Today Bella’s babies are 8 weeks old. Unbelievable!! Seems like just yesterday they were born! The exciting thing about having puppies is finding wonderful loving homes for them, and knowing that both family and puppy will be awesomely happy. That’s the reward of puppy raising! We had 4 families become proud “parents” to 4 of our puppies today. I congratulate each one, and wish the most joy and happiness that can come with a warm, loving furry relationship! Keep in touch!

Tomorrow will be another big day for our 12 babies. They go to see the vet, get checked over, and get stuck!   It always amazes me how they don’t even flinch when their vacination is given! They do better than my kids did, but don’t tell my kids!! The vet won’t have to give them their worm medicine this time because they’ve had two doses already, and will get another one before leaving our home. Again this time, I am so grateful to not have had any signs of those little pests! It is very common for them to be present, and does not necessarily denote poor caring conditions, but I’m glad they haven’t been here in our puppy families.

We’ve been taking our babies outside for the past few days during the times of day when it’s not so scathingly hot. They really enjoy it. We have a new puppy corral that gives them lots of room to romp and tussel. It’s about 10′ x 10′ with a handy gate, which makes entrance and exit much easier. There are a few escape artists that have already figured out how to get out, but they don’t get far before they are put back in! We have a large yard, so they wouldn’t get in much trouble anyway, but they enjoy tanlalizing those on the inside yet! Several have discovered the grass isn’t much better on the outside of the fence, so they slip back through to the inside again! Oh to be foot-loose and fancy-free as they are!!!

We had another fun time with updating puppy pictures last night! Photographing puppies can be extremely fun, or extremely exasperating – depending on how well the puppies cooperate!!! Last night was fun: they did so well!

It takes an average of about 10 pictures of each puppy to get one that is usable, so we were at it for a little while!  Some chose to investigate the props before posing, while others sat down and stayed put as if they knew exactly what we were doing! They are such cute little fur balls!

We use a Kodak CX 7530 digital camera. Not the most recent, but it works well for us, and does the job. And I’m used to it! Learning a new camera right now would be mind boggling to me – I’m SO technically savvy!!!!!! We used to take pictures outside, but have discovered that the kitchen table makes a lovely photo studio! Besides, PA has had a horrific heat wave that would wear the puppies out if they had to be out in it for long.

We tryed using the sport setting for capturing moving puppies this time, and it seemed to work much better. Some were still fast enought to create a blur even with that setting, but for the most part, it caught them in mid action! See the “Available Puppies” page to see the results!

Just out of interest, I decided to show our little kitchen “photo studio”! Ya gotta do what ya gotta do!!!