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Let the photos commence!

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Heart at one day old

Look, consider this forewarned — I have a puppy here now, and more on the way, so this blog is about to become booooring, in the way that only new and doting Mommas can manage to be boring.

Yes, that’s right – pictures.

I’m going to be posting lots and lots and lots of pictures.

In the interest of trying not to alienate all of you, I’ll likely post my favorite of the day over on the Photo Blog, and a link to the Flickr galleries here.

When it comes to videos, though, all bets are off — I am not strong enough to resist wanting to post videos of the pups doing super cute pup things (like wiggling. And sleeping.).

Anyway, photos of the little cutie, taken at one day old, are posted here.

Poor Bunny. She’s going through a serious case of crazy Mommy syndrome, which I have to take partial responsibility for. I was hauling out the weekly load of dog beds for washing, and tossed a dirty whelping pad from Tula’s room onto the top of the pile. Bunny was on it like a Bloodhound, sniffing and pawing and digging around in it frantically. You could see the wheels turning in her head “Where’s the puppy? I know there’s a puppy in here. Oh my God, she tossed the puppy into the pile of laundry!”.

Bunny then proceeded to warn all the other dogs to “GettawayfromypuppyorIkillya”. Elliott took one look at her snarling, and tossed me a look that said “Chicks, man. They’re all crazy”, before strolling away nonchalantly.

I dragged the pile of laundry into the laundry room, Bunny following along behind me making nervous little whining noises. Once there, I faced a dilemma — toss the dirty pad into the washing machine, possibly giving Bunny a breakdown, or leave it dirty for her to fuss over?

I chose dirty. I was about to wash it, then noticed Bunny was staring at me, and I couldn’t deal with the idea of her thinking “Aiiggh! She put my bebbeh in da washing machine! Must save bebbeh!”. Fine, yes, she’s probably have just wandered off to eat a television, instead, but why take a chance? So, the dirty pad sat on the floor, on top of the quilts we keep on the couch, and I figured Bunny would lose interest in it eventually, once she’d something new and expensive to eat.

Not so — instead, she found a small, orange stuffed hippo thing, and has now decided it is, in fact, her missing baby. She’s buried it in the middle of the dirty pad, and keeps digging it a deeper, safer, more secure bed — one hopefully free from the risk of being tossed into the giant swirly bathtub machine.

Bunny now refuses to come out of the laundry room, which is fine for now, but will be a bit troublesome when it’s potty or food time. On the plus side, I can probably now wash the pad without freaking her out, but no one had better touch her baby.

Think there’s any family resemblance?

Tula Has a Heart of Gold

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Tula went into full labor last night — about four days early. We took the pups this morning — two of them, one brindle girl, one pied girl. The rest was fluid – a LOT of fluid. My 19 lb girl weighed 26.3 at the vet’s office this morning, and opening her up was like Niagara Falls. I kept asking the vet “Where’s the rest of the puppies? Are you SURE you checked both horns?”.

The bad news — one of the pups did not make it. We never got a heart beat, in spite of her being full sized. The one who didn’t make it wasn’t even in a horn — she was in the body of the uterus. The other pup, the double hooded pied girl, is lovely and thankfully doing well.  She has a tiny, perfectly formed, symmetrical heart shaped brindle marking right above her butt. It looks like a stick on tattoo.

So, she is now Bullmarket Absolut Heart of Gold. No call name, until she’s been here a week or so and is doing fine…

As of right now, she’s vigorous, screamy, and eating like a little piglet — just what I want to see in a puppy. So far, so good.

Sean buried her sister under our cedars this afternoon, with the puppy we lost one year ago this week.

Here’s a short video of the baby, taken just a few hours after she was born. Lots of snorking, snuffling noises in this one (hey, they don’t do much at this age).

Tula might possibly explode

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Poor Tula — I’m afraid if she gets any bigger, she might just possibly explode. She’s always been a petite girl, at about 18 pounds, so it’s fairly shocking to see her go from her normal lithe, active self to this, in under two months.

Tula is waay pregnant

And of course, what happens when way pregnant girls with big, big bellies lie on their backs?

Why they get stuck, of course.

Stuck!

Penelope continues to be about as unthrilled as it is possible for a dog to be about this entire experience. We caught her sending away for a copy of “Baby NOT on Board” the other night. I think she’s dropping us a hint.

Not. Happy.

Delilah thinks all the fuss is just borrr-ing, especially since her diet means she’s not getting any extra snackin’ time fall out (she’s rather voluptuous, I’m afraid).  Tessa, of course, is so sick of anything to do with puppies or pregnancy that she’s decided the best approach to take is studious avoidance (read: extra naps).

Delilah is bored

Ten days and change to go for Tula, and two weeks and change for Penelope… the count down continues.

A Photo Guide to Making Raw Dog Food

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I wrote the other day about accumulating and prepping all of my ingredients for making a batch of raw dog food. Sean and I decided that if we were going to make a batch, we might as well make a big batch — and that’s what we ended up doing. Here’s a photo series of the steps involved in making a batch of raw dog food.

If anyone wants more detailed instructions, visit this page. Bear in mind, though, that what works for my dog might now work for yours.

The first step I usually do is to grind all my vegetables. I buy vegetables here and there, as they’re on sale or available, and then I grind them and freeze them into plastic containers — one for greens, one for carrots, another for fruit (my guys love bananas, melon, apples and pear). Then I partially nuke sweet potatoes and squash, and rice them using a ricer before freezing them into batches. The day before I’m going to make my dog food, I get them out and thaw them.

I’ve been getting a really good deal on whole, frozen salmon lately, so I bough ten of them and tucked them into the freezer. I poach them, mix them up with canned Jack mackeral, and put the whole lot through the grinder, bones and all.

The veggies and fish get mixed up with my yogurt, eggs, nutritional yeast, molasses, apple cider vinegar, pressed garlic cloves, hemp hearts and flax seed (I got a good deal on some at the co op, and decided to add some to this batch of food). I mix it all up in a giant corn pot (or lobster pot, or stock pot) that I got at a yard sale. I buy these giant pots any time I see them at a garage sale or second hand store – they’re perfect for mixing up dog food.

Sean grinds the turkey necks, hearts and livers for me — another reason why a tall guy is always useful to have around the house. We use a basic grinder from Northern Tools, and it’s lasted me a year and change so far, with two blade changes. I don’t expect it to last forever, with the amount of work we ask it to do, but I’m OK with that. If it wears out, I’ll probably buy the next model up. We buy our beef already ground, so it just gets mixed into with the turkey.

Did I mention we decided to make a big batch of food? So big, that I had a panic attack about where we were going to mix it all. Usually, we have a three quarter pot of meats, and a quarter pot of mixed gunk (that’s our ‘technical term’ for it). I then mix it all together in a third big pot, but this time, there was no way that would work — we had two full pots of turkey and ground meat, and a full pot of mixed gunk.

So, we improvised, and used this big wheeled bin. Here it is, about half way full, with Tessa watching the proceedings with interest.

Hey, are you wondering ‘how on earth do you mix up this much dog food?’. Easy – you stick your arms in. Up to the elbows. Pretend you’re one of those big food processor dough hooks, and blend, blend, blend. Then, look down, see that you’re covered in bits of raw meat gore all the way up to your armpits, shriek, and jump into the shower fully clothed.

Here’s the finished product, with flecks of heart, liver, bone and greens. Mmm! Getting hungry yet?

We measure out the food into large sized, zip lock freezer bags – to be more exact, slide lock bags, which are easier to close. We buy them at the dollar store, because the same bags otherwise would be $5 per box.

We put five cups into each bag, and by the time we were done, we’d covered the island twice, for a total of sixty bags. That is a lot of dog food.

We used to just stack the bagged food in the freezer, but found that the occasional leaking bag could make quite a mess. Now, we put the bags into plastic storage bins, which we then stack in the freezer. It’s easier to lift them out, and I can still stack things on top of them (in whatever room is leftover for people food, which sure isn’t much). We ended up with five of these totes.

Finished! And a long day’s work it was, too. For those curious about these things, we ended up with sixty bags of five cups each raw, or 300 cups of food. Ignoring our time and work, the total cost was just under $95. Not bad, really.

Here’s Tula, enjoying a bowl of the finished product. I, on the other hand, enjoyed a well earned nap.

Addendum: Oh, and can I just say how stupid I feel for having defended the right of Bernann McKinney to love her cloned Pit Bull, only to learn she’s actually an on the lam, sexual predator whack job? Nice one, universe. Thanks for the metaphysical slap upside o’ the head.

So much for her girlish figure…

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Tula is waay pregnant

If I had any remaining doubt about Tula being preggers, it went out the window when I shot this photo of her. Holy cow!

Honestly, I hadn’t really noticed how huuuuge she was until I took a good look at this picture. Considering how svelte Tula normally is, this is a pretty dramatic change for a dog who’s only one month and change into her 62 day pregnancy.

Dexter sits pretty

Dexter continues to grow up – unfortunately, he’s started to sit when there’s food on offer. When it’s snacking time, all the dogs have to do a good, solid sit to get their treat – looks like he learned by imitation.

Uh oh…

That’s a no no for a dog with a (hopeful) future in the conformation show ring. Back to the drawing board – I need to train him the ‘stand’ command all over again. On the plus side, way to learn the sit command, Dexter! Now, just don’t tell Barb.

Hey, want to see some old photos of our dogs? I just uploaded almost 160 old French Bulldog photos onto Flickr – and I have about another 200 to scan. These ones aren’t organized yet – they don’t even really have proper titles, but feel free to check them out. There are some interesting shots in there – take this one, for example:

Diva, Felix and Dragon

That’s a shot of Felix, to the left, and Diva, in the center, along with their siblings.

Diva is Bunny’s mom, and Tula’s great grandmother. Felix is Elliott’s dad. So, in this photo, you have two dogs who will both appear in the pedigree of the puppies Tula is carrying. This is important, since the dogs who came before my dogs today, will influence the dogs that we produce tomorrow.

Interesting stuff, if you’re interested in that kind of stuff.