Just some recent pics

Max

Chilly, rainy day today so I couldn't go outside to play. Here are some pictures from recent days when it was warmer and drier.

Serena looks good against the greening grass.

Theo, Max, Serena, and Della

Leo flashing his tail

I cleaned out the bed in the center of the driveway because
it's going to be the location of my container garden this year.

Leo, Theo (with ball), and Max

Della the Indomitable

Leo's sable coat looks like an impressionist painting.

Leo in front, Theo behind him, Max on the left, Serena on the right, Della at the back.

Sweet Serena

Theo, Max, Leo

Maya on a hike with Della

Three shepherds, one brain. Today when it was raining Max
was the only one smart enough to be in the shed, Leo was
running around the yard, and Theo was laying by the gate,
in the rain. Grrrrrr.

Della on our hike

This is the bare bones of the new container garden.
Plants coming soon.
Actually, I have five separate garden spots this year.
This will be the year of dragging hose around the yard.

Trooper

The dwarf flowing crab apple coming into bloom.

She's out of your league, Leo

Dream high, dream big, but be realistic, Leo. The Danes are out of your league.

Little Leo is still intact and he has noticed the difference between male and female dogs. He's taken a real liking to the girls. Maya just put him off with a zero tolerance approach to unwelcome advances. The Danish girls are little more tolerant, or maybe they just find him amusing. It's cute when straight boys try to date out of their league.

He'd have more luck getting attention from them if he'd just do a play bow and than take off running. They might respond to that, but trying to mount them just results in getting shaken off and occasionally getting reprimanded.

Because he's a Covid-19 captive like the rest of us he's not going anywhere soon, so I'm not rushing him in to be neutered. I'd like for him to have the hormonal benefit to his growth for a while. He still needs to put on weight. He is gaining some now since he's been wormed, but he's still a scrawny teenager with a metabolism that I can only envy. He can pack away as much food as the Danes, or more, with only a small weight gain.

While working outside in my new container garden, I opened
the back of the van to provide some dog bed space.

Della initially growled at Leo and chased him
off when he merely approached the van.

She made it clear that he was not welcome.

Serena is usually more tolerant of him than Della is.

Kissing up to Della. Nice try, but it's not going to happen.

Growing up Pups, part 4

Peroni is now known as Poppy. We always called her Pick-me-up-Peroni because she loved to be held. Even when the pups were still living upstairs in our guest room, Peroni would come up to Clay and me and sit at our feet and look up at us. She didn't jump, didn't claw, didn't bark, just looked. And that look is all it took. We'd snatch her up and hold her and that's what she always wanted.

She's a sweet, sweet girl and that hasn't changed. She's also the perfect fit for her new home. She has kids to play with but it's a quiet household and she's a quiet dog. She has only barked once so far, a small bark, and she scared herself doing it. I'm sure she has a big girl bark in her, but she's saving it for something truly important.

The fancy pants Poppy is wearing in this picture are because
Poppy has gone into heat already, as have the other girl pups. 

Abita is the one pup who was adopted out of the central Virginia area. She's just in northern Virginia, though, not all that far away and she came to the first mini-reunion we had back in December at the Santa Paws fundraiser for Green Dogs. Abita is one of the four merles, two of which were females (Abita and Maze) and two were males (Augie and MoDean), it's nice how that worked out. Abita went to the home of another prior foster, Clyde, who came to us in September, 2018, from south Georgia after a dogfighting ring was busted. Once Clyde got into his new home he refused to leave it. They have even had a vet make housecalls for Clyde because he refuses to go anywhere. Even though she came in as a puppy, she was a rather fearless puppy and so Abita might be just what Clyde needs to develop some confidence. Of course, if they've got everything they need at home, why go anywhere? We are all sort of working on developing that philosophy these days. 

Here's Abita and Clyde together.

The twelfth and final pup is Sierra. Unfortunately, I don't have any recent pictures of Sierra. When we were charting growth weights Sierra was always the largest of the females and for a while she was bigger than a few of the males as well.

Sierra was the final pup to go to her new home
which meant that we had a couple of days with
her alone. During that time she became the
first and only one of the pups to climb
to the top of the A-frame on her own.
(Well, with a bit of encouragement.)

Sierra also got a little one-on-one time with Della.
I even let her out of Daneland into the back yard, but Della
really didn't approve of that and kept trying to herd her back in.
Della's puppies, Della's rules. 

That's it for my look at the almost grown up 12 pack. We are planning a reunion around the time of their birthday, but that, like everything, is Corona-dependent right now. I suspect it may get delayed.

I'll end with another picture of Della, which is how this all began.

Growing up Pups, part 3

Thanks to all the puppy adopters who have sent me pics of Della's offspring, and/or allowed me to copy pics from their Facebook pages to do this series of blog posts. This is the third in the series, featuring Carlsberg/Woody, Guinness/Astro, and Allagash/Mo-Dean at about nine months of age. There will be a fourth, probably tomorrow.

Carlsberg is now known as Woody. He was always easy to identify among the three harlequin pups because has a solid black sleeve on his right from leg, just like Della. He also has a merle sleeve on his left front leg.

Here's Woody enjoying his first snow. I'm not sure all
the pups got to experience snow this year. We had none
at our house so I'm guessing that the two who live near
us may have missed out.

It's hard to tell the dog from the dog bed here.

Here is Woody in bed with his three siblings. The small one in the cone on the left is wearing the
cone due to a broken leg. Woody stepped on her. You can almost miss the black dog that Woody
is using as a pillow. All these pups enjoyed sleeping in the puppy pile, and they still do.

Woody's ears seem to have a tendency to turn
inside out when he's running and playing.
Della's do too, I'm forever fixing them for
her, but I rarely need to do so for Serena.

Woody looking like a holstein calf enjoying the
daffodils on a spring day.

Here is Astro at ten weeks. He already had a brown nose
from digging in the dirt in Daneland. 

Guinness is now Astro, named after the Great Dane on the Jetsons for those of you too young or too old to have seen that cartoon series. I always liked it and always liked Astro. Guinness went to a home with one other dog and four small children. It's safe to say that he has an active life

The definition of "gangly."

He's a little bit goofy at times.

The Valentine's Day photo. Red is a good color on him.

Astro and his brother. The dog on the left is the same size
in both pictures. The dog on the right is the same dog, Astro,
several months apart.

Nice sitting pose.

Here's Astro playing with Killian down by the river.
The black male pups are probably our best estimation of what the father must have looked like.
Astro is a fine looking dog and he's going to be a big one. 

Allagash is now known as Mo-Dean. He lives just down the road from us with another Dane we fostered, Galaxy from the hoarding situation, who is now known as Rorschach. Rorschach is an harlequin, see below, but Mo-Dean is one of the four merle pups that Della delivered. We were constantly counting 3, 4, 5, to make sure all the pups were alive and accounted for. Three harlequins, four merles, and five blacks.

I've got to admit that I never really learned to distinguish the merles by their markings, but Mo-Dean was easy to identify among the merles because his coat was significantly darker.

And enjoying a nice roll in the grass.

Mo doing a nice "sit."

Rorschach and Mo-Dean sharing a stick. You can really see his dark coat here.

Although I never really distinguished
the merles by markings, I notice now
that Mo-Dean has a definite stripe
down the center of his head that
gets wider as it reaches the nose.

I'm not sure who taught them to sit on furniture this way but
I've seen several of the pups do it. It didn't come from Della.
I guess we neglected that part of their education, but they all
took to laying on beds and sofas quite readily. Some of them
even use dog beds from time to time.

I'll end part 3 with this picture of Della and Carlsberg (Woody). It's one of my favorites.