Shelby x Viking @ 4 weeks

So our little red fire crackers were 4 weeks old yesterday and the transformation from belly crawling to full out running has taken place!! Each of these little guys has changed so much in the past week! There are come great little personalities shining through, and I'm so very happy with these little guys! Shelby's babies started on mush in the middle of the week this week - each litt

er is a little different on the start date for this; these guys were wimpering everytime they watched Momma eat so we let the mushy games begin! All are very good eaters and seem to think that a good milk chaser is the best finale to a chunky meal... Shelby agrees half-heartedly as they all have very sharp little dagger teeth in already!



This little is very agile, and has already been upgraded to our larger whelping area, as they were playing Houdini and escaping too frequently from the smaller one for my taste. Viper especially seems the little acrobat! He is also the most forward of the crew and has a little voice he likes to share (he 'defends' the rest of the party with a great little bark when the bedding is changed). He's also very confident and will sleep at least 75% of the time sprawled out on his back - preferrably on someone's lap. Viper is higher energy and loves to play, but defers to his sister for for steering the games and (surprisingly) likes to play from his back! Viper is a little go getter and is much loved by my five year old son.



Mercedes (our keeper girl for the program will be going to live in a co-home here in Southern Ontario) is loving and cuddley and loves to be right in the middle of the fray telling everyone what to do, just like her Momma. She's laid back and rolls with it all, but always seems to be right in the middle of the play zone making sure all of her brothers play the game by her rules! She has a sweet confident disposition thusfar, and it one of those little girls that just steals your heart and wraps it around your finger. She and Cruiser are the most careful of the puppies (of course at this stage that's mostly with regard to chewing!) around the children, and Mercedes (aka Scarlett) has definitely quickly become my three year old daughter's favourite.



Cruiser is the sensitive sort. He's very much the lover of the crowd and will snuggle any chance he gets - even if it's by wrapping around my wrist to sleep while I am leaning to take pictures or clean up! He is very good to be in the middle of the play zone and sleep with (preferrably under) the whole litter, but I will see him being the smart guy on his own sleeping over the heating pad content in his 'me' time. Cruiser is usually the first to meet me when I first come up to their area - or will sit patiently watching the action nearby (their whelping area is connected to our Family room, so the puppies are a part of all the action). Never complaining, but always happy to be close; I have to say the combination of his looks (just like daddy but not dilute) and disposition has made him my running favourite (not that we do that as breeders, of course) ;)



And then we have Hemi. Hemi is the most laid back, rolly poley, lovely little man! He's very compact, so although he looks larger than the other pups, he's not really - he just has a very sturdy, stocky little structure to him. All of these pups will be stocky; Hemi will be Mojo in a bottle.! Hemi takes it allllll in stride. He loves everyone, everything, anytime - but not in the high energy take it on way of his brother, Viper. Not Hemi.... he's the surfer of the crew. He loves to come with you and be a lap dog, and rests very comfortably on my Husband's lap every evening and all football. He's definitely the 'man magnet of this litter - the one that every man adores as soon as he walks in the room. His colour is not as flashy as the rest - in fact Shelby's co-owner (and great friend of mine) visited last night and called him the blonde of the batch; not because of a lack of red - as far as fawns go he's what most refer to as red - but rather that he's the only one of the puppies that is not the fire engine red of his mother. His beautiful head and broad shoulders won her over right away, and so he's 'gramma's' favourite as well.



And so you can see that I'm head over heels in love with these pups - and as usual spending way more time enjoying them than doing housework! :)) Luckily for us all, though it also means I've been snapping photos like a mad-woman and have attached a few for everyone to pour over! Enjoy!



More soon.....

Buyer Beware - a repost worth reflection...

Finding a good breeder is a difficult and often daunting task,yes, but my motto is that you probably will not have to do it again for years - so stick to your guns and don't let up until you find a great one!
When looking for a breeder PLEASE ask around, call references, check with their vet to see what testing they do (cutting corners on testing and medical care is an obvious red flag!) Talk for 2 hours and see if they start to sigh on the phone because they are bored of questions. Ask about their dogs and if you can get them to stop gushing in 10 minutes or less hang up. Find out what they are breeding toward, and away from; no dog is perfect, can they tell you the faults in theirs? Great breeders are excessively picky, so they should find fault in the most perfect dog and tell you how they hope to improve them in the next generation.
Ask for several references and call them; all of them. Find out how old the pups are, what their challenges have been, and very importantly if they can still rely on their breeder for good advice quickly and reliably. If everyone you talk to raves about them it's a very good sign.

It's a very sad thing, but there are alot of bad apples in the barrel - you know it because you've heard some stories yourself, but it can be difficult to weed through the pile when someone is being cunning and nice to sell the next pup. Always remember that all (well, most ;) ) puppies are cute, but you want to love the one you pick for a long long time - so as always caveat emptor! Believe it or not breeders get bitten, too, in fact every great breeder I know can share at least one horror story - so don't feel you are showing weakness by being super cautious. My recommendation? Assume the worst and make them prove you otherwise - this is about adding to your family; you can play nice in the dog park.

A final note on the matter: If you have had a bad experience - shout it out!! Reputation goes miles, and a bunch of bad reviews of awful experiences speaks volumes! As a consumer in this crazy world you are a king (or a queen), and your opinion can make a massive difference. Breeders can be trapped by etiquette and slamming another breeder, frankly, does very little good; it makes us look petty, competative and carries little weight. But as the new family you have the true power. Rave about the breeders you love, and please, and broadcast the ones that gave you the willies, or worse, the short end of the stick!! And last but not least - ask who we as breeders have had good experiences with - we buy dogs too, probably more often than you do! I know I have a couple of people I've dealt with that I highly recommend! Ask who we love to work with; If my experience has been fantastic, yours probably will be, too!

Be opinionated and hard to win over, your family and it's new furry baby will thank you for it!!

Shelby x Viking @ 3 Weeks

How are these little guys 3 weeks already?! Shelby is still such a great Mom that I think I lose track! LOL!

So the little red babies are flourishing! Just in le last few days I went in to see what the comotion was, as the pups were noisy and that almost never happens. Well, doesn't it turn out that Shelby has gone back for seconds on her dinner just outside the whelping box and all four pups are seated up staring at

her crying for Mum. And me without my camera! - The evolution from crawling little hamsters to bouncing puppy has begun!!

All four pups are pretty laid back so far, though, despite being the most laid back of the crew (he let's me turn him all around and upside down - even when cutting toenails and holding him by the feet - without bothering about it, like, ever!) Viper will give me the petit growl and bark routine if I leave him on his own too long trying to get photos or such. He knows he wants his mom, and he's not afraid to tell me like a big boy does! Hemi, on the other hand scared himself yesterday by making the same noise and actually cried out in response to his own bark. LOL!! So funny to see them hear and see new things for the first time!

Mercedes is also a very chill little girl, and so far the quietest of the crew, though always in the middle of the fray. Cruiser is a big snuggler. He's content to roll belly up on a warm lap, but isn't quite so sure about holding still and taking the nail cutting like a stud..... well, let's face it, it is just like a stud - the most stoic one is usually a Dam, not a Stud. To this day the loudest yelp from a microchipping came from Viking - yep, the Big Stoic Putz; therefore I'm sticking to my original deduction that the mini-Viking look alikes are also usually just like Dad in personality as well. :)

I'm feeling the typical buds for teeth to start to come through in the next few days, so we'll see how stoic this Dam is! I'm forcasting mush by Friday. ;)

I've attached the newest of the pics (this morning) and was busy cursing (figuratively, don't worry) at my camera for it's inability to grasp and translate the beautiful red coatson these little guys.... oh, well - maybe one day I'll upgrade..... again. :(

To sum up in the words of a truly great man and close friend who is recovering from a tragic car accident this week (and so is constantly in my thoughts):
All the best anchovies and hot peppers!

Shelby x Viking - Super Red

I made a promise to follow this litter better than the last - and since my lovely Shelby-Lou is Momma extraordinaire and I'm actually getting a little sleep this time around (sorry, Boleyn, that wasn't intended as a jab) ;)... I might actually be able to follow through.

So this is Shelby's last litter. I'm a little sad over it, as much for her as for me, as she adores being a mum and I love her pups almost as much as I love having her here with me. Shelby is a co-own and is regularily spoiled rotten at her second home. They are a great family (Tina and I go way back) and I couldn't ask better for any dog. Shelby fits in there like peas and carrots and, to be frank, if it wasn't such a great placement I'd never have parted with her.

Shelby lived here with me for quite a while before being placed and she's just my kind of girl. The kind that's sweet as the day is long but will tell our Doberman to go where the sun don't shine if he so much as hints that he's bigger than her. And both are quite content with the realization that she is without a doubt the bigger dog. :)She gets along quite happily with anyone, anytime and speaks her mindjust the right amount for my taste. More loving than headstrong; but headstrong is like salt - can't do without just the right amount.

I like a girl with hutsba - but who knows that I'm in charge here, without doubt (-unless my husband is reading this in which case, she knows it's you, dear). ;) I love her mischievious side that compells her to steal all the toys in the house and hide them in her bed, and charge the dobie once per day with a big grin while he pretends she's scared him away... usually just before they both fall asleep snuggling. The point being: she's unique, just like every frenchie I've known, and I love her to bits for all her lovely quirks.

This litter by Viking is one of my most exciting. It's very rare to see reds as bright as Shelby, and certainly nearly impossible to find them as strikingly bright as Shasta, her mom (incidentally both are Driscol Blue Gene's dogs, who is also a Sheila - yes it is confusing when we chat :), and aho makes some of the most amazing reds I've ever seen!), so with Viking's red jumping through his blue I knew It was going to be an awesome pairing. I am not at all disappointed. 4 pups were born via c-section in the wee hours of the morning on Monday September 26th (incidently her schedule c-section was for first thing in the morning):S. Her surgery went well and true to form she woke up and was breastfeeding less than 10 minutes earlier. She has to be my only girl who in the stuper of waking up from surgery perks up to pups' cries and manages to communicate that she wants them with her immediately. She then flatly refuses to leave them for 24 hrs. Even I was not that hard-core. So day one with Shelby includes me picking Shelby up and carrying her outside to pee and then standing her in front of the ice water and broth bowls respectively that have been sitting beside her untouched for the last four hours since I repeated the cycle. One thing is certain: Shelby will be back to visit other's litters. I really feel that with her it's like retiring a herding dog from the field.... take it away completely and they'll never be the same dog. Working Border Collies need cows, Shelby-Lou needs puppies. I will make sure she has them, though, unfortuately, they won't be hers.

The other toughie on this litter is that they are some of her best yet... or from what I can tell at 4 days old. lol. She's really a perfect match for Viking - mr. macho muscle. These little pups are very short bodied. I'm very tough on evaluating my breeding dogs. I find faults. No dog is perfect, as close as they may come. In my mind Shelby's is that she's just a little bit long bodied. Viking is nice and short, and thankfully so are the pups!

They are also 'Shasta red' so far. I say, "so far" as all pups change colour bit by bit as they age, but I personally think the reds do especially. From what I can tell, though, three of the four are 'Shasta' red brindle. Basically it's the brindle we see now and again with the bright red striping, but reversed. I can't tell you how much I love that colour. Each to their own, I know, but that's got to be one of the most striking colours in the frenchie world to me: reverse red brindle. Yum. So what I'm saying is that I'm in heaven.... 'cause that fourth pup is coloured just like Momma. As much as I adore that reverse red brindle, I have to say that I would have been very disappointed to not get a little Shelby out of the deal. Even if he is a boy. :)

True to form, of course, is the min-viking of the litter: Cruiser. Those who follow AMIaBULL know that from his start last year Viking made sure to include a mini-me in just about every litter he's sired. We joke that it's because he's such an amazing dog that (and that he's told so often!) that he feels he needs to carry it forward. And I'm thankful every time. I spent 3.5 years hunting for a dog like Viking, searching pedigrees and bloodlines, looking at parents for conformation and coat colour and pattern combinations... and he fits every single tiny expectation. He's just darn near perfect. I wanted to be sure without a doubt that if I was going Blue I was going to blow the 'they aren't healthy' and 'they don't fit conformation' myths out of the water. Let me be clear. I'm not political and do not care one whip about the controversy over blue in the ring.... or rather not in the ring (and why). All I know is that I've adored the colour in every animal and breed I've ever seen and was so taken with frenchies that the combination seemed... well... downright perfect. I will not show my blue dog that could kick butt in the ring if I painted him black with stripes. But my uber healthy, totally handsome, one in a million (health, temperment and conformational, *though not by colour*)dog has and will continue to sire dogs that will. Final words right there on the subject.

The point is I wanted perfect and I darn near got it - thanks to Agnes at Bastille Ore (and, yes, that is a shout out!) and the breeders before her in the pedigree tree.

Long and the short (and apparently the long again as I see the above) :), is that I'm absolutely head over heels in love with these pups...again...and I'm enjoying every minute of it shared with Momma Shelby.

I'll close by adding a photo of Driscol's Shasta - to put those who've never seen it out of the misery of curiousity. :)

Photo Op Bust

SO there I was this morning, camera and flash charged, backdrop hung, puppies pristine... and .... crud. Yep you heard me: crud. I think I got 3 good photos out of the lot. There's just no accounting for puppies and there moods. Now don't get me wrong - I have some experience with the preparation of this type of thing. Feed puppies, warm puppies, tidy and rub before looking for action (I WAS trying to get some pics of their new found legs and walking about)...yeah, not gonna work. Everyone wanted to go away from the camera, hide their face in the comfy blanket, our just plain get the heck out. Sooooo... I snuggled instead. The great news with my pups is that I spend so much time with them they think of me as another mom. They spend a good deal of time as a group on top of me, in my lap, wherever they can fit, really.

So, as all good breeders do when thy hit challenges, I rolled with it. I must have gotten some of the best dang pics I've taken of this litter just by letting them snuggle in my lap instead of the fantastic set I'd created. So what if the backdrop is my ugly green velour track pants, my unpedicured feet and my comfy sweater that I wouldn't be caught dead in public wearing... Guaranteed none of you will notice anything but cute cute puppies. :)

Never enough time to catch up - We'll just start from here!: Boleyn x Viking 3 weeks old

So here I am 3 weeks into puppies and I had promised myself I would blog the whole thing this time.... oops. :)
I've tried a couple of times to go back and describe this litter (Boleyn x Viking) from the start and it's just too much for my little sleep deprived brain to handle.... so I will skip ahead and start from now hoping you will all forgive that somehow I got to 3 week old pups instantaniously. ;)

These 3 pups are big, healthy and beautiful. Some of the best I've produced, I think. They are just at the point where they start to do more than eat sleep and void - and eyes have been open for a few days.

Yesterday was the first day that one of the pups tried to play (while tottering) with his mom. Mulberry, of course, who seems to be the first of everything in this litter except out of the the womb (Lychee was already raring to go in the birth canal when Jim (my Surgeon) went in to get them. It was (as expected) completely adorable and I fell in love with puppies all over again. Boleyn, who we've dubbed as a 'teenage mom' - even though she's 2 years old and very much old enough to be bred - was not quite sure what the heck he was doing, or what to do with him.... kinda her standard with the pups, really. lol

Boleyn is one of the sweetest dogs you'll ever meet. She loves everyone immediately and throws her young hearted lust for life into everything she does. She'll land on your lap faster than sitting for you if you have a cookie; that type. I love her to bits. When she started cleaning Shelby and the kids as soon as the pups took I thought for sure we had another Naveed on our hands - a true Maman that would steal everyone elses pups and pretend they were also her's... from her first litter forward. Not so much with Boleyn. She came home from the c-section and was more than a little wary of the little gerbil squeaky things I seems to want her to like. I was anxious as she initially seemed to think they were squeaky toys... nonetheless we do everything puppy together and she is never without me in the company of puppies. I need all the years at the end of my life I can get. I don't plan to lose any more to worry; I've seen what rejecting moms can do. I kept expecting the 'mom' to kick in.... not so much really. This was different, though, than the Dam who just doesn't enjoy being a mother - Boleyn LOVES her puppies, she's just unsure what to do with them. She refuses to clean them... and gives me the, "you expect me to WHAT?!" look every time I hint at what needs to be done!! You get the picture; this one is very much OUR litter - we are both the Mom (hence the teenage mom crack earlier). The pups adore her and climb all over her, and though she doesn't seem to know why, Boleyn seems to enjoy it.

I'm very excited for the next week; the time when puppies start to interact and play. Though early stages of motherhood seem to elude Boleyn playtime is her specialty... If I were a betting woman I would put good money down on this Momma really enjoying the next few weeks.

CKC Rare French Bulldogs - using AMIaBULL incorrectly as a testimonial in their website

It has come to or attention that CKC Rare Frenchies (aka Juggernaut Reg'd French Bulldogs, aka Hennessey's Rare French Bulldogs, aka CKC rare Color Frenchies)is using a statement on their website intimating that AMIaBULL endorses their kennel. Despite written request for it to be removed the postings remain. Please note that AMIaBULL is in no way affiliated with any other kennel and does not recommend, refer, or guarantee the legitmacy of any breeder or dogs other than the ones AMIaBULL themselves produce.