Harmony German Shepherds Happenings

We are still getting used to this new blog format, but hopefully this will post and be available on our News Page in case anyone is interested in what is going on here. Please excuse any typos here...probably caused by the Shepherd at my feet or by one of our housecats (Myra our Maine Coon Cat is curently taking her turn in my lap and helping with the typing this morning.

Yesterday was another hectic day. So many projects, so little time. And all of it fun! Really.

NEAR END OF GRETA'S AVAILABLE PUPPIES?It appears that the last two Greta puppies may soon be adopted. We have two Puppy Deposit and Sales Agreements out as of last night on the last 2 puppies.. #2 and #3. And there were also 3 additional inquiries that seemed very serious about both of them in addition to the two Puppy Applications received.

Of course, no puppy adoption/sale is final until the Puppy Deposit has been paid..so we are still accepting Puppy Applications for Puppies #2 and #3.

And,if you missed out on getting a puppy from the current Greta litter, we encourage interested future puppy owners to fill out our new ONLINE PUPPY APPLICATION form to get on the WAITING LIST for our next litters. It costs nothing to be on the WAITING LIST and you get to pick your puppy from the next litter in the order that we received your Application. You will also be notified first of births.

GRETA's PUPPIES WILL BE LEAVING US NEXT MONTH TO GO TO THEIR NEW HOMES.. but our work is far from over with them
Daily socialization is ongoing with the puppies to ensure that they keep the great personalities that they have developed. They all have such affectionate and lively personalities we will miss them all. It always amazes us how intelligent and sensitive they are even at their tender age...for example a few days ago some unknown event must have happened that upset Boy Puppy#1..(it could have been someone stepped on his toes and upset him and he held us responsible..even though it was probably his mom that did it)and for a couple of days he hung back and wasn't his normal self...but with a few extra sessions of socialization he is back to normal. We learned long ago that things like a first bath can be traumatic and leave a lasting negative impression...like an aversion to water or baths. They remember everything and it is essential that their introduction to new situations be carefully handled so that new experiences are positive experiences.

NEXT LITTERS UPCOMING
In the midst of everything else, Heidi and Bridghid have started their heat cycles..this is a cause for some upset since we have two Males and we are trying a first mating using Victor. Lincoln is Not happy about this! Absolutely secure fences and pens are a must at times like this. In any event, we are looking forward to sucessful breeding and the expectation of new puppy births in early June. We also expect Greta to come into heat again in just a few weeks and to have puppies in July.

NEXT GENERATION MOMMIES.
We decided last year to expand our Breeding stock. So, we are in the midst of raising a next generation of future Moms right now. Raising 8 German Shepherd female puppies at the same time is very challenging, but we are happy to report that they are all coming along very nicely. It makes for a full day giving each growing puppy individual attention. Cleaning up after everyone is getting to be a hurculean task ...we are planning on adding a full-size septic system just for the dogs this summer. We will be doing test breedings starting in 2006 with the new girls.


ENLARGING FENCED-IN GRASSY PLAY AREAS
We are in the midst of a major building effort...we are adding onto our fencing arrangement to enlarge our enclosed grassy play and training areas. We think it is essential that the Shepherds be able to get out to exercise, romp and play every day....but with our younger GSDs..we want to make sure that they are secure and don't go off exploring on their own. And this makes for better training areas. So we are enclosing much larger areas.

The moveable fence panels that we first started using over a year ago have held up very well so we are building more of them. Originally we made 10 foot long x 5 food high panels. We are now making them 16 feet long. We found that our Shepherds did't even try to go through the new fence panels.

By contrast, when they are bored they are capable of pulling apart our standard heavy chainlink fencing. We have almost finished another 28 16 foot long x 5 foot high panels. This gives us almost another 450 feet of fencing to enclose even larger yard areas. This should bring us up to a couple of acres securely enclosed.

The design of the fence panels is our own...made of wolmanized 2x2 frames with 2"x4" wire fence fabric attached with 1" staples. The panels are light enough to be carried by one person and reconfigured easily to enclose different areas. We rip the 2x2s out of stock 2x4 treated lumber. T-posts pounded in every 16 feet provide attachment points for the panels.

Parts of our fenced in areas are bordered by our little lake...since some of the Shepherds are serious swimmers..we had to design a floating fence system...we didn't want to fence-in the lake. Floating fence works! We made 30 foot sections of floating fence by caping sections of DWV 4#pipe and wiring 3 foot fence fabric to it. You can probably see the floating fence as a white line out in the lake in some pictures on our website.

INSIDE OUR KENNEL... We are still facing rebuiding all the inside dog houses and we have all that ceramic tile yet to install to make inside cleanup easier. The place looks like a construction site...because it is...we have been gathering materials for all this year's projects for over a year..this year is put-it-all-together year.

Well, this is another new experiment for us! Sort of a daily diary of what happens here at Harmony German Shepherds. Our website hosting service added this feature as a new option and we were able to puzzle it out and wheeeee! It looks like it works.

This has been quite a computer day! Bradley and Lyle finally got the Online Puppy Application up and running..that will make it so much easier for people o submit applications. The old cut and paste method just did not work for some people and was a pain for everyone. Once the Application was done...we also added a new Discussion Forum. Lots of stuff to test out and explore.

We had are first rainy day in quite a while today...all the "children" (dogs and puppies) are sad because they had to stay inside....it is just too muddy to let them out in the grass yards...the mess they can make of themselves and the yard in a short time is just unbelievable.

We have a solution for that probem in the works..we are tripling the size of their fenced outdoor running yard..and of course when the grass starts growing again mud won't be much of a problem.

Greta's 6 puppies (born 1-24-05) celebrated their 8th week here and we took over 300 pictures of them.. maybe a dozen are useable and we will post them in a couple of days.

Well ok, this was a test. G'nite!