That's not my name!

Happy, tired and wet!

That's not their names!

This is Reuben, WooZah and Reba on todays training run in pea soup fog and heavy rain. 

WooZah found a nice smell to roll in. 

Reuben taking the advice from his trainer, why stand when you can sit, why sit when you can lie down!

Spotty's greatest challenge!

In a weeks time we will be approaching the start line. Spotty's greatest fitness test. He wont be riding a bike though. He's watching that bit from the support vehicle.

Hold Hover!

Ms Puma giving the hold hover signal as all helicopter engineers and pilots will know.

We had a contact from someone asking after Ms Puma and the Heli Crew but the email we sent back kept returning as undelivered. So if you read this get back in touch.

 As we have more puppies than we had anticipated we are looking for a few other people who want to join the Dolyhir Clan, so if you think you would be able to look after a Dolyhir Berner then please get in touch.

Elf and the Heli Crew

Bliss and the Reservoir Pups

Ms Orange

Mr Black

Reservoir pups

 Bliss' pups all had new collars today as their birth collars are already too tight.

 One day these pups will have paws this big!

 Ms Yellow posing

Mr Green relaxing.

The Heli-crew

 Elf with a bowl full

 Tough life this, what with eating and sleeping

 Proof that once they were small

 Cuddled up

 Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Geteroffame!

Elf and the Heli crew plus two

 Elf  is loving her whelping box and uses every bit of  floor space at some point of a 24 hour period.

 And when shes not trying to persuade me to take her for a walk

 shes busy admiring her pups, like Ms Puma here,

or carrying them into the lounge for a family hug.

Reservoir Pups

 Bliss has an unusual feeding stance which is, I think, why she has accidentally squished two pups. She seems to half sit and the pups gather to feed, eventually she nods off and slides down and as bad luck would have it squash a pup. Last night I checked her every ten to twenty minutes and constantly moved pups at risk, even managing to pull Ms Pink and Mr Blue out from under her. Even with all that effort Mr Purple bought the farm last night, I tried to revive him but he'd gone.

 So by 3am anti squish rails, 3 of them were fitted, they wouldn't have made a difference to Mr Lilac and Mr Purple but they might protect the others. The reason there are 3 is that that was the number of brooms I managed to find and break up, wedged in with card collars they are holding up to pressure. Bliss has finally started to lie down, I think through exhaustion and having had 8 hours sleep in the last 72 myself I know how she feels.

 Morning roll call and all Reservoir Pups were growing fat.

Mr Blue after a particularly large post breakfast stretch.

Unlucky boys

Bliss rolled on Mr Purple at 2.15am.

We now have 14 pups, 5 boys and 9 girls.

Heli-crew close up

Ms Puma practicing her helicopter landing arm signals.

Heli-crew +48 hours

Heres Elf's Heli-crew pups, all doing well and all gaining weight except Mr Chinook who is still 14 oz, his birth weight. Elf has two others with her, she is fostering Mr Black and Ms Turquoise to help out Bliss and the Reservoir Pups.

Reservoir Pups + 48 hours

Here are the scores for weight gains for the Reservoir Pups 48 hours on, all except Mr Blue have made good gains, Mr Green a massive 5 ounces, Ms Turquoise to Mr Greens left and Mr Black, who is left of Reuben (dad) have both made good gains and are being fostered by Elf with the Heli-crew.  Another quiet 24 hours and 3 hours sleep keeping watch on the new Dolyhir Clan members.

Pile on!

 Boo Boo making sure the top food for top dogs is delivered safely.

 Spotty and Poppy making sure that they get their share of any freebies!

Spotty is on extra rations because of the training he is doing for W3P2P.

I feel good!

Reuben on being told hes a dad x15

Reservoir pups part two

 Early doors saw Bliss get a change of bedding and a clean up while the Reservoir Pups had a nap.

 Bliss had other ideas about bedding

 and keeping it neat and clean.

 She has at least bonded with her pups, it was a worry yesterday when she came round from the anaesthetic and chucked a mental and then displayed all the maternal instinct of a block of flats.

 But now she is the doting mum.

 Clumsy as an elephant but very attentive

and her pups are already growing!

The Heli-crew have landed

 While Bliss and the Reservoir Pups were keeping us occupied, poor Elf took herself off onto the Helipad and began excavations creating a subterranean dwelling in which she began to give birth. Now the vet was pretty sure she hadn't started labour but we were pretty sure she was showing at least signs but confident that she was a week or so behind Bliss we let her outside unsupervised. Squealing alerted us to the drama about to unfold and so while yours truly juggled Bliss' pups and feeding bottles my beautiful and oh so pregnant wife set up a maternity suite in the conservatory and as Elf's whelping box had yet to arrive she had to make do with the floor.

Elf was brilliant and pretty soon the numbers of pups at HQ began to rise. The Heli-crew are;

 Ms Bell 12 oz

Ms Puma 8oz

Ms Fairy 8oz

Mr Merlin 10oz

Mr Chinook 14 oz

Ms Apache 14oz

Elf also gave birth to a tiny 4oz girl who lived for around 8 hours, a still birth girl at 12.45 am who weighed 12 oz and unbelievably another still birth girl at 10am this morning! She weighed a mighty 14 oz. At 5am Elf had an accident and lay on Ms Apache so by mid morning today she was left with a litter of 5. 

 Her whelping box arrived and once the puzzle was put together (its a brilliant bit of kit, details of where to get one will be listed soon) she moved in with the Heli-crew.

 As Bliss had 10 pups, which she was thankfully taking over the feeding of, a plan to get Elf to foster Mr Black and Ms Turquoise was hatched. Mr Black has the large white blaze and you can see the difference in size of the Reservoir Pups and the Heli-crew, this might be why the vets thought that Elf was 2 weeks behind Bliss for due date. As it was they both dropped them the same day and Reuben was a busy boy that day 9 weeks ago. This foster plan was very successful

and Elf has taken to the two cuckoos like her own. We now have 15 live healthy pups, 6 boys 9 girls and two healthy mums. All good so far, I did manage to get 2.5 hours sleep but I am on night watch again as the mums still have a habit of lying on the pups so a constant vigil is needed.

Reservoir Pups!

 Here are the latest additions to the Dolyhir Clan, the Reservoir Pups! Bliss started to behave strangely last night but this morning was showing no signs of labour so a close eye was kept on her. Thankfully this paid dividends as my beautiful and oh so patient wife spotted a dark green mucus oozing from Bliss' tuppence so Bliss was emergency admitted to the Vets (this misses the bits where Bliss refuses to get in car, runs off, hides etc etc until yours truly carries her to car and in the process risks a double hernia) who diagnosed the placenta was/had separated and things did not look promising.

 However as luck would have it, and thanks to the skill of the Arrowfield vets 11 very healthy pups were born by c section.

Introducing the Reservoir Pups.
Mr Lilac 1 pound
Ms Pink 14 oz
Ms Red 14 oz
Mr Blue 1 pound half ounce
Ms Odage (Orange but lil t named her) 1 pound
Ms Yellow 1 pound
Ms White 1 pound
Ms Turquoise 1 pound
Mr Green 13 oz
Mr Purple 1 pound
Mr Black 1 pound

A mighty load of pups for poor Bliss to carry and it would seem the weight of them made the placenta break and it was unusual for the c section to save so many pups. So thanks all round to the skills of the vets and their veterinary nurses.
Unfortunately just after the above pic was taken Bliss squashed Mr Lilac and he died at 7.30 pm.

We were worried that Elf was showing signs of having her pups but after an examination by the vet we were reassured that it was not imminent. Soon. Not straight away. This was a good thing as Bliss was refusing to have much to do with the Reservoir Pups and we were feeding them. Elfs whelping box doesn't arrive until tomorrow so we were glad to have that breathing space. While we were busy with the Reservoir Pups, Elf was playing on the Helipad, digging. A curious sound could be heard above the squeals of the 10 pups in the dining room. MBAOSPW went out to investigate and found Elf had dug a cavern under the Helipad and was giving birth. Two filthy pups were in the hole. As of this posting she has had 2 boys and 5 girls and a still born girl at 12.45 am. So you will have to wait for further details of the Helicrew Pups as things are a bit busy here at HQ.  Total so far is 17 pups but one of Elf's only weighs four ounces so we are not expecting her to live. She noisy but perhaps too small to make it.