Puppies!!!

Not mine, but I saw puppies today, sired by Thumper son Monarch out of a lovely girl call-named Darby. They are 3 weeks old and super pretty; 5 boys and 2 girls. Lisa Garson is the breeder and she has started her puppy list.  Lisa and her puppies can be found at

https://www.riverhillaustralianshepherds.com/


But just a sneak peak here:

These puppies promise to be typically high energy and will need homes that are active, interested in training, and hopefully experienced in training a high energy breed. The sire is a lot like HIS sire Thumper which means a bit independent and VERY athletic; no couch potato!  It is early yet to determine if any are not good performance sport candidates but from these parents most or all should be able to do just about anything activity-wise. .  Just like in my home, final decisions on which specific puppies  go where and who stays with the breeder generally can't be made until the litter is >7 weeks old, but the breeder can generally sort out what homes are suitable for a puppy as time goes on. So if you are looking for a puppy toward last part of the summer you might talk to River Hill.

Time flies....

Can't believe its been so long since posting. well, Satin  had her litter of puppies sired by Jimmy (AKC Ch. Sirius Copper Still of Harmony Hill) and we had 6 puppies: 4 girls and 2 boys, 2 blue merles (both girls) and 4 black tri's. All pretty with symmetrical markings and strong color, no excess white, all toes present etc. In short, perfect for the moment. The litter was born July 1 2016 for easy accounting.  They are now a year old and all settled into their wonderful homes. #5 girl became Dot (Milwin Inkwell Polka Dot) and she is with co-breeder Debbie Mills, and is starting her show career.

3 days

The Good Mother

Pretty Satin last year

Dot went to USASA 2017 Nationals and came home with a second place ribbon out of the 9-12 Bitch class in the hands of Maria Neff.

In other news, Inkwell's First Born (Inkwell Milwin Uno) has his CD with owner Christine Kaye with placements and high scores in all 3 trials. What a wonderful team. 

A few weeks have gone by since our last update. A lot of little news bits so let's go:

Tempo is now 5 1/2 months old and at THAT age: odd head profile, leggy, wild, not a tooth in his head (well, I exaggerate). But getting what looks like all his adult teeth now. He is a really bright fellow and so far seems a lot more biddable than his daddy Thumper, promises to be a good competition partner if I keep my end of the bargain and keep training. He loves to do that so that helps! Actually most dogs love training if methods are rewards-based, of course.

About 4 months here.

Other Inkwell doings include the creation of a new champion!  Julie Rigby's Favor is now ASCA A-CH Inkwell Milwin Token of Affection GS-O JS-E-OP RS-E (also agility titled in AKC, USDAA, and UKI. Favor got her championship in style, going up under all ASCA Breeder judges. This photo is the one that finished her, under SBJ Ann DeChant. She was handled by THE Aussie handler (imo), Maria Neff. So proud of owner and dog, and so thankful to judges who appreciated her and the handler that helped get her there. 

Meanwhile Favor will continue to thrill in agility and, who knows, maybe some rally or obedience!

In other news, Satin had another trip to Ohio last month to revisit Jimmy (AKC Ch. Sirius Copper Still of Harmony Hill) to repeat her breeding from last year. That breeding only produced 2 puppies but we hope for a larger sampling this time around. This will be Satin's last litter. 

Ribbon turned 12 this month and remains as active as ever. 

And this month (next weekend) I will have Thumper at Oriole Dog Training Club competing in Open A. Yikes!!!  Uno will be there as well, hopefully to get his Novice title. 

That about wraps it up for now! 

Not very long since the last post....

But trying to catch up. As many in the Aussie community know, Thumper is sterile. However I had collected him before the calamity occurred so all hope wasn't lost to see him in future generations. His first frozen litter was in TX last year with breeders Shelly Hollen-Wood (Shalako) and Andrea Torres (Zydeco), resulting in 3 nice puppies, 2 boys and  a girl. The girl, Hummell, is a Red merle and has gone on to Germany to live and show and, eventually, be bred. She held onto her tail as the plan was always so see her off overseas. Shelly and Andrea kept the two tri boys, which are coming along nicely.

Then in December of this past year a litter of 6, borne to AKC/ASCA Ch. Mpossible Warrior Princess CD, cobred by me and MaryAnn Magness. Xena did a lovely job and I traveled out to the west 2 weeks ago to see, and to select a puppy from, the litter. All are lovely, healthy active puppies, and my selection was a handsome balanced blue merle boy now named Tempo (Inkwell's Drumbeat). He favors his daddy in a lot of ways though the blue eyes are quite a new thing for me, and will take time to adjust to, lol.

Sits in Living Room

Tempo has nice foot timing, easy moving

Tempo's first formal stack shot

While out in TX where I met the litter, I traveled to the EASTEX ASCA club's set of shows and showed Tempo for his first experience in the ring, and he did great. No wins but no matter, those will come. Meanwhile his daddy Thumper was along on the trip and Shelly took him into the breed ring at one of the shows where he was BOB and won a stuffed toy I don't think he will get. lol.

Shelly and Thumper looked good in that Texas ring, with judge Tammy Seamans

That catches things up I think. Oh except for this: a brother of Tempo is coming east to join Donna Johnson's household where Sammy, a Thumper brother, lives, and will be destined for an OB, agility and  rally career like Sammy has had. And a sister is coming too, for an ob career with another friend of Donna's. So half the litter will be here in Maryland, which is so marvelous for me!  Pictures of them will no doubt follow.

That's it for now!

so long since we last spoke!!

Wow it has been months without an update, so here comes a very newsy one!

Back in October I packed the entire crew of dogs to go to the ASCA Nationals in Shelbyville, TN, where I set up a booth for art sales and watched the shows. I roomed with Julie Rigby in a converted school bus/RV that she located on AirBnB and it was terrific and fun!

Ribbon and I, oblivious to the danger in the sky behind us. (It was Halloween week). 

I only had Ribbon entered, in veterans, and we did a respectable showing with class placements several times. She looked great though!  Thumper was along for the ride only, as was Ziva.

And Flash. I felt I couldn't leave Flash in someone else's care as he had been having worsening vestibular episodes and his dementia seemed to worsen as well. By Saturday night the first weekend in TN he was deteriorating, with serious confusion and apparent discomfort, despite pain medications and close tending, and the decision to let him go became clear to me. To the end he had an amazing appetite and so he went out with a lovely handful of treats and a lot of hugs and loving from me, with the help of a marvelous vet who came into his office on Sunday to help us along. My sweet old man was 14 years and a few months and I think he had a good life here with me, and hopefully a good death.

The last good photo of my baby, showing his head titl from vestibular disease. 

Anyway with that sadness past, I was also able to watch Julie Rigby's Favor (Satin's littermate) run agility and also show in altered classes. They are a terrific team in both venues and, IMO, should have had more success in the Breed ring than they did, but such are the vagaries of subjective judging. 

I also saw Satin son Ticker, also belonging to Julie, show in the breed ring. He is a lovely little sound dog, but emphasis is on LITTLE here and so his conformation career concludes, lol. He will be a dynamite agility dog though, a rocket. Young still though, not ready for competition for many more months. 

Thats Ticker, up front.

So that was our Nationals week. 

Meanwhile the Satin puppies from the Jimmy breeding are doing well, with Christine's 'Lux' debuting in the Big Boy Breed ring in AKC last month. He showed well but wasn't the judge's cup of tea, but he is very puppyish at this time. I expect he will follow in his Uncle Uno's footsteps as an awesome obedience dog . Which brings me to Uno!

Uno and Lux, doing one of the things they do best.

Uno debuted in the AKC Obedience ring 2 weeks ago, first time for his owner as well, where they garnered a 2nd place in Novice A and a 196 for their first Q! So proud of them both, the owner is an excellent intuitive trainer and has trained all his life just for fun, without any interest in competition until just the past few months, but now is quite fired up!  Stay tuned for further ring reports!!

Uno and his 2nd place ribbon 

I think that is it for this post, further reports coming on the next post!

Odds and Ends

Julie Rigby​'s Favor (Inkwell MIlwin Token of Affection with-too-many-agility-titles-to- remember) has entered the conformation ring  in ASCA, and needs only her major wins to finish her championship. We are going to Tennessee in October to the ASCA Nationals and she can compete there in agility and in conformation.

Puppies are 7 weeks old!!

Well, 7 weeks old tomorrow, and healthy and happy. Satin too!

 Satin is only nursing a couple of times a day now and only for short periods, but the puppies are doing great with their dog food meals.

Tri boy!

 They do the stairs (2 stories-worth of them on my hill) easily a couple of times a day when we go out for some yard time.

Add caption

Add caption

But THIS week...

Here they are at almost 5 weeks, now spending some closely supervised outdoor time and learning about stairs and so forth. Thanks to Christine Kaye for the photos

A lot of catching up to do!!

Haven't said a thing since our Jimmy puppies were born, but shall rectify this forthwith.
Puppies turned 5 weeks old today and are growing like the proverbial weeds. From 10oz birth weights they are each about 6 pounds now, well on their way . They are on their feet, eating, running, pooping, peeing, and doing all the other things puppies do.

Better maybe to just show you. These shots are last week, at age 4 weeks.

Add caption

Hard to imagine how she managed 7 puppies this size last litter!

Tri boy

Poor mommy

Just too much!!!

Using the adult beverage container

A favorite spot

Puppies!

It has been a while since the trip to Ohio with Satin for the purposes of breeding to Jimmy, but we do have puppies as a result of that trip. Only 2 puppies this time, both boys (because we seem to have that as our specialty) but nice and healthy of course! They were born on June 30 via c-section after a period of fruitless labor, not uncommon in 1 or 2-puppy litters. In this case it was not big puppies but was a logjam at the exit point, with neither puppy yielding to the other.
At any rate Satin had a rapid and problem-free recovery and the puppies are, needless to say, fattening up a LOT every day due to no competition for milk.

So here is a first-18-days album.

birthday!

Satin doing well the day after

18 days old, eyes opening and nose filling in