5 week update - Deja

Here is what we accomplished with stacked pics this week with hopefully our newest addition - Deja *Athill's Here I Go Again (pending ckc approval)she is a real energetic little gal, spunky and smart.

Athill's Highland Laddie HIC

A bit of a delayed post but i just got the pictures from the event photographer :)

Athill is proud to announce that Athill's Highland Laddie HIC - "Mc Duff" owned and loved by Patricia in Thunder Bay earned his Herding Instinct Certificate with flying colors and much enthusiasm this fall. Here are some photos that were snapped of him in action, we also have a youtube video on him working that can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Athillshelties#p/u/0/D-DR08v54L4

Thanks to Maggie Redfern-Pucci for capturing this all on film.

Mc Duff is sired by our own tri boy CH. Athill Kintara's Questar and is out of our blue lady Ridgelynn Blizzard Of Ahs.

Also to pass her Herding instinct certificate that weekend was our lovely little Skonsa - Solhundur Depla Aleiga HIC who had a blast and got right in there with those big sheep and got 'em moving at just 4 months!

4 week photos

The kids at 4 weeks - how time does fly.. starting to look like little bears now :)

Two week photo session

Gabby pictured above

Deja picture above

Poison pictured above

Tye pictured above

Tried to take some new photos of the puppies and had mike help me out, needless to say haha i did re takes after he left for work ;)

I tried to get some pictures of the puppies just being themselves so it is more of a casual shoot, but cute none the less.

New babies - 1 week old today!

Last week on november 3rd 2009, Mac whelped four beautiful sheltie puppies sired by our blue boy Rivet. This was both Mac and Rivets first litter.

Mac easily whelped three tri colored girls and one blue merle boy, she was cool and collected through out the whole thing and as it turns out is a very enthusiastic and loving mother.

The puppies have been gaining every day and are thriving. :)

Attached is a photo of the gang only hours old.

Xray Day!

Mac had her xray this morning confirming 4 puppies, and maybe a 5th! Im very pleased that at her age and having her first litter she has such a nice sized litter brewing in her tummy :)

Good job Rivety & Mac!

All the puppies looked to be nice and evenly sized, once i get a digital copy from my clinic i will post the xray here. Note to self for next time: Dont feed momma before xrays. Hahah So not only did we get a nice picture of some lovely little puppies but of mac's breakfast and previous nights supper as well :S

Cant wait to meet the new little ones!

Sitting on the nest...

Mac goes for her xray thursday :) here is a pic of momma mac hanging out in her whelping box. Laying down and looking pretty spread out, she was reluctant to lay on her side and stay put for pictures so I wasnt able to snap a big belly picture this time ;)

The Countdown begins next week!

Mac's puppies are expected as early as next week, we've already felt them kicking away....Poor little mac is as big as a house and is feeling it which makes me think she caught on one of the very early breedings.

The web cam is also now online although it will be off and on while i calibrate it and find a permanent place to set it up..check it out here...

http://www.justin.tv/athillshelties

there is a password required which is: athillnursery

OFA Hip Testing - Fantastic hips run in the family! Images and info

Thought this was interesting and wanted to make available some info about the hip certification that we do with our dogs and some interesting hereditary statistics.

At Athill we have chosen to use OFA to grade the dogs used in our breeding program, to find out more about them you can click here: http://www.offa.org

As some of you might know our dogs are linebred or related to a Blue merle male by the same of Am/Can Ch. Shelgrande Kintara Hi Roller, call name "Gambler", gambler is a son of a very well known sire in sheltie history BISS, BPIS, BPISS AM/CAN/INT'L
CH. WESTPOINTE BACK ALLEY RHAPSODY, ROM- "Jesse".

We are very pleased that two of our "Gambler" relatives have been graded as having excellent conformation of the hip sockets and no evidence of hip dysplasia, one of our girls who recieved an "excellent" rating this year actually was xrayed at age 6 and still her hips looked amazing. I have attached the xray of her hips as i always enjoy when others share their films.

Gambler himself is OFA rated Excellent along with his father Jesse who is also rated Excellent!

At this time there are 6 gambler kids rated as excellent who have been used in breeding programs across canada these kids are:
SHOBNA MASKMAN OF SILVERTHAW
SHOBNA MAJOR
RIDGELYNN SHELGRANDE NEVADA
SILVERTHAW'S MARI MAC
KINTARA'S BELLATRIX
KINTARA'S TEARS IN THE RAIN (PRELIM)

Quest BOB @ Sept '09 show

Im very proud to say that our first home bred champion Quest (Ch. Athill Kintara's Questar) went Best Of Breed on Friday September 18th 2009 over some very nice specials competition.

Thank you judge Phyllis Wolfish for this win, we couldnt be more pleased.

We didnt get any pictures from the show but did get some video which i plan to upload to our youtube account soon :)

A new face and more exciting news!!!

Athill shelties would like to Welcome Skonsa, Solhundur Athill Depla Aleiga to the family, skons is our first icelandic sheepdog and newest addition to our gang. She is a piebald tri color!

Skonsa comes to us through the generousity of Laura & Scott at Solhundur icelandics in Toronto, i cant believe the amount of people that we get stopped by to ask what breed she is, im proud to say that she is from laura's wonderful kennel and cant wait for her to grow up a little get out into some performance and confirmation and really turn some heads!

Here is a photo of skonsa taken at 11 weeks, she is still very hard to get photos of because she is a very active puppy and although when in trianing mode she is a good student, knows that as soon as she is out doors with the gang that its time to play not to pose!!! i will have to move my training regime out doors as well!

She is doing very good with table work, focus work and learning to stand and bait. I think this weekend i might take her to a match for fun to see how she does in a show setting :)

Other good news is that Mac has been bred to Rivet, im crossing all my fingers and toes on this one and if all goes well we should be expecting halloween puppies this october!

Rivet 16 Months and looking very handsome

Took this photo the other day at the park near boulevard, there were so many great shots to choose from but this one stood out to me as i wanted to show off his great outline and LOOOONNGG tail hehe. I love this dog, he is beautiful and was well worth the wait, Rivet is co owned with kim at Stonemills shelties. I fell in love with Rivets mom years ago and have been bugging kim for a libby puppy ever since haha.

Rivet just got some health testing done and his hips came back OFA prelimed EXCELLENT! and he is CERF normal and DNA'd as CEA/CH CLEAR.

Mac is OFA EXCELLENT (at 6 years!), thyroid full pannel normal, eyes CERF 2009 NORMAL.

He will be siring his first litter this August and will be bred to our older gal "Mac", rivet is a great narural stud dog and so i will see how a natural breeding goes if mac gives the o.k. :)

Puppies would be due on Halloween 2009, should be able to come up with some pretty neat reg names for them.

Rivet currently has 3pts from the sr puppy class his first weekend out, he has always done well against more mature competition and has taken many reserves and he will be back out in september to hopefully pick up some more points while he is still able to be shown in the 12-18 month class. He missed out this year on a few shows lately as him and his best buddy Slick do play awfully rough and slick managed to chew off and break a big section of coat off rivets topline, we call it the mohawk look, yikes!

Looking good my rivety rabbit!

Broken Paw...Broken dreams :(

Last night I i unloaded some stuff from the van and one of the items i brought into the house was my grooming table, it was folded up and i laid it against the wall for a moment to turn around to open the door to the computer room. In that split second it fell over and landed right on angus's right front paw, he cried out and was limping terribly, i put him on the counter and went over his feet, did not seem to bother him when i gently manipulated the joint and toes so i promptly put him in his crate to rest it.

About an hour later i checked on him and the foot was swollen right up, i knew it was broken, that night i put cold compress on his foot and he laid and rested. The next morning (today) i took him to the vet and sure enough he has fractured one of his middle metatarsus bones.

He was sent home today with a padded sock and was a trooper for Dr. Gerry, what a good boy. I have attached a photo of angus in his broke paw stocking.

Needless to say angus was supposed to trial in two weeks and only needed one more qualifying run to obtain his AGN title, he was to compete in Novice Jumpers with weaves also this year but now we will have to wait. Poor angus, how he loves agility, i am so disappointed and angry with myself, I had to let his teacher know tonight that he will not be attending classes out at the field for the remainder of the season, his class mates send their best wishes for a quick recovery :(

I sure wish i had've listened to my gut on this one and not leaned that darn table against the wall...a mistake i will not make again. Poor my little wolverine-coffee bean.

Show Class - Rainy Dayz

Its been soooo crummy here the last two weeks and i feel so bad for the dogs, have braved the weather of course and gone to Agility which was still alot of fun, I dont even think the dogs noticed the pouring rain, except the other night it was pouring so hard so we decided to work the advanced level kids only that evening and just on weaves and table, no contacts or tunnels it was wayyy to wet for that to be safe.

Tonight i got a call from a friend to go to an outdoor handling class, so i grabbed Quest for fun and off we went, it thankfully didnt rain and the bugs werent too bad so it was nice to get out for a bit and "play" dog show, i want to keep him in the loop now that he is finished incase i decide to special him here and there, *sigh* i love that rotten boy.

I was just thinking how cute it would have been to post soaken wet pictures, I should have taken some pics of our gang the other day but didnt think of how funny it would have been to get some snapshots until after hehe. Ah well next time.

I sure wish these renovations would get underway already i hate the dog yard the way it is and i hate having all the kennels apart, it looks junky and i dont like things unorderly haha.
Soon enough i will have my patio doors and then a nice deck for the dogs to go into the yard from, and a nice foyer for wet dogs to dry off in also that will be nice. So much work and it seems that we are running out of time, i hope the job takes no more than a month i want to get everything back in order before the snow flies.

Blogs? who has time for blogs anyhow haha

Back again and will try to keep it updated ...so much going on always and so much i have missed to post about.

Firstly Our tri boy Quest finished his Canadian Championship at the Kenora District Kennel Club this June, Thanks to Judge Tom Alexander who appreciated our boy. Quest makes the first champion for our kennel and is from our very first litter, im pretty proud of that.

You can see his show picture ~here~. He was a good traveling buddy and when hes ready i plan to show him selectively as a special here and there. In the mean time we'll be getting serious with some performance, what better way to use that super body of his hehe.

It has been about 6 months since my last set of entries, and its about that time again...were waiting for mac to come into season, the lucky fellow will be our young lad "Rivet" who recently passed his health testing with exceptional results, OFA prelimed EXCELLENT!

And so now we wait.... :)

No Puppies?

Got an xray taken of Mac yesterday and i cant believe it, a vet from my clinic gave me a call and the conclusion was that "she did not see any puppies present", i received the xray via email from my clinic later that day and find it to be extremely hard to tell anything from except that Mac needed to have a bathroom break soon. The exact same xray i received can be seen along with this post.

All i can say is "wow"... i have never experienced a false pregnancy before in any of my dogs if this is in fact what this is...any why would she all of a sudden start having a false pregnancy after years of normal ones? And such a sevear one? milk, coat bloom, temp drop?

The weirdest thing about it all, her temp dropped today to 99.4 after peaking at 101.1 which is up from the usual 100.6...

Well time will tell i suppose, i just hope that things work out o.k as the xray was done to determine the size of the puppy and then i would have made arrangements to have a c-section based on the size, position..ect.. and since i dont have any of that info from the xray to go by, i am sure hoping that IF in fact there turns out to be a puppy there that everything goes alright and she is able to deliver without too much trouble. What a mess...poor Mac

Just for fun...

Here is Mac's half sister Pixie (same sire, different dam) pictured a few days prior to her due date ( now almost 4 years ago)...she had two small-ish puppies who both grew up to be our two lovely hopefuls:

Athill's Pixie Dust "Glitter" & Ch. Athill Kintara's Questar "Quest"

...I had major doubts that she was pregnant as well at the time, but lo and behold two pretty little babies :)

Mac is she or isnt she?

Mac our pretty little girl may be expecting a litter of babies in the next few days..she has at this point kept me guessing and frankly I cant wait until Tuesday when we go for the x-ray to determine it once and for all, and also to make arrangements for a c-section if need be (possible singleton). I HOPE that we do not need a c-section and that she is able to deliver naturally without complications...

Here is what Mac is telling me:



- She is not looking pregnant in the abdomen area
- Her coat is thick and full
- She has milk in 5 of 9 teats
- She is very clingly but she is a very cuddly dog anyhow
- She is in the last week calmed down her activity level but only as of recently.
- She has always been an enthusiastic eater so that most certainly hasn't changed.

As I sit here typing this she is resting in her box, she has spend alot of time there recently but it may be because its the most comfortable place to be in the room at the moment haha.