Litter ALL SPOKEN FOR! TAKING RESERVATIONS FOR OUR 2020 LITTER
Envy x Drifter Puppies
Sex: 2 Females, 3 Males (See what’s going on week by week by scrolling down)
Coat type: 1 curly, 4 wavy
Colors: All Irish Marked (like mom and dad)
Date Available for New Homes: End of October 2018 (after they are 8 weeks)
Health and Screenings: Before going to their new homes puppies will receive first round of vaccines, a veterinary health check, worming (if necessary), eye screening with veterinary ophthalmologist, temperament tested, microchipped, groomed and well socialized with young children, dogs, cats and people (and ready for you to keep up the great start).
Envy is a moderate girl that is eager to please, high energy, smart as a whip and lives for “doing” anything. She loves agility, rally obedience and doing demo work. She patient with my 3 children and their friends and patient with other dogs. Envy has amazing reach and drive, an lovely head and nice substance. Envy has her Rally Novice title, 2 legs towards her Novice Agility, 1 leg for her Coursing Ability Test and 9 points towards her championship.
Drifter is also a moderately sized boy! He has an impressive headpiece, lots of bone and an easy going temperament. He’s a true gentleman no matter where he goes. He has titles in conformation with a brag of winning the stud dog class at the 2015 PWD Nationals, has agility titles and is a producer of multiple champions and puppies with lovely sound temperaments like his.
From the moment your puppy was conceived we’ve been caring for them. Ensuring mom had a low stress pregnancy (calm moms produce calmer puppies), the best food and vet care and then when born the puppy’s enrichment starts. From the day they are born we start handling them daily. They are weight, pet, kissed, toenails done, exposed to a variety of sensory experiences, etc.
Then when their eyes open the real fun begins. Puppies are socialized with children, other dogs, cats, a variety of textures and surfaces, all sorts of sounds from kids toys, to TV’s, vacuums and more. The puppies will be groomed multiple times before they go home and been on a few “protected” field trips. They’ll have met many, many people and had lots of opportunities to explore and build their confidence. We also litter box train the puppies to help with housebreaking, start them on crate training and introduce them to some basic training and commands.
When you pick up your puppy he/she will have: received their first round of vaccines, a veterinary health check, worming (if necessary), eye screening with veterinary ophthalmologist, temperament tested, be microchipped, groomed and well socialized with young children, dogs, cats and people (and ready for you to keep up the great start). We will also send you home with a starter pack of food and offer you a lifetime of support for your puppy, whether that be for training or something else.
We want our puppies to go to the best homes possible so we screen each home very carefully. Our goal is to get puppies in the right forever home, but we also know that sometimes life gets in the way. That’s why we will always take our puppy or dog back for their life, no judgement passed. We look forward to meeting you!
Inquiry about Envy x Drifter Litter
Hi Future Owner!
We’re excited to have you here. Owning a Portuguese Water Dog is a rewarding and magical experience. This high energy breed loves to be a part of everything you and your family does and hates to be left out (Want some PWD Pros and Cons? Click HERE!). This breed isn’t for everyone, so do your homework to make sure they are right for you. (Check out some of our FAQ’s on our puppies HERE!)
As a breeder, we know how important it is to make sure your puppy has the best start. We take this job very seriously. Each week we’ll update what’s going on with the puppies as well as include a few pictures. Enjoy!
Looking forward to meeting you,
Becky
The puppies are growling, barking, hopping and have started to eat a gruel! Three times a day we blend puppy formula with dog food to create a gruel the puppies love. Right now, we feed them on large dinner plates since they are so low to the ground and easy to clean. The puppies hear the plates clattering and come running. They think the gruel is the next best thing to mom. Envy has started to distance herself from the puppies a bit as the weaning process has begun. She’s still in there cleaning and feeding them, just not as often as she previously was. We also had our first escape from the whelping box this week. Little Wavy Girl decided to take the plunge in the middle of the night. I heard a racket downstairs to find her running around barking to get back IN to the whelping area! Getting out was much easier than getting in.
This week the puppies experienced:
-The patio and the outdoors (no grass yet)”
-Lots of puppy toys! They got to play with a box, a Fitpaws bone (for balance), a skateboard (with big sister Kindle helping).
– They also played with falling leaves and some of the other dogs
– New things to hear: the blender, a blow dryer (big sister Kindle was getting ready for a show) and thunderstorm sounds at night.
-Lots of snuggles with the kids. The kids get to sit on the dog beds and snuggle puppies while we clean their area each day. The puppies LOVE the kids!
The puppies also got a new bigger area to play in and have started on potty training! Right now we’re using potty pads as they are easy to clean up. The puppies thus far have hit them about 80% of the time. Not too bad for little ones that JUST started walk two weeks ago!
Next week on to bigger and better things…maybe even grass!
Everyone’s eyes are open and they’re enjoying walking around looking at life. Many of them have started to come to the edge of the whelping box and peaking over the sides at what we’re doing. The week that they open their eyes is definitely a fun one as it means there’s so much more to life then just feeling and sniffing (which they definitely love doing!). This week the puppies got to see lots of flashing lights of the kid’s toys, have trains built around their area, experience a few different textures (carpet, wood, fleece, paper) and they get to listen to the vacuum cleaner, dog blow dryer, and LOTS of kid’s cartoons. They’ve also each received approximately 100 kisses on their heads each day. With 3 kids, they are definitely not lacking in the love and snuggles department.
The tough of the week…we lost the curly male we were supplementing. Breeding dogs is full of so much joy and so much heartache. The risk with supplementing is always that the puppy either still won’t gain the needed weight or there’s the ever looming possibility that the puppy will aspirate. Without intervention the other bossy puppies would continue to grow and push this one out for feedings. So we opted to supplement, but in the end, not every puppy is meant to be despite our best efforts and the best efforts of our veterinarians. We’ll be thinking of him now and always.
The puppies are MUCH more active. We are continuing with the neurological stimulation and they are getting more handling time. We’re starting to see little cracks in their eyes and ears which means soon they’ll be looking and listening to us!! Two of the puppies weren’t gaining as much as the rest so we have begun supplementing them with some formula to make sure they keep up with the big guys. They’ve also started their little walking like drunken sailors routines. Step, step, stumble, step, stumble, step.
The puppies were born Sunday, August 26th from 8 pm to 10 pm. They came fast and furious! Throughout the next couple of weeks we’ll be doing a lot of handling exercises with the puppies, neurological stimulation and letting them grow (you can read more about the benefits here: Early Neurological Stimulation
For week 1 we’ll be weighing them 3x daily to make sure everyone is gaining weight as they should, holding them daily in a variety of positions (side, back and while shifting weight from front to back), and trimming toenails. At this age, the eyes and ears are still closed and they rely 100% on mom to eat, drink and stay warm.
Also, after much consideration, we decided to NOT do dewclaws for this litter. For years we’ve had the front dewclaws removed, but there’s more and more research that suggests this might not be ideal for the dogs structurally later in life. Though removing the dewclaw does give the leg a clean appearance and eliminate the risk of it getting caught, keeping it allows for proper biomechanics for movement. The dewclaw serves as a point for attachment for 5 tendons and when the dewclaw is removed this leads to atrophy and potentially arthritis later down the road. So we elected to NOT do dewclaws. You can read more here: Do the Dew(claws)?
Check out some of our previous litters!
Drifter and Envy (2016)
