Pics of My Puppies

[Tia]

I keep meaning to take photos of the puppies but haven't had the camera outside with me as it's been so cold over here the past couple of weeks, so as little an amount of time spent outdoors is best right now.

Anyway today, probably the coldest day so far this winter, I did dig the camera out so some inside shots and some outside shots.

Firstly, here is Snowdrop. She is 2 months old; cute as pie and such a happy little puppy.

And here is my beautiful Clover. Clover is 8 months old and is a truly amazing puppy.

And Clover warning the wolves by howling at them. The wolves were howling too in this photo! Shame photos don't offer sound!

The little puppy and the big puppy. This is a real treat for the big puppy being allowed to come into the house. We do sneak the little puppy in frequently

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Clover and Snowdrop love one of my cats. His name is Socks and he quite likes them too, the 2 girl cats scamper as soon as any dogs come in the house.

 

[CowgirlACH]

Ahh, they're adorable. Snowdrop looks so cute!

 

[mccarron6769]

Stunning, that first photo is too cute for words and just look at that little pink and spoldgy puppy belly, I could just kiss it !!!!!!

 

[MurphysMinder]

Snowdrop is gorgeous, love the spotty tummy. Had to laugh at the "outside " puppy sprawled on a chair. Clover just gets more impressive as she grows, love the pic of her howling to the wolves, what stunning scenery.

 

[WelshRareBit]

You have beautiful dogs Tia, Clover looks like she's growing up into a fine dog.
Snowdrop is just edible!!x

 

[severnmiles]

Look at Clover *in love smiley*!

What a cute puppy too, looks very happy cutched into the sofa

 

[echodomino]

Aww.

Is little puppy one of the ones that you bred?

 

[MillionDollar]

OMG, I want them!!!!

They are gorgeous!!! Love Snowdrop's markings. What breed is Clover?

Have all the other pups gone to new homes now?

P.S. I keep thinking Snowdrop is called Clover and vice versa because of their colouring

 

[prose]

What lovely pictures, Tia. I could do with a Clover on our trips to CT bear country

 

[Tia]

QR -

Thank you everyone

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Claire; here is Snowdrop when she was 2 days old. All my dogs have flower names so when Snowdrop was born, we saw she had a white droplet on her head, hence the name.

Here is Clover when she was a puppy. She was white and fluffy and had pink fur under her eyes, hence similar to a white clover.

Clover is an Akbash; Akbash are a Rare Breed of dog which comes from Turkey.

Snowdrop is out of my Springer X Collie bitch, Lily and her father was a marauding collie who came visiting our farm one day and had nasty hanky-panky with my dirty little girl!

Yes all the pups have gone to their homes now. All of them went to liveries of mine so I still see the puppies all the time, which is really nice. These puppies were very well loved from the start and it seems like it is doing them well in life as none of the owners have anything bad to say about their puppies at all.

Prose; I am hoping that Clover doesn't meet or have to deal with a bear for at least a year. She's still too small and light right now, but she will bulk out a lot eventually. She has had a couple of run-ins with the wolves though and nothing at all frightens her (which is what concerns me at times

). Clover has this habit of standing with her nose in the air just sniffing. Then she lets out these almight howls to warn any predators off, then she sets off at light-speed after her quarry. Quite amazing to watch; mildly irritating with the constant howling when wolves are around though. She is learning to curb her howling though. I've spent a fair amount of time researching how to do this without disciplining or telling her off, and what I am doing seems to finally be paying off. Clover would worship little Stella! She is such a gentle dog with "her family".

Clover is quite a unique breed of dog and I absolutely adore her.

Snowdrop is not unique, but my god she is cute!

 

[CAYLA]

Lovely piccies....clover is huge, and fluffy and very laid back /calm looking....2 fluffy babies

 

[Blizzard]

Beautiful photos Tia!

Clover is beautiful, how long do Akbash take to fully mature?

As for Snowdop, so so cute, I love the first pic!

 

[Tia]

Akbash aren't fully mature till they are around 2 or 3 years old, so Clover still has a fair amount of growing to do.

Yeah, Snowdrop is a squooshy, yummy little thing.

 

[Enfys]

Gorgeous pictures Tia, I am very envious of your slopey land!

I would be fascinated to hear how you are disciplining Clover (perhaps not the right word) without actually doing so. She is going to be one impressive dog when she is full grown, how tall is she now?

 

[Would_I]

aww lovely pics

 

[Tia]

Yeah I like my slopey land too.

Well I always go outside and listen or look to see what she is barking/howling at. I stand beside her and tell her it's okay (AFTER whatever it is has gone). I then ask her to be quiet and then the moment she does, I tell her what a good girl she is and give her loads of cuddles. This really does seem to be working very well indeed.

I tried the other option which was to lock her on her own - I put her in the dog pen outside for a couple of hours once.....and when I let her out again, she moved out!

She slept in the hay barn for 2 nights and it was only by letting her come into the house and giving her lots of nice loving that she decided to move back into the dog room

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She is probably about a hand (4 inches LOL!!) taller than Daisy my shepherd dog; so she's pretty big already. She really is impressive to look at; even if she wasn't my dog I'd think she was darned lovely!

One of my liveries owns her brother (quite by coincidence) and although he is a beautiful dog, he has nowhere near the presence of Clover. Actually their dog is more closer to a typical Akbash, Clover is but only in so far as she guards us from predators and not from humans; I put this down to the way in which I have brought her up to be friendly with humans. My dog doesn't pay much attention to people who turn up at my farm, whereas their dog becomes very vocal and territorial when strangers come to their house. This was something I tried very hard to not have Clover to be like this and I'm pleased she isn't, however I am very confident that in any emergency she would definitely know her job, and that would be to take out any predator (human or otherwise) who threatened us.

It's been a steep learning curve Enfys. I've never had a dog like this before; but now I am a bit more knowledgeable about the breed, I would say I would definitely consider having another one.

 

[Tia]

I love your signature Would_I.

And thanks.

 

[Enfys]

It's one of those days isn't it? Sunglasses or snowblindness!

At your account of Clover moving out! She sounds as if she has her own opinions. The rewarding her by ignoring the undesirable behaviour and praising the desired actually sounds quite logical when you put it like that.

We do much the same with Boston, purely because we have found it is the only thing that works with him. He is a wimp, if you tell him to do something his ears go down, his tail goes between his legs and he gets in a real state, anybody that didn't know us would think that he has been beaten, and truly, we have never laid a finger on him. I had never thought of it as a training method though.

I have to ask, because I am nosey, and also because I am looking at fencing myself, in the photo with Clover howling, you have three rail fencing, is that the Field Guard type panels? Thanks.

 

[Tia]

Clover is afraid of absolutely nothing, not even me when I used to shout at her to stop. She paid no attention to me whatsoever because she has been bred to work alone and not take instruction from anyone; but it seems that she likes being loved a lot, and this was where I started to make the breakthrough. Obviously the locking her in the pen wasn't going to work, which I'm actually secretly glad about, as I hate my dogs being restrained or cooped up in any way.

The fencing is actually vinyl fencing. It is made of very tough polymer and has 3 strands of high tensile wire running through it. It has a break-weight of 6,000 lbs per rail, so no horse is getting out of there. When I did my research on what fencing was best for foals, this was the only fencing where I found no recorded foal fatalities as a result of fence accidents.

The fencing is fantastic. It is so easy and quick to put up. It comes with a 30 year guarantee. No maintenance (unlike all my white post and rail fencing which needs repainting yet again

). Looks good. The only down side to it is that it is very expensive in Canada. I imported my fencing from the States via NAFTA and our Broker; the cost was about three quarters cheaper than I could buy it for in Canada but it still worked out to being the most expensive fencing we have on our farm. Compared to our post and rail fencing, the vinyl fencing worked out at a bit more than P&R but that does not include the price of the posts for the vinyl; so with the posts in the equation, it ended up being much more expensive. I know that it will work out to being cheaper in the long run though as the rails never need replacing.

I am so impressed with it that I won't use any other type of fencing now. I also did a couple of fields with the round vinyl. It is high tensile too and is lovely to put up and looks nice and clean too.

Here's the link for the fencing if you are interested; http://www.centaurhtp.com/