It’s been an anxious last 2 days, we had a litter of tollers due on Sunday and mum to be (aka amba) looked very restless, but managed to keep us in suspense until Tuesday evening before giving in. She had a quick and easy birth having 7 puppies. She started at 16.48 and finished at 19.40. Amba and Rudy produced a very even litter all having the same birth weight of 16oz. All puppies are very strong and feeding well off mum. Amba is a very calm  affectionte mother and is doing really well. 

All puppies are settling in to thier new homes, and look very comfortable. Below are a few pictures sent of the first few days we will add and up date pictures as they arrive and grow. 

We are in the final week before the puppies start to go to their new homes, this week they have had their first vaccination so the puppies will leave us and go into there new environment with some immunity. All puppies are very forward and we are extremely pleased how the litter has turned out. We have really benefited by bringing Rudy into our breeding program as you can see he has given the puppies so much more structure in their head, chest and ears.  Amber is in fantastic shape after rearing and giving so much to her offspring, she has even managed to get two days off to go picking-up. It will be nice for us to see how they grow and develop within their first year.

This a hard time for us as a family to let this litter go as we all have put a lot of time and energy into them and have been watching  them grow from day one. We all have our individual favourites and will be doing our best to hide them away when the time comes for them to leave!  

The final weigh in of our Toller Gundog Puppies!

We often get asked if it hurts the animal when they are Microchipped, the simple answer is no. The implanting of the micro-chip is short and painless, it is located between the shoulder blades and is as big as a grain of rice. We’ve added a small video to show you the quick and simple process.

Breeze is now 10 weeks old and we have been socialising her within our family environment getting her use to family life and finding her place within the pecking order. Breeze is very bright and extremely laid back, she is excellent with the children who are very hands on.

At this early stage of training it should be done within play drive with no pressure. Everything should be easy for her to achieve and made enjoyable. We are talking to her all the time in play training giving her plenty of encouragement.

The main steps at this moment in time are her retrieving and recall, her recall at present is fantastic, as soon as you call her name she comes back to you, or when you are play retrieving she also comes straight back to you, but we are never to quick to take the ball or sock off of her, as we don’t want her to get into the habit of dropping the retrieve.

 We are also starting to lead train her, we put a collar on and attach a lead then let her run around the house. We will occasionally tread on the lead so she gets use to sudden pressure. We also let the children walk/pull her around to get her use to walking on the lead.

So many owners teach a dog to walk with a lead but not on a lead!

This morning at 06.00am we collected a puppy out of our yellow Labrador retriever stud dog, Moss who we had in exchange for a stud fee. We have christened her Breeze, she is a very outgoing yellow Labrador bitch.

 The breeders Neil & Alison Parkin have done a fantastic job of rearing her in the first 8 weeks of puppy-hood. Our plan with Breeze is to do a step by step guide of how we introduce one of our puppies to a working life as a gundog.

This will give all an opportunity to follow our step by step guide for their own use, but also for others to give us advice  if we were to come across any stumbling blocks along the way which they may have already encountered.  Watch this space!

A new video of the Toller Pups at three Weeks Old!

In the last week the puppies have become alot more active, they are becoming more independent moving around, investigating and becoming vocal.They have started showing interest in mums food so they have been on weetabix and goats milk over the last four days and will move onto Masters Puppy Eclipse over the next week soaked in warm water an hour before feeding. The puppies were given their first course of wormer over 3 days starting last friday and finishing on Sunday. They were wormed with Panacur 10 % liquid. Amber was also wormed over the 3 days with Panacur.