Totty and Laki - pregnant

This says it all: - Totty and Laki - pregnant

7470 Stonehenge??

I may be building a new home on 9 acres of pine forest with about 200 feet of Lake Huron shoreline in Michigan's Thumb region!

Here are some photos taken today.

(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Adrienne Rich passed. Here's one of my favorite poems of hers.
What Kind of Times Are These
By Adrienne Rich

I'd copy and paste it onto my blog but I think that's wrong.

Please copy and paste this into your browser.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181516

It's worth a good reading.

Totty - today

Totty looks like she is carrying her puppies "high". I originally thought she would deliver this weekend but I'll bet she has at least a week, maybe two, left.

This will be her first litter; she just recently turned four. I think is she going to be surprised. We saw four skulls in there.



(Clicking on the photo will enlarge it.)

Flowering Qunice

Pink and Green - what a great combination!

With buds opening a full month ahead of "normal", the flowers of the quince are now at their peak. I can only wonder what might happen. It feels like summer here. Farmers are concerned that cherries, apples, pears, grapes, etc. will open too soon and the possible (probable) eventual frosts may kill the developing fruit.

Linda and Russ are expecting puppies very, very soon from Anaegja. These should be wonderful performance Icelandics and also great examples of breed standard pups.

(As always, click on photos in order to see them better.)

Totty

Totty still, in my opinion, does not look pregnant but I have seen the x-rays so she must be.

For a dog that's supposed to deliver in about three weeks, she looks quite lean. She must be carrying them very high. These photos were taken today.

(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Totty and Kata at Gasow's

(Totty's puppies - Look for spines and/or skulls.)



Somehow Kata knocked her upper left canine tooth squeejawed and it had to be extracted by Dr. Ashley Reynolds this afternoon. She saved Totty's tooth for me. Thank you Ashley!

When we returned in the afternoon to pick up Kata, I decided to have Totty x-rayed to see if she had pups. I was a little concerned that she may have had only one or two. Fewer pups might mean larger pups at delivery time and perhaps a more difficult delivery and I wanted to be prepared just in case.

She does. Have pups, that is. Totty only started to thicken in her waist last Thursday so I was really thinking she was not pregnant.

The pups are not as far along as we thought; Doctors Reynolds and Holmes say that's probably either because the eggs were not released when we thought or the first ties didn't take. The later ties were more likely the successful ones; the bones are not as calcified as they would have been if the first ties had resulted in fertilization. Dr. Reynolds thinks they should arrive in about three weeks. Dr. Holmes thinks she saw four pups.

I'm attaching her x-ray. I know it's much harder to see here than it was on the larger computer screen. I should have asked what color the pups would be! (hehehehe) I'm predicting 50% of them should be black, tan and white (aka tricolor) and the other half should be tan shade dogs or what some people are now calling sable. I find that term perhaps misleading or confusing. It would be nice if the tan shade dogs had the sire's nice red coloration. Laki (Foothills Laki) is owned by Colleen Schmidt, a fellow Michigander, of Kross Gola kennel.

Spring, 2012

(CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM.)

As the happy bright yellow winter aconite begin to fade, the species crocus "spring" up to meet the new season.

Today I got some really good news from my urologist, Howard Korman. Three tests done to see if my cancer had come back showed no signs - five years! Of course I wanted to celebrate but three of the most important people in my adult life have passed away. Bitter/sweet day. I'm alone with my thoughts.