To sire our second and last litter from our star Juno - IntCh NordCh SCh NCh FINCh DKCh EstCh JWW-02 NLJW-02 NordUV-02 NordV-02-04 NV-02-03 FINV-03-04 KbhV-04 SV-04 VWW-10 BIS SBIS BISS Faouziah's Bastet, we chose young Lucky - FINCh Northgate's Don't Blame Me. Lucky is a handsome and sparkling male with wonderful details, smooth long movements and just the sweetest temperament. He also had his eyes checked before breeding showing no signs of PRA, HC or RD illnes and has knees officially checked 0/0. We will be forever grateful towards Luckys owner Eija Timonen with family and his breeder Hanna Ukura at Northgate's kennels for letting us use their boy.
This so longed for litter of 6 (2 boys and 4 girls) where born on the 10th of December 2008. But Juno got really sick when the puppies were exactly one week old and had to stay at the animal hospital for several days after her operation. During this time Tanjas foxterrier Sol took on the role as extra mom all by herself, keeping the pups clean and warm all the time acting as they were her very own and after a while even starting to produce a lot of milk! Even after mom Juno was since long home and doing perfectly well Sol didn't want to completely return her adopted babies and kept taking a huge part in their care. Sol kept on feeding them being their caretaker and Juno took on the role as the perfect baby sitter instead! ;) Sol was truly our hero during all of this, we could honestly not have done it without her. But she wasn't our only hero. Since bottle feeding was a lot of hard work, we are so grateful for all the help we got from our friends and families those first weeks. Thank you Maria Westman! Jenny Nyström! Linn Hansson! Lil Nyström! Cissi Hultgren! And all the rest of you!
Out of conprehensive reasons this litter truly became very close to us and therefore we gave some of the pups their first callnames based upon one of our favourite movies at that time - Twilight - and the books from the same sagas by Stephenie Meyer. So in the beginning the boys got called Edward (blue puppy) and Jacob (green puppy) and the pink girl Bella. The rest was Manda, Lilla Ä and Smultron. But they very soon got their correct future call names.
Gladly the pups where growing and learning new stuff everyday. They played and barked and rumbled around with all their toys! It is always nice to see puppies develop and see who's first with what. And especially with these pups since we were so glad we managed them all. In this litter Julia opened her eyes first, Ilo was the first one to tumble out the puppy bin and also the first one to truly enjoy solid food. While his brother Qiwi didn't really want to say good bye to nursing at all. Alice was the first one to bark for real and she liked the sound of her voice for a looooong time. Sweet little Siri was from the beginning very calm and thoughtful just as her "twin sister" little sweet Smulan.
When the pups were 4 weeks old we tried a few stacking pictures for the first time. Some of them were more co-operative than others and we truly had a laugh doing this! Of course these pups where the absolute sweetest, kindest, cutest, most adorable babies on the planet! ;) See the first results bellow.
As the pups started to get a bit of the outdoors each day they seemed to find it both exciting and fun even if a bit cold... Which means most of them prefered to go back inside to pee on the floor instead. But to be honest, who could blame them!? It was coldest winter so they were totaly forgiven! ;) They also got a well needed bath each and they were all a bit surprised over the situation but still kind of seemed to enjoy. Some of the pics we took that day are the absolute cutest ever.
At 6 1/2 weeks of age the babies had turned into crazy rascals. But the stacking photo session went perfect and the pups behaved much better than before. We even got to keep all fingers intact! ;)
The feeling was bitter sweet as the pups turned 7 weeks: One second they are such wild kids all you wish for is that last week before they start moving out to go by very very fast, the next second they fall asleep in your arms completely relaxed with their head hanging up side down and your heart bursts of love and emotions for the little ones! But every trick a 7 week old PH pup comes up with, they make a fun adventure out of. And exploring adventures is truly their favourite waste of time! ;)
At 8 weeks of age the pups started to move out... Our sweet babies had grown up! Eija and her daughter Marianne came to bring their baby pup boy back home to dad Lucky and the rest of the family in Finland. Their name for their boy is Ilo which is Finn for joy or happyness. The rest of the puppies got to stay in Sweden. Jenny N came to get her little Julia and Cissi to bring her Siri, so incredible longed for. Qiwi too moved to his new home with Jenny H and Jocke a few days later.
Many tears both of loss and happyness in other words!
Sweetest Smulan stayed with us a few weeks longer before she moved to the Tibblin family just outside Uppsala. Therefor she got to follow us in all our day to day stuff for a while, to Annas work, the dog park, to the stables, visit friends and family and much more. After she had moved Alice became the only pup with us from the f-litter... But that's more than enough! ;) Utterly convinced all pups has got the ever best of homes we wish them all the luck!
