Mickey's new home

We’ve made it home. Only about 10 minutes of intermittent whining and when we stopped for a burger in the drive-through I put him down to eat and I lost him… found him under my seat.


We stopped at Shilo (he slept the whole way) and didn’t go potty. Back to sleep and didn’t need to go until we got home (already living the rock star lifestyle trying to create stones). At the Shilo he, initially, did not care for the leash but by the time we left he had no problem with it at all.

He’s met some neighbors and one dog.

Whining when left alone until he realized that he could explore and he does whine to ask to get up on the sofa. He only gets up when he stops. No picking him up if he stands up and scratches at our legs, either.

He does enjoy the bully stick and gorged himself on dinner and water before passing out again. So far, so good, on going outside and not in the house. He’s also coming when called with some encouragement.

So many things to remember to do and not to do to have a good dog. It’s not easy being a doggy momma!

Thank you so much for the wonderful little boy! ~ Lisa

P.S. I’ve already yelled, “NO!” once… he was chewing on his paperwork.

Jasper hits the road

Jasper is from our last litter, which was born October 5, 2010. This 8 month old boy lives with his mommy in Tillamook, OR but has returned to his 'grandparent's' so we can work on getting him in shape (mentally and physically) before he tries his paw in the show ring on June 24th at the Mt. Hood Dalmatian Specialty at the fairgrounds in Canby, OR. This photo is of Adrian and Jasper hitting the trail for the first time - so far, so good!

Hearing Results

Today the puppies and I made the long track to Clackamas where they had their BAER hearing tests done. I was very lucky to have Ann & Patty come help me wrangle puppies at the vet's office (Ann owns Jasper, a puppy from our last litter).  We also had a wonderful surprise visit from Lisa, who will be taking Mickey home in a couple more days.
The test went well, everyone is bi-lateral hearing (meaning that they can hear with both ears) except for "Orange" (Black Diamond Fast Track), who is a uni (he is deaf in his right ear but hears fine with his left ear). There's nothing wrong with a uni and most people don't even notice that their dog can't hear in one ear. Uni's can be shown and some people even use them in their breeding program (although we personally choose to not use uni's in our breeding program).
While at the vet's office we also had blood drawn from each of the puppies. I brought the blood vials home with me in a cooler and will be shipping them to the OFA where they will be housed. In the future, when researchers are working on health studies involving Dalmatians, they will be able to obtain the blood samples from the OFA to use in their research. So someday this litter might help come up with a cure for an ailment effecting all Dalmatians - such as hearing issues or urinary stone formation.

The view from my dinning room this morning:

3 Amigos

Here is a photo of Olive, Ringo & Mozart watching me from the deck. Poor neglected babies thinking I'd forget them! ~ Bernie

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.

Lunch time for everyone

I'm at home today, so I was able to take this video and then go straight to my computer to upload it - so this one is 'real time'. :)  The sun was shining into the window just right that I'm thinking you might be able to see some of the spotting in this video. We have one boy who is going to be VERY HEAVILY spotted and at least a couple of the girls who look they are going to have extremely nice spotting (so we have a full scale of spotting in this litter!).

Spots

The puppies spots are just starting to come through - we have to hold them up to the light and get them 'just right' to see them. Sorry but I don't think they will show up in photos yet, couple more days...

Belated video update

As soon as I got home I took this video to share with everyone. They sure have grown since I saw them last!!

JR Earns His First Point!

Today in Lewiston Idaho, JR won Best of Winners and earned his first point under the famouse Mr. Edd Bivin. Unfortnatly the camera's battery died within just a couple of seconds of being turned on, so I don't have a video clip or photo to share.

First photo

I made it home safely at about 6:30pm tonight. It was great to see Jazz and her babies. Everyone is doing well today. All babies are nursing well and Adrian says every one of them were very strong right from birth and didn't need any help nursing. Typical for Jazz, she's eating, drinking well and doesn't want to leave the babies at all. Jazz is like that the first week or so with her pups - but by week three we have to practically force her to get into the whelping box.

Puppies, puppies, puppies!!!

We now have 8 new, beautiful babies at our home!! I'm in Spokane at the moment, so Adrian has been texting me all day long to keep me posted. There are 5 girls and 3 boys. One boy is a double ear patch and Adrian believes all 8 puppies are black spotted. Adrian had his hands full and wasn't able to take photos that we can post to the blog, but I'll get home tomorrow evening and will be sure to get photos on the blog ASAP. So CONGRATULATIONS to all of you new parents who are on the wait list for this litter - your a new parent!!!

Jazz's x-ray

We are sure there are at least 8 puppies, possibly 9 that will be arriving sometime the end of next week. Too bad we can't see sex or color!

Jazz's new shape - watermellon!

Jazz "Before"

Jazz Tonight

Video footage

This week we received a great envelope which contained a DVD from January. This was the day that Bow finished his Champion Title, Romeo won Best Of Breed and Willow was Select Bitch. It is amazing to get such great video footage of such an amazing day. Bow is being handled by our good friend Pam in this video; I (Debbie) am handing Romeo and Adrian handled Willow.

Jazz's date set

Jazz's X-ray has been scheduled for Friday this week. During the x-ray we will be able to count spines and heads to see how many puppies we can expect... we're just a little over a week out from PUPPY TIME!! Typically I'm able to talk the vet into giving me a copy of the x-ray so I can post it on the blog, so hopefully by Friday you'll be able to see the babies too! Check back soon...

Romeo saved the day!

 Today I hosted a Showmanship workshop for the local 4H kids and then a Handling workshop for adults followed. The day started off a little rough as one of the 4H kids ended up crying the whole time she was in the ring. Her nice family dog was very scared of the show ring, judge and other kids with their dogs. At one point the poor girl was dragged across the entire ring as if she was on skies behind a sled dog! Romeo to the rescue!!! I had brought Romeo with me so we could practice a little during the adult section, but he had a much more important task today; making this young ladies day! At first she didn't want to use Romeo seeing he was quite a bit bigger than her dog, but a little convincing and watching me take him around the ring once did the trick and before we knew it she was HOOKED!! Getting to practice with a dog who didn't pull her around the ring, stood for the judge to examine and who knew what they were supposed to be doing, did wonders for her self esteem. She tried to convince her mother that they should just keep Romeo and she'll show him from now on. :)  We were thrilled that she ended the day all smiles and having fun.

JR and His Girl

JR sitting on top of his girl, Sky. This is an every night thing in our home!

Yoshi report

 Yoshi has added so much to our little family. She's blended into the zoo at our house and loves her big sisters, Indy (our Weim) and Kairi (our Husky). She is a ball of energy most of the time. We've all decided she's especially cute when she's alseep. She not super excited about visiting the vet and seems sort of tender afterwards. She's also gotten carsick a couple of times (thankfully in Rich's truck!). She's still pretty small, just over 30 lbs. But, she holds her own. And, she could eat constantly.
Her absolute favorite thing to do, besides sleep next her dad and go for walks every day, is to lounge on the back of the loveseat and spy on the neighborhood. Rich is a complete pushover and has promised me a new loveseat when the time comes. He just can't say "no" to his baby girl.  ~ April