Puppies!

Foothills Laki and Vinlands Totty had their Icelandic Sheepdog puppies today, Monday, April 2, 2012.

Thank you Colleen for letting me use Laki with Totty. The match was perfect! He's a handsome guy!

Yesterday was the 63rd day after the first ties between Laki & Totty. Early today, April 2nd, five healthy girls were delivered. Contractions started around 6:30. The first girl came at 8:01 a.m. and the fifth girl came at 8:45. As you can imagine, we were very busy. Five puppies in 45 minutes!!

Totty, who has always been a bit of a Tom boy, was quite surprised, especially with the first one, but, although she allowed me to hover, she instinctively knew exactly what to do and did it all by herself.

It's still early, they're still wet, but it looks like there are two tricolors and three tan shades which some people are calling "sable", I believe.

It will be many weeks before we can tell what "shade" of tan each one of the trio will be. I'm hoping that at least one girl will be a shade of tan similar to dad's shade. Laki is a nice red shade. However, any shade will be just fine as long as they are all healthy.

Laki has long fur and Totty has short fur but she carries one recessive gene for long. So, it's way, way too early to know but hopefully, there will be a variety and some will have long fur and some short.

(There are photos of Laki and Totty on previous posts. Laki is stunning, a real head turner. Don't you agree?)

Genetically, the tricolor girls are atat Bb which means they have two recessive at-genes for black and tan and one recessive b-gene for chocolate-brown.

The tan shade girls are Ayat Bb which simply means they carry one recessive at-gene for black and tan and one recessive b-gene for chocolate-brown.

These puppies are going to be excellent pets and companion dogs. Totty is extremely smart and people oriented. They are also going to be great in the performance ring excelling in agility, obedience, rally, etc. Of course Laki is now an AKC champion Icelandic Sheepdog with a winning temperament so they should also do OK in the conformation or breed ring.

I had picked out some really nice names for males! Wouldn't you know!! I'll get busy on the names for the girls. I'm open to suggestions. Please email me if you have a name for consideration - - jaimehansen1@comcast.net

None of the puppies are spoken for. I don't reserve puppies until they are born. I'm not exactly superstitious but - - - - - .

If you'd like a copy of the pedigree for these pups, drop me an email. I would love to send one to you. The pedigrees include important information like hip and eye test results and ancestry.

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Oops! While I was writing and posting this, Totty delivered a sixth puppy, this time it's a tricolored male. I don't know "when" he arrived. He was still wet and a little bloody but is also healthy. They are all fairly close in weight and they all have good looking double dewclaws on both rear feet.

The first two photos were taken after the fifth puppy was born. They came so fast that they were still wet.

The third photo was taken after the surprise puppy. I had cleaned up the whelping box after the fifth one was born and cleaned by mom! Maybe his name should be Houdini? Call name "Hoodie"? Hmm. I wonder how smart that would be.

Can you tell the tan shade pups from the tricolor ones? They are not in birth order.

(AS ALWAYS, CLICKING ON THE PHOTOS ENLARGES THEM.)
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from left to right - tan, tri, tan, tri, tri, tan