Archive for December 30, 2019

Happy New Year to all from Dolce, our newly available male puppy!

December 30, 2019 Comments Off on Happy New Year to all from Dolce, our newly available male puppy!

30 December 2019

Miss Paige, Yogi x Star 2019.  A delightful and precocious  female.  Splits her time between NYC and VT.

It has been a wonderful year for my little pack.  I have very much enjoyed this latest chapter chasing fifteen quadrupeds around my house and yard.  Huge thanks go to Jen & Andy for watching the babies, while I shower –  thank you to Lady Bernadette for loving me and all of us – and more huge thanks go to Lady Heike, without whose grooming we’d be a mess!  Our days are well organized and overnight snowfall makes what I’ve missed, go away.  How very pretty it is, in the morning!

We are a beautifully managed little operation, as long as I have my triple Nespresso with foamed milk in the am and my vino in the pm.  And there’s always a second Bosch washing machine, should anything prove to be a wicked big mess.  Oy.

Our lovely GRCH Piccolo and her five babies. 26 Nov 2019.

Most importantly to announce: we now have one very newly available male puppy named Dolce.  Please reach out to me, if you’d like to see a video of Dolce and the other puppies in his litter.  He is available because I have decided not to keep my Beckham-sired male out of Beckham x Koko, as Veronika Kucerkova of Erbosedition in Slovakia has bred a beautiful sable male for my next outcross in 2021 and Questa will be coming home soon.  That will give me two intact males in residence and that is full capacity.  We will bring the sable boy into the pack, come April 2020, and I have plenty of Beckham’s frozen semen for future breedings.  So, I have released Kensington’s Zapata to a very nice Massachusetts family and now, Dolce, their former Oskar x Piccolo puppy is available.

Normally, folks have to wait several or many months for a Kensington puppy . . .  but someone out there just might get lucky, if they make the cut and prove to be ready for a puppy, come mid January.  Dolce will be nine weeks old on 16 January 2020 and ready to leave us anytime during the MLK weekend.

Rudolf posing with the sleigh on the porch at Maple Street. Happy Holidays! Glad they’re over!

In the meantime, we are going to have a New Year’s Eve party to get Rudolf and his sleigh out of the garage and onto the front porch.  We missed Christmas and the Thanksgiving wreath remains on the front door – but there was no available time for decorating frivolity!  Puppies and their mums are always the most important thing around here and Rudolf can’t go anywhere on his own.  We might get really lucky and have Lily & Daisy in town to help with his rigging, as I don’t know the first thing about rigging a reindeer!  And their wonderful mum Lizzie donated Rudolf’s tack.  But if the girls aren’t here?  I’ll call Tom Sequist to the rescue.  He and his wife are equestrian pros and I know they will know how to hang Rudolf’s silver bells.  ;>)

BFF, A man and his dogs: RR, Freddie and Whitaker. June 2016

We wish everyone out there a healthy and rewarding New Year.  Please, act with heart and help us make the world a smaller place.  Tell the folks you love that you do!  And smile at a stranger.  Hold the door and help an elder.  ‘Tis the season and that should be the way we behave, year-round.

May 2020 bring you blessings and joy!

Fun News and Accolades

Happy Holidays 2019 and Status of Puppy Availability

December 22, 2019 Comments Off on Happy Holidays 2019 and Status of Puppy Availability

22 December 2019

Season’s Greetings to everyone!

Monsieur Moustache (Beckham x Ziva), in the front of the crate. Crate training begins at six weeks with a crate included in the X-pen setup.

It has been a terrific year for Kensington Tibetan Terriers and we are grateful for so many things: our FIRST Non Sporting Group 1 awarded by Judge Mrs. Cindy Meyer, several litters of healthy puppies born & raised, great new forever families who’ve been welcomed into the fold, our second Top 20 Breed finisher (like mother, like son), Grand Champion and Bronze Championship titles, Medals and Awards of Merit won and television performances at Westminster AND in The National Dog Show on Thanksgiving Day 2019.

We simply couldn’t ask for anything more.  We have snow outside – heat inside – smiles on our faces – and plenty of Stella & Chewy’s on hand.  ;>)

Kensington’s Questa o Quella’s sire Yogi in show coat – not to be confused with Erbosedition’s Yogi.  ;>)  July 2019.

And now, with the high holidays upon us?  We look forward to holiday dinner parties and the departure of Beckham x Koko and Beckham x Ziva’s last puppies.  I finally got my litters out of Beckham, Shadeacre Fast Love at Kensington.  And Kensington’s future will include breedings of my female and male pick Beckham-sired puppies to Yogi-sired Questa and Yogi-sired Piccolo.  We remain dedicated to the breeding & raising of healthy, happy and smart Tibetan Terrier puppies for the best forever homes who find us.

Applications for 2020 puppies are now closed.  We are holding plenty of applications with deposits and wanting to fill the wishes & wants of these forever families, before we open applications up again.  There are a number of applications that have not yet been returned and we will do our best to breed and raise puppies for those folks, too – but then?  We will next accept applications only for 2021-born puppies.

Oh, how our Kensington-bred sable Leo loves being the center of attention! With a bunch of 8 year old girls in Newton, MA.  2019.

It looks like I’ll be traveling to Slovakia in April 2020 to pick up an Erbosedition sable male puppy bred by my friend Veronika Kucerkova.  I am very excited about V’s latest litter, as the puppies are out of Waterley, Falamandus and Kashi bloodlines.  There are two sable males in her litter and I am letting Veronika select the one for Kensington.  We got to know one another in 2016, when my Billie (GRCHB Kensington’s 1st Dance with Michael) and her Yogi (Erbosedition) traded Best of Breed wins several times during the late fall.  Our dogs are similar in style and I will need another outcross in about two years.  Who better to breed our future boy than a gal who grooms, breeds & shows her own conformation Champions AND performs agility & rescue with them?

Happy Holidays, eh! Canadian Whittaker enjoying a moment with Santa. Whit is one of Billie and Annabel’s brothers. December 2018.

September 2020 will find Lady Cheryl and me traveling to France for the next Tibetan Terrier World Congress, just north of Paris.  I love France and ANY excuse will do to get me on a plane bound for the country I love.  I never tire of practicing my questionable French on the shop girls.  ;>)

So, Joyeaux Noel! and Bonne Annee! to all of you great people who keep me laughing, when the going gets tough.  And thank you for staying in touch and for sharing the great stories of life with your Kensington TTs.  Together, we are making the world a happier and smaller place.

Yours truly!

Wendyll Behrend, a Grand Champion in my own right.  ;>)

 

Fun News and Accolades

No wonder we have cave paintings . . .

December 8, 2019 Comments Off on No wonder we have cave paintings . . .

If I didn’t write things down, I’d be lost.

Daily weigh ins are vitally important, so that I find out early, if anyone is having a problem.

Think about it.  The shopping list.  Directions to a destination (before GPS).  The times you administered a medication.  Who’s eating which kibble?

There are 19 dogs in this house right now and that is down two, because Mlle. Campari and GRCHB Questa are both competing in Springfield, Massachusetts under Rebecca Bradley’s professional hands.  Three of the girls here have litters and we hope that dear Piper will come into season in the next three months, get bred and have puppies.  We’ve been hoping that, since she was bred last April and did NOT conceive.  But I have way, way, WAY too much on my plate now to worry about when Piper’s coming into season!

How else can I keep it all straight? The easel pad sheets from Kensington’s September 2018 litters.

You should see the clipboards and easel pads that hang around my house.  And scales – I have three.  And hygrometers and thermometers – there are at least six of those.  My own office gets repurposed, with every litter.  For the first four weeks, the new litter and their mum hang with me in my office off of the kitchen, as I attempt to stay on top of daily weighing, note taking and mummy dog care.  Once the puppies can climb out of the whelping box (and that will be happening within days)?  It’s time for the 2″ height extender that will buy me most of a week’s more time, before we move the puppies down to an Xpen in the AGA room at about five weeks of age.  This year?  That is scheduled to happen, just as Ziva’s puppies begin leaving for their new forever homes.  Thank you, Mother Nature!  A four week gap between litters is just about perfect.  Now, she needs to work on her ratio of males to females.  ;>)

Monsieur Moustache, in the front of the crate. Crate training begins with a crate included in the X-pen setup.

And then we have the oldest litter which will be the first to leave, beginning on December 14th.  At nine weeks of age, Monsieur Moustache will depart for a wonderful new home that’s been grieving the loss of their Golden for some time.  He will move to Richmond, Vermont to live with an athletic couple and their seven year old son.  Mrs. will be home 24/7 for the first week with the new puppy, as they have their own contracting business.  I’ll get to see the puppy occasionally and will always offer him board & room, when requested by his humans.  His first day on Albon was Thursday – boy, THAT was fast!  They just met him on Wednesday and moved quickly with their decision making.  The Albon protocol is important, as we proactively treat for the potential of coccidia by putting each puppy on a ten day course of Albon liquid, timed ten days backward from the departure date.  And Pinot and Preta’s Albon protocols began yesterday.  Kuro starts today, as he’s leaving next weekend, too.  Yvette (formerly Chesty and no laughing  ;>) is staying with me and so, she won’t need it.  And then, depending upon Preto’s departure dates, we’ll add him to the Albon calendar, too; that will be five out of six in that litter.

The big blue balls provide first exposures to unexpected touch and moving obstacles.

Koko’s litter is only four days behind Ziva’s and I’m keeping Eddie, one of the Beckham x Koko puppies and, yes, named for Eddie Redmayne.  That puppy won’t need the Albon (as he’s staying with us) and I now have departure dates for the other two; have figured it out and added their Albon protocols to the calendar.  And the only tricky thing to remember and calculate about the Albon protocols is that the first day is a double dose: .5ml per pound for the first day vs .25ml per pound for the next nine days.

Piccolo’s puppies are too young to have to worry about anything other than the Nemex II dewormer protocol (administered at two, three, four, six, eight and ten weeks), although the two females are going to Dallas by jet plane on January 16 . . .  count back ten days and add those two to the Albon calendar.

My desk, after a big Questa win – like his BOB and Group 2 placings on 6 Dec 2019! ;>) Perrier Jouet rose on my laptop. Panacure, show photos and temperature data in the background.  Cheers!

Understandably, sometimes I just want a break and need to take it down a notch or we celebrate a Questa win!  Where’s the wine?  Only issue there is that with my overnight sleeping interruptions?  I sleep better without the alcohol.  And I remember in the early 2000s, when my dear Italian aunt was still alive and suffering from Alzheimer’s with me as primary caregiver . . .  I’d meet my brother for a two martini lunch at Legal in Chestnut Hill to ‘dumb’ myself down . . .  only to realize that she was exactly where I left her, upon my return.  I drank to make her go away, but it didn’t work!  (Anyone out there who’s done the same?  It’s pretty funny and absolutely pointless, in retrospect.)

So, the training routine continues and morphs a little bit with each passing day.  Puppies are now outside playing in the freshly fallen snow, twice daily.  Car training is in full gear (pun intended).  Lady Bernadette is here daily and becomes more highly valued with every passing day and tomorrow?  Nothing will have changed.  Clean laundry will await folding by early morning – dirty laundry will predictably be waiting my morning arrival down in the AGA room – the Albon’s sitting on a windowsill to keep cool and the ladies will greet me with circular wags of their happy tails – and out they’ll go to bark at the world and announce the beginning of another day.

One day at a time.  Nevermind the wine; where’s the coffee?  ;>)

Breeding

When the nights become days and the days become nights

December 3, 2019 One comment

Questa’s sire Yogi in show coat. July 2019.  Very handsome and prolific sire!

It is quite normal and has become part of my routine to be up between ~ 12:30am and 3:30am every night.  It’s either the ladies down in the AGA room who ‘boof’ for a potty break . . .  or dear Piccolo who comes to the gate between the kitchen and my dining room/bedroom to make her request clear.  As I’ve said innumerable times in the past, it’s a good thing that I live alone!  The doggies need care 24/7 and long ago?  I happily signed up to be the caregiver, laundress and chef extraordinaire.  ;>)

Beckham x Ziva’s puppies out for their first adventure. 30 November 2019.

Ziva’s puppies are seven full weeks old and they’re quite mature physically.  Still finding their emotional ‘sea legs’ and trying on all sorts of behaviours including biting something soft, until they get a blood curdling scream.  I think we’re almost past this stage, as I’ve come to the rescue more than a dozen times and by now?  They’re on the brink of realizing that it’s not fun to be on the receiving end.

Koko’s puppies are only four days behind Ziva’s puppies chronologically, but they are hard to tell apart visually from their older friends.  All are on straight kibble & water, 4x per day.  Carrots and apples come next.  Both litters are producing tootsie roll stools and I am very pleased about that.  The Royal Canin kibbles I use seem to yield smaller and less fragrant tootsies than other kibbles we’ve tried, ESPECIALLY the salmon based kibbles.

Look hard! There are five puppies nursing on Lady Piccolo. Oskar x Piccolo.

And then, there are Piccolo’s five beautiful babies who are still nursing: two females and three males.  Today is Day 19 for them.  I only wish that I could handle more for the wonderful forever families out there who are waiting ever so patiently – but three litters is my max.  This time?  It’s more like two, as the first two are only four days apart – but the laundry doesn’t lie and it feels like three litters to me!

But what is life without the occasional upset? Even with apparent total quarantine for the youngest litter, one managed to catch an upper respiratory infection.  How now, brown cow?  Well, apparently, his mummy Piccolo must have brought the germs into their whelping room and for whatever reason? He caught a cold.  Three .1ml doses of Clavamox later?  The apparent congestion seems reduced and it truly is 24 hours, since I noticed it yesterday morning.  I know that with humans, we think very seriously about whether to ingest antibiotics and I, for one, prefer to ‘tough it out’.  But when the patient is 18 days old with newly opened eyes?  Give me the drugs!

This morning?  We had our second outdoor snow experience with Ziva’s puppies.  The first car training with outdoor snow fun happened on Saturday, this past weekend.  With Koko’s puppies about four days behind Ziva’s?  Car training will begin tomorrow.

Winter is upon us. Maple Street in Stowe, Vermont, December 2019.

We didn’t get the 20″ of snow they got in southern Vermont and boy! would we have liked that!  But the 2″ dusting we got makes for a pretty morning and shortly, I am off for my solo walk to town.  Wishing everyone a terrific day!

 

Uncategorized