izzy were due to depart for their new homes. Lauren, Harley’s new mom and adoptive mom of our Lola, was flying in from New York City, and Sean had agreed to meet her at the airport to save her driving the five hour round trip to our house. Lauren had agreed to carry both Izzy and Harley back on the return flight, dropping Izzy off to her new mom in New York City. Susanna would then fly her back home to Texas the next day. That’s a lot of planning, none of which could be bumped just because our power was out. I had to make a lot of frantic phone calling to make sure everything was still on track, complicated by the fact our cordless phones weren’t working with the power out, and my cell was completely drained. Thankfully, Sean bought a new cell just before Christmas. Lesson learned – buy an old fashioned plug in phone, in case of future power outages.
So, Izzy and Harley are gone, off to their new families. The house is awfully quiet, and poor Dexter seems a little bit bereft. You’d think he’d be grateful, since Izzy spent the last few weeks terrorizing him at every given opportunity. Sean has taken their leaving rather hard – after all, this is the first time he’s raised up pups, only to see them leave for new homes. He felt a special bond with Harley, who enjoyed sitting on Sean’s feet when he found the rowdy grown up dogs a bit too overwhelming. Poor Sean. He just learned that every litter breaks your heart just a tiny bit when they go.
Solo is coming along swimmingly, and has finally reached the stage where he seems like a ‘real’ puppy. That’s the stage where this tiny little bundle of fur suddenly develops a real personality, and sense of consciousness. You look at them, and they are looking back, not just gazing unfocusedly into the ether. Solo has a vocabulary of little puppy growls and barks, and did his first puppy mouth war with me. He’s breaking his baby teeth, and likes to chew on the nipple of his bottle. He looks more and more like a baby polar bear cub.
Unfortunately, Mae is pretty thoroughly bored with Solo. She’ll give him a cursory lick now and then, but other than that they’re rather like two polite roommates sharing an apartment. Solo stays on one side of the pool, and Mae on the other. This disinterest on her part has given Sailor a new hobby – licking the puppy. After I finish feeding him, I place him in front of Sailor on a blanket, and she spends the next twenty minutes acting like a canine car wash. She licks him up one side, then down the other, and repeats the process for good measure. Solo gives off little baby growls when he’s had enough, but usually he ends up falling asleep on his back mid lick session. Sailor has been a veteran puppy licker since she first climbed into her mom’s whelping box to tend to Tessa’s new litter, and she’s been at it ever since. This is a photo of her licking her half brothers and sisters, shortly before Tessa told her to shove off and get a new hobby.
Sean took some pictures of the pups before they left yesterday, and some photos of Dexter settling in with the brindle bunch today.
