CASINO - 1ST CD LEG

Our blue-eyed beauty, Ch Shelamo Burleigh Casino Rama CGN obtained a 3rd place in her Novice B class today at 91/2 yrs of age! She has been living with, and trained by our good friend Mary-Anne for the last year. Mary-Anne has had to take her from her show dog mentality and teach her that standing in front isn't a good recall position, nor is moving out at heel position.

Congrats Mary-Anne you've done a super job with her .... more trialing tomorrow so we hope she adds more legs.

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Feeling Upside Down This Week

This week we are having new flooring put down in our Canine Suite, our front entrance/foyer & 2-pc bathroom. This Canine Suite used to be a 'Granny Suite', which contains a small kitchen, living room, full bath and 2 bedrooms. It is where we've chosen to raise our puppies, keep our in-season females and crate our 'house mice' when needed. One of the bedrooms is used for all our computer/office equipment. We just love it as a set-up for raising puppies.

Three of the rooms had carpeting, which is just not what you want where you play with puppies or mom's raising their newborns and they decide their food bowl needs burring for the 1st few days :)

It will be nice when it's all finished. In the meantime tho, all the STUFF is piled in our dining room, our living room, our present litter of pups takes up most of our kitchen, and the worst part, our computer is in our kitchen on the counter which we can only access the web via the phone line ... and in the country that's 26 kb/sec.... No fun!

This slow speed has made me realize how many people don't pay attention to the joke type files, video links that can be 5 MB or pics of their dogs right off their camera at 3MB each that they send, removing old redundent text in an email, or even some of the websites with large pics that take forever to load. I can't count the number of times I've tried to look at a website, and with the slow speed it just will not download it. The phone line also has a mind of its own, and will just 'drop' you on a whim!

Through one of the doggie lists I'm on, there has, ironically been a conversation with regards to high speed access and it surprised me, in this day and age, how many people still can't access high speed. It seems to mostly be those in hilly or mountain areas of our vast Canadian country. Our old Ma Bell lines are still way behind the times!

We are eating off of TV trays; having to go upstairs to use the washroom, and helping "Trixie" to not fear that the noisy equipment & banging is going to 'get' her puppies. At the moment it is a good thing that her pups were just a week plus old at the start of this and thus their eyes & ears aren't open yet and are the most contented, FAT pups! so this commotion isn't a fearful thing for them.

This is a view from the kitchen area just after the flooring part was done, looking into the livingroom through to the patio deck. As you can see the deck has tarped items on it as well! We're told the toilets won't be back in till next week.

I will stop here, as I'm sure it will take awhile for this post to go! More banging, pounding, nail gunning today as they put back the baseboards .....

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Tri To Bi

No I have not made a spelling mistake in the Title! Breeding the different colours our breed comes in, can really be, a daunting task. Over the years I've spoken to many breeders of totally different breeds who can't get over how we sheltie breeders have to consider 1st, the colour genetics of our breed, before selecting for all the other traits we try to improve upon based on the standard. We start with that, and then search out pedigrees, faults, looks, distance to the male ... just to name a few. Without getting in to all the colour genetics, let me put it very simply ... you could breed two dogs that are the sable in colour and not get any sables at all! Depending, you could (% wise is not likely) get a litter of all tris (black coat with tan face points), or, you could get bi-blacks (black coat with no tan points). Surprised??? well it's true. All shelties carry two colour genes, so in this case it means both parents carry the sable gene (coat colour you see) and the bi gene (usually making the sable what is called a shaded or mahogany sable). You could also get blues but that is another whole genetic lesson.

Bi-blacks are just harder to come by whether you try to buy one that is of quality to breed/show or to breed a dog with the potential to produce one. The genetic pool is less, there are less breeders who breed for this colour, and yes, I'd say in certain areas of the world the buying public isn't as interested in them ... people seem to still want that 'Lassie look', so breeders are careful in producing them so they aren't growing up a whole litter. Breeders will also say it can be harder to finish a Championship also that is this colour. Yes we've tried both, not tho with unrelenting ambition, not with much success.

Right at birth, it can be hard to tell the difference between a tri and a bi as the face tan points are not very visible. One clue is to look under the base of their tails to see if there are any brownish hairs. Well, wet black puppies with a flat coat can all look the same, and you just motor on, delivering the next, and when all is said in done, much needed rest for the mother, and you. Life tries to move back to normal. Busy! You eye ball every so often to make sure all are nursing. Fat puppies, I don't tend to weigh each day.

So where am I going with this?

On Tues, I had a better look at the two black girls as on the one the tan points were starting to show. I picked up the other girl to have a closer look, and nope I can't see any tan on her face; under her tail, NOPE! OH MY, I think this is a bi-black!!!!

Below is a picture of them taken on Wednesday, 4 days old.

On the top left is the bi-black girl, the bottom right pup yawning is the tri girl where you can just start to see a tinge of brown on her upper jaw area.
Here is a closer look at the tri girl this morning, Friday. You can see the tan points developing over the eyes also.
The blue boy and bi-black sister where you can really see the difference.

Am I ecstatic! You BET! Now we just wait and watch, crossing our fingers that she has the qualities we wish to carry on with and she stays in size.

So should we name her Shelamo Try to Buy ??? or Shelamo Tri to Bi ??? :)

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They Just Keep Adding UP!!!!

Lynn Cuthbert & her boy Shaymus just keep adding titles. I do believe they've added the most in one season on any of our Shelamo dogs. They are now up to SEVEN just this past summer. The Oct 11th weekend they qualified with 2 first and one best run, obtaining their CKC Intermediate Standard. Here is their list to date -

CKC Novice Standard
CKC Novice Jumpers with Weaves
AAC Starters Standard
AAC Starters Games
NAFA - FD-Ch (Flyball)
UFLI - TF111 (Flyball)
CKC Intermediate Standard

plus they are well on their way with a 1st & Best Run for AAC Advanced Gamblers & the same for their CKC Intermediate Jumpers with Weaves!

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'Boobie' Imprinting ~ Puppies!

Did you know that puppies will imprint from birth on a particular nipple? That's why you will see pups pushing down under, to get to the mother's lower set of nipples, or ones climbing on the bottom pups to get to the upper row. When they empty theirs, they will move on to the next available one. As a breeder, if you have puppies that need help in the beginning this can be very tiresome as you try to get the puppy to latch on, but they just won't. They fuss, squirm, turn away, and just plain refuse that particular nipple. You have to assess everything, and work on another boobie as this imprinting might be one of the main reasons.

So where does this lead me .....

Our girl "Trixie" is (was as I write this), due to have puppies in the coming week. Saturday, it was time to bath and clean her up. Even tho the girls start to shed out their undercoat, starting at the belly area, to expose their boobies for the upcoming pups, I still trim that area a) the pups don't get lost in their coat, or b) less likely to tangle themselves as they root around.

"Trixie's" belly is trimmed, she's now ready for a bath.

Soaped up well!!!
Now she's getting blow dried. The high powered blower allows you to separate the hairs well and see right down to the skin.

"Trixie" surprised us later in the evening!

No panting, no digging, no pacing, ate her meals until Sat morn and no outward signs, until I noticed her belly was contracting a bit. I grabbed the whelping box, got her in it and then she really started to bear down. Mike held on to her while I gathered up the other supplies and within 15 minutes, several very large contractions, I helped an 8 oz blue male come into the world.The blue boy only minutes old. Still wet & shinny.

Within the next hour and a half she delivered two tri girls, two very plain tri girls! Both, again weighing in at just over 8 oz.

These are on the big size for sheltie puppies, not that we haven't seen this quite often. What I normally like is around 6 - 6.5 oz, makes delivery just a little easier on mom, yet they are still strong & large enough that the fear of mom accidentally lying on them is less.

Now we watch, wait, keep things clean and monitor on an hourly basis as we don't take anything for granted. There are just still so many of their little 'parts' that need to grow ... their eyes are not yet fully developed, nor their ears, their heart & liver, their teeth/bite, that smart brain of theirs, stomach needs to change to adapt to regular food and not just milk, and even their parathyroid won't fully develop until 6 wks of age. And that's just a start!

The wonders of genetics, wonders of life ... still amazes me each time.

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Cob Caution - I did not know

I've been busy this past week working on our new website ... long days ... so haven't had time to post, or even take pictures of the goings on. Took time to view the Blogs I visit, I'm reading the one from Jo Ann's Place, Whitegates Shelties. It's about the seriousness of dogs eating, especially this time of year, the fall harvest type corn cobs. You can link to her story by clicking on the Title above.

PLEASE go and read it! Thanks Jo Ann for bringing this to light.

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Over Vaccinating - Post by Just Dogs With Sherri

Here's another Blog I follow with some important links about vaccinating our dogs. Something I think we canine owners need to be more aware of. Yes ... something else in our lives with dogs to be on top of.

I personally do only minimal puppy vacs, minimal yearly/3 yr vacs, and stop all vaccinations of our dogs after 6 years of age.

Again, just click on the Title above.

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Today we go LIVE - New Shelamo Shelties Website

Has to be today, am running out of time! The host for our website for our Shelamo Shelties is closing down and thus we've had to move. We've been on the web since the fall of 2002.

Today, we launch our new website! It's been a long arduous task in learning a new web designing program from the ground up. Meta tags, codes, picture size, font size, how people see a site on their personal monitor ... pics are too big then many have to scroll back and forth, up and down ... the list goes on :)

Pennylynn Woodruff, Ruffleith Shelties has been an awesome help. She's spent many hours with me, doing hands on teaching, along with phone calls of HELP! My program is the newest version, so of course it wants to do things 'a little different', so we've done this learning curve together. I can't thank her enough! Dinner is coming Penny! Mike promises.

Not all our pages are up, I am working day by day on them. So please bear with me.

Our new website is

www3.sympatico.ca/shelamo

Please drop by for a visit and let us know what you think. That's all for now ... said I'd do whatever it took to 'launch' today, and I have ... am now off and running to get ready to teach my dog obedience class tonite.

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Another Titled Shelamo Dog!

While I was out at the horse and dog show Saturday, Judy Flanigan of Guelph was out trialing "Truffles". Received an email from her that the two completed their 3rd CKC Novice Rally leg with a 2nd place score. Then on Sunday it was her 'insurance' leg, obtaining a PERFECT score of 100!

(Shelamo Truffle Delight is a full litter sister to our
Multi Group Winning Ch Shelamo Sugar Shack - their mother is our Shelamo's Party Pack ROMC)

Nice going Ladies! Love this kind of news!

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A Day of Things I Enjoy The Most

Saturday was a day full of things I enjoy the most! I left home around 9am, with fairly dense fog, and caught this picture along our road with several of the trees in their full fall glory. on the second part of our road ..

you can see the hint of the fall colours ...

Where was I headed? To our ScotiaBank Place with Mary-Anne & Marylou to watch two shows. The 1st was the Kuboto Steeple Chase event. Horse jumping, one of my FAVS! The object was to get around the course as fast as you can without faults. They got one shot, no jump offs. (I now realize that from the 2nd level, my camera doesn't capture movement very well ... so yes, some pics are blurry but they do depict the speed!)

This one is of our own Captain Canada, Ian Millar ... his horse looks like he's jumping twice the height!The line up of the winners; 1st Van Canele on Pitareusa, Ian Miller 2nd on Costa Rica Z; John Anderson was 3rd on Terrific. I missed figuring out in the end who came 4th & 5th.

We then had a break, so off to lunch we went. The afternoon show was SuperDogs! The dogs performing were from across Canada, with quite a few who qualified from the Ottawa area. There were rescues and purebreds; breeds from an Old English Sheepdog, Jack Russel, Viszla, Rotties, Iziban Hound, Boston Terrier, Bull Dog and of course, Border Collies, and a sheltie from Ottawa. As I mentioned before, my camera wasn't capturing movement pics ...

The dogs participated in teams, like doing flyball, the only difference was instead of getting a ball at the end they had to go around the barrels you see. This pic is of the Vizla ... I couldn't believe how far she took off before the jump on the way back.

They had a height jump competition. The dogs went over 4 jumps culminating with the last one being moved up a bar each time. In the end it was the Iziban Hound that jumped the highest ... something like 60"!

Then there was the 'dance' to music ... the dogs had to do the agility weave through some 12 flag poles. Here the owner had trained her two Rotties to go at different times, but were in sync as they moved through them. In the end it was the applause of the audience that 'crowned' the winner ... the one that looked the best.

There was a gentleman from Venezuela with his top winning disc catching Border Collie that put on a performance. The last event they had were 2 dogs running against each other where the dogs raced over jumps, through tunnels, up onto a boardwalk and then raced down another set of jumps. Most of the events where racing was involved the audience was split into 'teams', the Woof Woofs, and the Bow Wows, selecting their choices of dogs to compete and of course to cheer their 'charges' on.

As I arrived home, with the fog now long gone, the warm afternoon sun made the colours on our road even more vivid.

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