Today the puppies were given their final health examinations prior to homegoing and they all received perfect scores from Dr. Kliewer!  We are getting prepared for departures, our first one being this Sunday.  I couldn’t be more pleased with how they have all turned out and quite surprised that we were totally victorious in our battle against this heatwave.  It feels like over the last month we’ve hit highs between 97-107F every day, with the exception of a handful of days.  I’ve been spending hours a day back  in the woods with the puppies, letting them dig themselves wallowing holes in the deep shade midday and soaking them down in cold water afterwards, in addition to their typical morning and evening run/playtime.  Here is a video of the kids and pups in the woods on a morning runabout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nb3jyStko4

Last Friday we ended up down at a pond that we have access to south of town.  At least two, maybe 3 puppies swam on their own.  You don’t see it in the video, but the rest I carried out a little ways and set them down in the water and let them swim back to shore.  Everyone made it back in on their own steam, so we’re good there.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjDGsJ80rrg

This week we’ve been starting individual crate conditioning and socialization.  It has been too hot to drive them around in the van and run errands with them, so we had to take that part out of the routine (they got plenty of driving in the crate during pair conditioning, coming and going with vet needs and going down to the pond).  So the individual routine has been to pick a pup each day to bring in the house individually, crate the pup for 1.5-2 hours, take it out in the front yard on a leash for 5-10 minutes to potty, then bring it back into the house for the kids to play with for another couple of hours.

Caleb messes with the pup while Cordelia squeaks a toy, with friend Allena waiting her turn to play

Really all there is left to do with the pups at this point is finish up individual crate conditioning and socialization, then do their brief introduction to a live bird.  Aside from that I need to get my office work on and get all of the invoices, guarantees, health documents and transfer forms completed and bundled up.

“Doris”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon female

“Dottie”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon female

“Derry”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon female

“Daisy”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon female

“Don”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon male

“Darryl”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon male

“David”, seven week old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon male

The kids and I have big plans for the last couple of weeks of summer post-puppy and pre-beginning of school.  I have a few griffon “how-to” items up my sleeve for this blog before we get ready to fire up the hunting blog for the season.  Charles and I collaborate on the hunting blog, it has a bit of a different voice and structure than this, the kennel blog.  Check out some of our posts from last year if you like by clicking the “Hunting Blog” button on the top navigation bar of this site.