Article on stones

Mozart and Ringo's mom sent me the following link to an article by Purina, that I thought with the recent Ti issues might interest everyone.  http://www.akcchf.org/news-events/library/articles/dalmatianupdate0707.pdf

E-mail from Ti's dad

Hi Deb,
I was never able to get Ti's PH to stay consistently between 7 and 7.5. It was typically 5.75 in the morning and 6.75 in the evening so I wasn't expecting good news today. Ti surprised us though. The ultrasound did not reveal any stones and the urinalysis did not even show crystals. It's a Dalmatian miracle! He will have another ultrasound in six weeks.

I'm not sure if it was the switch to distilled water, increasing the amount of water or the diet change that cleared him up. The allopurinal and potassium citrate may have had an effect as well. I just don't know.

I'm happy with the diet I created for him so I'll continue with that as well as the distilled water. His allopurinal and potassium citrate will run out in two weeks.We'll see how the urinalysis and ultrasound look in six weeks and go from there.
Hooray!
~ John

Priceless

1998 motorhome = $40,000.00

2008 Honda moped = $1,500.00

Blanket to attept to keep dog hair & mudd off of everything = $22.50

Tired and peacefully sleeping Dalmatian = PRICELESS

Vacation has begun.

 We arrived at Cooperfield Campground at 1:00am last night. Our friends/family arrived this morning and we're in full camping mode now. Romeo, Sky and JR had a nice run, then enjoyed laying out on the grass behind our motorhome. We're here until Monday morning, rain or shine - so we've got our fingers crossed that the weather men are wrong and we'll actually get to enjoy some nice weather. It's going to be hard to be away from the puppies this many days, but they are in good hands. We'll be sure to get new pictures of the puppies posted as soon as we get home, but meanwhile you'll just get to look at the 3 we brought (and maybe some relatives if anyone else out there wants to send in updates). :)   Deb



Black Diamond Mint Julep (Green) - Possible Show Female

Black Diamond Trifecta (Pink) - Possible Show Female

Black Diamond Front Runner (Light Blue) - Possible Show Female

Black Diamond Triple Crown (Purple) - Pet Female

Black Diamond Run For The Roses (Red) - Pet Female

Black Diamond Sure Thing (Navy) - Possible Show Male

Black Diamond Toontown (Black) - Pet Male

Black Diamond Fast Track (Orange) - Pet Male

Cinder is on the road to recovery

Attached is a picture of cinder after her 4 1/2 hours of surgery to reconstruct her vulva, spay her and remove the extra urethra she had grown in her body - it was not fun trying to keep her quiet for 2 weeks - the drugs they gave us did not work and the cone of destruction just about killed all of us when she whacked us with it - we got the cone off today and the stitches were removed and the vet says everything looks great - hooray
~ Karen

First Toys

Have you seen our momma?

Above the puppies is a lid (so their bedroom is more like a den), which Jazz feels is the perfect place to lay and keep an eye on her children. So frequently we find all the babies sitting in their bed staring at the cealing in their box.

Jack's growing up!

Here is a picture of Jack they took at the Walk/Run for the animals we participated in . Isn't he just so pretty.


~ Stephanie

AKC names have been decided

In order to have the AKC papers ready to go when the puppies are, we are forced to come up with the baby's AKC names while they are quite small. Because of this, we aren't able to come up with names that necessarily match a puppies personality (seeing they are just starting to actually get personalities), so we choose a theme and go with it. These babies have a daddy named "Speed" and seeing they were born in the spring, we decided to go with a race horse theme (for everyone except for 'Mickie'-the two ear patched boy has his own custom made name).  At this point we only have the names assigned to a few of the pups, the rest we will assign as we microchip them. This litter will be known as:
Black Diamond Triple Crown
Black Diamond Front Runner
Black Diamond Mint Julep
Black Diamond Fast Track ('Superspot')
Black Diamond Sure Thing ('Nice spotted male')
Black Diamond Trifecta
Black Diamond Run For The Roses ('Heavily spotted girl')
Black Diamond Toontown ('Mickie')
Next weekend I'll be going to Tri-Cities to purchase their colored collars and we'll do their first set of individual photos.

First Dog Beds

The babies discovered the comfort of dog beds today. It's funny to see how tiny they are on the beds that they will someday cover with their bodies.

Wild & Free

Today was the puppies first time "running" free in our home. All of them had a good time exploring and lasted about a half hour; before we knew it there were sleeping puppies all over the place.

First solid meal

Alls Well

All is well with the puppies tonight. They are doing well getting to know their new box. Most of them are sleeping in the 'bedroom' area (shown) and are actually going out to the 'potty room' area when they need to go to the bathroom. Potty training can be  easy when you set them up for success - even if your potty training 8 all at once!

First drink

The puppies have now graduated to their 'puppy box' which gives them much more room to walk, play and they can start learning potty training. They also received their first experience with a water bowl, which always takes them a couple of weeks to figure out the bowl is to drink from and not to walk in!

Afternoon sun

The eyes have it!

Eye's are starting to open today. This little girl has her's open the most, but soon everyone will catch up to her. This girl also has the least amount of nose trim, but there are lots of little black spots on her leather, so we're thinking it will make it.