Puppies are born

Lisa's whippet, Zest, had six puppies on 30th May. There were two boys and four girls and they are all mostly white with brindle patches on their heads and backs, unfortunately Calum doesn't like the look of their coats very much. I thought that they looked very sweet but that may have been due to their tiny size and their pink noses.



In her email Lisa said that she had an order for a show dog male and that it was early days to start allocating dogs to people. I wasn't exactly sure what she meant but after a few emails I think she means that I may not be able to have one of her dogs. Calum had a word with Toni at work and she immediately suggested another breeder who has just had a litter of whippets too. New whippet breeder Anne-Marie has four boys and two girls and has not promised any of them to anyone yet. In the photos Anne-Marie sent me the puppies are mostly blue or brindle with white marks and Calum likes them a lot more - phew.



In the meantime I have been reading loads of dog books. 'The Dog Whisperer', 'The Dog Listener' and 'Cesar's Way' have all been great, the later two were lent to me by Ushi and I must say she has a very nicely behaved dog. Having read all these books has obviously made me a dog behaviour expert, when we are driving along in the car I say to Calum, 'That dog thinks it is the leader of the pack.' when we pass some poor soul being dragged along the street by their dog. When I visit someone's house and the dog jumps up I think, 'Dog trying to assert its dominance over me.' Calum says that I'm just reading all these dog books so that I can be a know-all when the dog arrives.



I realise now that our Jack Russell, Corrie, that we had when I was a teenager was completely untrained and acted as the leader of the pack her entire life. We were always wondering why she wouldn't do anything she was told, she always did exactly what she wanted and never paid any attention to us at all. I suggested to Calum that they had the same experience with Selkie, their Vizsla, he was horrified and insisted that Selkie was a well balanced dog, despite biting the postman; dragging someone off a moving motorbike and always barking at fat people. Yesterday I was taking to his mum about dogs and she said, without prompting, that she would adopt a completely different method if she ever got another dog because they didn't get it right with Selkie.