Maggie and her brothers and sisters are now a year old!!!

Happy Birthday to Maggie, Scrumpy, Mylo, Poppy, Cash, Maverick and Star!

I hope you have had a smashing first year!

Katherine with Maggie

Smiling Maggie!

The Gang on Maggie’s Birthday

and not forgetting Melvin had his birthday on Sunday! Class of 2011 are now 3!!

Before I do the March birthdays, I must wish my Molly a happy birthday, 24th February – she is now 6 years old, we bought her some lovely chewies to share with the gang, but just forgot to update the website! oops!

It is the start of Crufts tomorrow.  With gundog day being Sunday the 9th March – which is also the Best in Show and MORE importantly Melvin’s birthday and his siblings!.

Sam, Melvin, Bunty, Amber, Summer, Rocky, Marley and Tess are all now three years old!

I am so lucky I do still get photos of my babies and they are developing so well into lovely young adult dogs!

Happy Birthday to the class of 2011

It is also Maggies Birthday coming up – 11th March!  I cannot believe we were waiting for our puppies to arrive this time last year.  I was so lucky to get the choice between three black girls.

Here is a family photograph taken recently.

With Maggie, Stanley, Molly, Archie, Melvin and Charlie on the bench, then Maverick, Holly and Bunty in front of the bench.  (at Wembury Point)

Melvin and the gang in action!

Melvin the Tiggeretriever!  He loves to fly!

Katherine’s 12th Birthday with her woofs!  Happy Birthday!!

Having had Frisky stay with us for a little while, I have been waiting for the opportunity of looking after another lamb again.  Frisky was one of triplets and we had her from a day old.  Frisky imprinted on to us very easily as she didn’t know anything else.  She followed us everywhere and responded to us calling her.  We now have a lamb who is already a week old.  We have named him Wilbaa!  Wilbaa, although doing well hasn’t (as yet) imprinted on us.  Im not sure if he will or not as he seems a little hesitant about us holding him!

Wilbaa was also one of triplets and was fostered on to another mum.  Usually when triplets are born it is common practice to foster a lamb out to a singleton mum.  In this particular case, the foster mum had twins.  Sadly both twins had died so she had plenty of milk to offer.  Unfortunately the fostering was unsuccessful.  So this is where I step in!

Wilbaa is now suckling really well from the bottle (although he doesn’t initially like the feel of the teat) and has a lovely skip around the living room!  Today he met the cat for the first time.  Maggie has been looking after Wilbaa by nurturing him.  It is so lovely to see her licking him and generally caring for him, getting anxious when she cant be with him!  So sweet!

Mitzi and Wilbaa

Katherine with her little lambie!

Meet Frisky, we are looking after her for a week or so to make her strong before she goes back to the farm where we will watch her grow and play with other lambs her age.

Frisky is now four days old.  In the photos she is 2 and 3 days old.

Lambs can suffer with hypothermia so they can die very easily in the first critical days.

For some reason I cannot upload the video clip as a link, so if you copy this link, this will show you Frisky at 2 days old.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2jRk-UBTC0&feature=youtu.be

Everyone at Marchstone, the woofs, Smokey our pony, the cats, the rabbits and the parrot (oh and the fish too!)  would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Best wishes for the new year.

Thank you to everyone for keeping in touch with me throughout the year with a variety of photos and videos of our wonderful puppies.  I have been so lucky to have visits too, from the puppies!  This years litter have turned out so good!   I am very proud of them not only that…. I would like to mention dear little Tess – the spitting image of our Molly.  For those that don’t know – Tess was going to be our little Marchstone Maggie when we kept Melvin.  It is really lovely and special for me to know how very loved she is.

I wonder what new additions we can look forward to next? (though not until Spring 2015 for puppies – such a long way off!)

I was so excited to collect my parcel full of beautiful collars!

L-R – Stanley in a snoopy collar with bow tie, Charlie in tweed, SuperMelvin, Molly with lovely purple hearts, Maggie pretty in pink both girls with smashing flowers, and Archie in jellybean collar and bow tie.

I will be adding a new album showing the collars off in detail.

I am thrilled with them – the service I have been given by Tillymint Dog Designs was brilliant.  So much choice and a lot of thought has gone into each collar!

I love love love Stanleys Snoopy collar!  Charlie of course looks so distinguished in his collar!  The girls collars are so pretty and feminine.  They are all perfect.  I think I may need to order some more bow ties for Archie (some different colours, one for every day of the week! LOL!)

Take a look at the Tillymint Photos

We have had a busy couple of days, with Holly staying with us.  Holly is the first bitch that Molly gave us in our first litter.  She is litter sister to Stanley.  So it has been a lot of fun taking Holly out with her family which also included Bunty!

Here are a few family photos!

This is Stanley and Holly from our first litter, then Maggie from the fourth litter, Molly (mum to all!), Melvin and Bunty from the second litter.

Here is a group photo (L-R) Bunty, Maggie, Stanley, Holly, Archie, Molly, Charlie, Melvin.

Family photo of Molly (Mum), Holly, Stanley, (the kids!) Archie (Dad).

PHOTOBOMBED! by Bunty!   Bless her she didn’t want to get missed out!

I have received a lovely surprise today!  A beautiful bouquet of flowers arrived for me, to say thank you for the help I had given to a lady with a litter of 7 furbabies!

Very glad to be of help!  Enjoy your puppies Donna!

Woo hoo happy half birthday puppies to Maggie, Scrumpy, Poppy, Mylo, Cash, Maverick and Star!

I hope the puppies are all behaving themselves and doing well in their training.

Don’t forget that all training has to remain consistent and fair.  Puppies are likely regress with their training between 6 and 9 mths.  just take your training exercises back to basics.  (as though they haven’t had any training whatsoever!).

It is worming time!  After this you can worm your puppy every 3-6 months.

The bad news (from your puppies point of view) is that it is time to take them down to TWO MEALS.  Of course they will think you have forgotten and it is hard for them to grasp the idea of not getting the third meal!!!.

I hope you are all enjoying your puppies as much as we are loving having Maggie – who is another tiggeretriever – with invisible springs on her paws!

I am so pleased that we have had another day of fun with the dogs.  We took Molly, Melvin and Maggie to a dog show held at the Donkey Sanctuary nr Ivybridge.  a very well run show with a lot of fun classes to take part in.  We had such a good time and I hope the donkey sanctuary made a lot of money today!

Maggie:- 4th for best puppy, 2nd for prettiest bitch, 3rd for clean bowl challenge, 4th for fastest to eat a bonio.

Melvin:- 1st for handsome dog, 2nd for clean bowl challenge, 3rd for fastest to eat a bonio, Special prize in the lucky dip class (dog most like its owner).

BEST IN SHOW – MELVIN!!

So pleased that Melvin got best in show as we do think he is the best boy in Plymouth! if not Devon! 😉

We also took part in the scurry which was the first time our dogs have actually handled a dummy.  Melvin did retrieve the dummy (once he knew he was allowed to play with it!)  and enjoyed himself.  We also took part in the agility.  Katherine ran Melvin with a time of 30.6 seconds, I also ran with Molly.  I don’t know my time!!! (funny that!!!)  The agility was great fun.

Melvin and Katherine in action

A thoroughly enjoyable day where we also got to see the donkeys and give them a cuddle.

The day finished with Katherine having her photo taken for the local paper, with Molly, Maggie and Melvin!  Im so proud of all of them!

The highlight was the clean bowl challenge – all the dogs thoroughly enjoyed racing along to the bowls – making sure it was empty and charging up to the next bowl.  (2 sausages in each bowl – five bowls!) They had to eat every sausage in the bowl and race back again!!!!   Of course this event is something the labradors will be incredibly good at though we did not take part in the “temptation alley” class! No surprises there!  (the dog that came first was also a Labrador, with Melvin in second and Maggie third!).  Funnily enough we also enjoyed the spirit of the event for the fastest eating bonio contest!!!  It was good competitive fun!

                                                       Team Marchstone – WELL DONE

So that Stanley didn’t feel left out we took him up to see Smokey.  We did some obedience and agility training.  Stanley loves it!  Stanley in action.