Puppies

Hi everybody. Claire here from Van Isle Labradoodles and we have a really big announcement for you today in this video and I mean big, in many different ways.

This is the arrival announcement video for the Shake it Up litter. As you can see, this is a big litter. In fact, this is the very biggest litter we have ever had at Van Isle Labradoodles. We have 11 medium, multi generation Australian Labradoodle puppies here, courtesy of Breezy and Bruno. We knew Breezy was going to give us quite a few puppies because she was a very good size with her pregnancy, but we never anticipated she was going to give us 11 puppies. That’s really something.

Interestingly, our previous record for large letter is held by Breezy’s momma Oceana. Oceana’s litter that she had that was the largest was 10 puppies, so obviously this line produces a great many puppies, which is good for us and great for our families. It makes so many people happy. It is a lot of work for our girls, so we’re giving Breezy some really extra special care and attention so that she can manage this big litter.

Today’s video we’re going to introduce you to all 11 of these little cutie pies and then we’re going to talk a little bit about Breezy, a little bit about the litter in general and then we’re going to give you some information about some resources and some books that you can start looking through and some videos to start getting ready for your Shake it Up puppy to come home to you.

This litter, as I said, is the largest litter we have ever had at Van Isle Labradoodles. It’s quite amazing that Breezy was able to produce 11 puppies, that’s a lot of work for Breezy and she did it without a single complaint and just did it as if she had been having 11 puppies at one time, multiple times. She was just fantastic to work with. No complaining, just did the job and got it all done. Took her a little while to get started. We had about an hour between the first four or five puppies and then after that we started having them at a little bit of a faster pace.

She actually started having her puppies at just after 11:00 pm on Sunday night and then the rest of the puppies were born yesterday on Monday. Just for ease of reference going to say that their birthdays are all on Monday and then not have two birthdays and to be honest, I can’t remember precisely which one of the puppies is which as to who was born on Sunday and which one was born on Monday. We were all pretty busy with the Breezy delivering this great big litter.

The other thing that’s a little bit interesting about this litter and unexpected is that all the puppies are black. We have four solid blacks, and the rest of them are black and white parti’s. While Bruno and Breezy had the possibility of having black puppies, statistically that is not what she should have had very many of. We should have had more in cream and chocolate, but obviously mother nature likes to make sure that we all know she’s the boss and so the statistics be damned, what we got instead was all blacks and black and white puppies. They’re beautiful. Black puppies are my favorite color. I love the depth and the richness and the glean that you see in their coats. It is something that I find to be very attractive and I really, really like parti puppies.

I think it’s so interesting how each of them have a different pattern and each one of them is very unique. There are no two parti’s with the same markings on their coats. It is a very pretty litter and we have lots of families who are going to be very happy. Indeed we have extra puppies on this litter so there is going to be some families who have an opportunity to not have to wait very long for a puppy. Normally, at Van Isle Labradoodles we’re booked up for six months to a year in advance, so this is a very rare and unique opportunity.

Let’s meet these puppies. They’re all going to nature to be medium Australian Labradoodle puppies, so they’re going to be a little bit bigger than Breezy. Breezy herself is usually around 36 pounds and she’s about 17 inches and Bruno is about 38 pounds and he’s about 18 and a half inches. Between the two of them the puppies are going to average out to being slightly bigger than Breezy. They’re going to be a little bit closer to our girl Spirit’s size. Spirit is about the same height as Breezy, but she weighs more than Breezy; she weighs about 40 pounds.

I’m going to use some notes for this litter because we have so many puppies. I can’t remember each one of them all exactly, so I’m going to refer to my notes to let you know what their birth weights are. We’ll start off here with Ms.Pink Collar if she’s not busy and I can find her. I think she’s over here actually. Yeah, she is. She’s having a little bit of a sleep. I’m just going to move orange over here. There we go baby girl. We’ll get Ms.Pink Collar. Most of these puppies are females as well. We only have three boys.

This is Pink Collar giving you a beautiful look inside her mouth.

The pink collar is a really pretty black and white parti girl. You’ll see that they jerk around quite a bit. And I’ll explain to you why they do that in just a moment. And one thing pink collar has is this really adorable little beauty spot on the left side of her face. So she has really symmetrical markings on her face, with the black being fairly evenly distributed. And then she has a good bit of black on her head. Both of her ears are black. And then she has some really pretty black spots on her back. So very nice markings. And then on her tail you’ll see how at the base it’s black, and then it’s white up here. She even has one little black smudge here, more like a little freckle.

So we’ve started scenting with the dogs. And that’s where we put them up to our neck and we let them feel our chest vibrate as we talk. And we do that so that they learn right from the very first day that humans are good and humans give comfort. So, as I pick up each of the puppies, you’ll see me doing that with them. So little pink collar girl was 370 grams when she was born. So she’s actually the largest puppy at birth. Now just because she’s the largest at birth does not mean necessarily that she’ll remain the largest throughout the entire time of the litter. That’s just what happened when she was born.

And now the next one that we’ll talk about here is yellow collar. And I’m just going to interrupt her from nursing, which is probably not going to make her very happy. Well just take her off gently there. So this is yellow collar. And yellow collar is also a parti. But she is a little bit different than pink collar because she’s what we call an extreme parti. Extreme parti is something that you don’t see that many of. But that means that her body is all white. Her only color is on her head. And you can see even this ear here is a little bit different because it’s got some black, and then it’s outlined in the white. And where you see pink, that will be white later. It’s just because she’s a baby that it’s pink now. And even her tail is all white. And it’s quite unusual in a parti to have a solid, white tail. Normally we have the base of the tail in the color of the parti and then the top part of it is the white. But this girl, being an extreme, has lots of white on her. So she’s going to be a very unique and really pretty looking girl. Her head is really going to cause a lot of attention and show off her beautiful good looks.

So miss yellow was 340 grams when she was born, so a little bit smaller than pink but not terribly. We’ll put her back here right where she was at the milk bar. And we’ll see if she can just get herself reattached so that we didn’t disturb her too much. And there she is, she’s latched right on again. Oh, not quite. But she will there in just a second. There we go.

And the next little puppy that we’re going to look at here is purple collar girl. And she’s over here. And you’ll see that I just touch them all a little bit before I pick them up just so that they’re not startled when they’re being handled. Again, that’s all part of them learning that people are nice, good and comfortable. So purple collar girl is just like pink collar girl in that she’s quite a well-marked parti. And you can see her face is a little different though in that it is primarily black. The only bit of white on her head is right at the top there. Otherwise she has a predominantly black face. So that’s really beautiful. She’s got really cute little markings. And she has a little smudge of black right at the end of her pink nose. And then you can see she has a really nice, good, black spot around her neck, a couple of more on the back. And then she, too, has this very unique all-white tail. So we’ll just have her come up here and we’ll give her a little bit of a snuggle, let her feel my vibrations and let her smell me, and tell you that purple collar girl was 314 grams at birth. So she was smaller than the others, but only a few grams. There’s not a huge difference in size between any of them.

So next let’s move on to orange collar girl. We’ll put miss purple back where she was. And orange collar girl is nursing as well so she’ll maybe be a bit angry at me. But we’ll try to make this as easy as possible. Orange collar girl was the first puppy that was born in the litter. And she is one of the all blacks, as you can see. And you can see what I’m talking about when I say how I love the rich, dark gleam of a black coat. I think there’s nothing prettier than a black puppy. They’re just gorgeous. And this little girl has two little, tiny splashes of white on her hind toes there. So not very much color to her. She’s mostly a black girl. And miss orange, she weighed 340 grams when she was born. So she’s a good size too. So let’s see if we can get her back where she had her spot at the milk bar there or another spot that’s open so she’s not too mad at me for taking her away from her meal there. We’ll just put her down and let her sort that out. As you can see, they’re very good at having lots of strength at getting to the milk bar.

Now the next one we’ll look at is one of the boys. And that is mister green collar here. And by taking him I’ll maybe open up a space there for orange to go get something to eat. I’m just going to redirect her in that direction. So here’s mister green collar boy. Mister green is a parti as well. And he’s similar to miss pink in that he has very symmetrical markings on his face. He’s got the two black patches over his eyes. And then he’s got that adorable little spot at the top of his head. And mister green also has these really cool ears. So you can see there’s a little bit of black down it, then it’s white on the side. And then also on this ear it’s got white sort of as an outline at the base of his ear. Then he’s got what is probably two spots that have merged together here, and then a little dot at the back of him right by his tail. And then he, too, has that really unique all-white tail. So this litter has some really interesting markings with these different features. And mister green collar weighed 332 grams when he was born. So we’ll put him back and see if he can find his way back to a good spot. Or Breezy might want to give him a little check. There we go mister green.

Now you’ll notice that Breezy is cleaning all of the puppies as I put them back. And that’s partly to reassure herself that I haven’t done anything that might have harmed them and that everything is going well with them. And then for a couple other reasons that we’ll discuss right at the end of the video here.

So next one we’re going to do is miss red collar girl, if I can just find her. She’s underneath miss purple here. Miss purple’s using her as a nice pillow. And here we go. Here is miss red collar girl. Now miss red collar girl is another pretty black girl. But she has quite a bit of white markings on her. So if you can see her toes, at the front she has some white, her toes at the back, and then you can see on her chest there and under her neck she has some white as well. So she has quite a bit of markings on her undercarriage. But she also has a little goatee. Now that goatee has quite a story. The goatee comes from her grandma on her father, Bruno’s, side. And that’s Bijoux. Bijoux’s puppies all have a little goatee. So we see in her grandchildren now that that shows up quite often. So miss red collar girl was 335 grams when she was born. So, again, she’s sort of right there in the middle. So we’ll put her back and see if purple can use her again as another pillow. They like to rest on top of each other.

And now let’s do light blue collar here. He’s one of the boys. We only have three boys in this litter, which is quite something. Usually we end up with more boys than girls it seems lately. So this litter is evening that out. Mister light blue collar is an adorable little fellow. He’s a little smaller. He weighed 313 grams when he was born. So he was the second smallest at birth. And he’s just an adorable little tiny package. And he has no white on him at all, other than he does have a little smidge of a goatee. But, by the time he gets older, that goatee probably isn’t going to be too obvious. So that’s our little light blue collar boy. So let’s put him back down because he was having a nice, little sleep. Here we go little buddy. Maybe we’ll put him over here where’s there’s a little bit more space.

And the next doggy we’ll do is gray collar. And she is another girl and another one of these beautiful, gleaming, black dogs. So you can see on gray collar, you can see her goatee. It shows up a little bit more. She has a little bit more of one than her brother does there. And she has just a little wink of white at the very tips of her toes on that one foot. And that’s all that she has. And gray collar girl was 326 grams at birth. So she’s one of the smaller ones. She’s a very sweet little girl, very nice and quiet.

Then the next boy that we’ll, or actually it’s a girl, we’re going to do is right over here. And this is dark blue collar girl. Now this little girl is a little bit different from everyone else. Dark blue collar girl is a parti, as you can see. She has that beautiful diamond right in the center of her head. Her right ear is black and her left ear is half black and half white. And if you look at the side of her face, she has sable markings. That’s what that brown coloring is. That is very unique and really, really pretty. So as she matures, she’ll end up with these nice little bits of copper brown coloring on the sides of her face similar to phantom markings.

So if you watch our video on the Cinnamon Swirl litter, which was born just a couple of days before this Shake It Up litter, you’ll see that those Labradoodle puppies are all chocolate phantom Labradoodles. So they have full phantom markings. And phantoms are tan points similar to a Rottweiler or a Doberman. So these puppies carry sable but not phantom. And so you’ll get a little bit of smudges here and there on a couple of them. So that’s what dark blue collar girl has. And miss dark blue collar was 329 grams when she was born. We’ll just put her over there.

Next is right here. And that’s miss peach. Come here little girl. There we go. There’s miss peach. Miss peach is a beautifully-marked parti girl. You can see on her face she has a little smidge of white off on the right-hand side of her muzzle and up the middle of her nose. And then there’s a tiny little smidge up there in the middle of her head. She has both black ears, very nice markings on her back. These two spots are combined. And she almost has an all-white tail. But she has a little bit of that spot that’s flowing over into the base of her tail. And miss peach was 283 grams when she was born. So she is the tiniest puppy in the litter. Hey sweet girl. I believe she was the last one born. And quite often the last one born does weigh the least at birth. But that does not mean that she’ll stay weighing the least. We’ll put her back down there.

And last but not least is mister brown collar boy, one of the boys who apparently is hiding at the moment. I cannot see him. He must be maybe this one over here. I kind of have to dig around. Yep, there he is. I’ll just take him off of his spot at the milk bar and hope he doesn’t get angry at me. And here we go. Now mister brown collar boy is also an extreme parti. So he has really cool features. I love the way his markings are on his head. He has a big white expanse. And then he’s got his black patches off to the side. And then his right ear has a little smidge of a white racing stripe down the side there. And his left ear is almost totally white. And then he has the one little black spot on his back. And that’s it for color on this guy. So he’s a really interestingly marked fellow. Very unique and really is going to be just adorable as he gets older. So mister brown was 329 grams when he was born. Oh, and you can see on mister brown, we have some remnants of his bellybutton showing still. That’ll just dry up and fall off soon.

So now just a little bit about the litter overall and different things about what the puppies are doing. So first of all, as you know there’s 11 puppies. And at the milk bar there are eight stools. So we have 11 patrons and eights stools. So we will be monitoring very closely the weights of the puppies to make sure that nobody is getting left out or not finding a spot. So far everybody is really vigorous and really well able to find their way to get there spots. And generally what happens is the puppies, on their own, divide themselves into a couple of groups. So the first half will nurse while the second half sleeps, and then they switch. If they aren’t doing that on their own, then we’ll come in and we will actually help them do that. We will split them into two groups, monitor it, and make sure that’s happening.

So for now they’re all gaining equally. So we haven’t had to worry yet. But if that does become a problem, then we will intervene. I’m just keeping Breezy’s foot over here so that it’s a little bit easier for the puppies to get in and find a place at the milk bar. So it’s a lot of resources for Breezy to provide to this many puppies. So we will give her extra support, extra food, a few extra supplements and some extra bowls to make sure that she stays in tiptop condition. We will also be monitoring her very closely to make sure that she’s doing well and is able to maintain this many little mouths.

Another thing that’s really important for Breezy is to drink a lot of water. When the girls are nursing, it’s really important that they have lots of fluids. So if she’s starting to go, “Nah, I don’t really want to drink,” then we’ll put some liver broth or chicken broth in it to encourage her. But so far we don’t need to encourage her to eat. She’s doing very well with her appetite. And when the girls at first have their babies, they’re really reluctant to leave them at all. So it’s a little bit of an effort to get her to go out and go to the bathroom. She’s getting a little more comfortable with that now. At first we had to leash her and actually take her out. But now she understands and she will come out. And sometimes she’s doesn’t want to come out of her box to eat her food so we’ll place her food in front of her. But if that still is making her uncomfortable, then we’ll just hand-feed her.

So right now Hazel, from the Cinnamon Swirl litter, is having to be hand-fed. Ripple’s pretty good about eating on her own. Oceana is eating with the rest of the dogs. And Breezy is sort of back and forth on the two. So we’ll just do whatever it takes to make sure she maintains a good weight and that she’s in really good condition because we want to make sure that Breezy was well taken care of as the puppies are.

Now one of the things I was mentioning, and you can see when you look at the puppies- I’ll just get Reynold to put the camera down on the puppies again- is when they’re sleeping you’ll see, you can watch here in green, you can see he’s moving around a little bit. You can see his legs are moving. And you can see that in peach collar girl too, that her legs are moving. And lots of times people think that that’s because the puppies are dreaming. But it actually isn’t because they’re dreaming. That’s what nature does to give them exercise and help build their muscles and give them strength. And that’s what gives them enough strength so that they can come in here and push their way in and find their way to the milk bar. So that’s what all those herky-jerky movements are about.

And, as most of you probably know, the puppies are all born with their eyes sealed shut. So they’re blind for at least the first 10 days. They can’t see anything. But some people aren’t aware that their ears are also sealed shut. You can even see, in the ear here, that they are completely closed. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose is that Mother Nature had in mind for those two things. But their ears open up after their eyes. So normally their eyes open up around 10 days to two weeks and their ears open up around three weeks or so.

And the other thing the puppies can’t do right now is eliminate on their own. So that’s why Breezy is licking them all the time. She’ll lick them, and she’ll lick their stomachs to keep them clean but also to stimulate them. So that is why you see a momma dog always licking her puppies. And you can see that they’re all pretty much spotless. Breezy’s doing a really good job of keeping them nice and clean and tidy. And that’s quite a bit of work to maintain 11 little bodies.

So that’s the news on the puppies and the litter. And now I just want to refer you to a couple of resources to help you prepare for your new puppies’ arrival. These resources we’ve picked because they most closely mirror our approach and our philosophy to puppy raising and our relationships with our dogs. Times have changed fastly since when I was a kid and had my first puppy in the 1960s. We did things very differently then. I know I can remember my parents, if our dog went to the bathroom on the carpet, they usually got a swat on the nose with rolled up newspaper. And they sometimes got their noses put into where they’d gone to the bathroom, and they promptly were tossed out the door. Now we’ve learned and evolved from then and know that that’s not the most effective way to house train your dogs. Our dogs all survived but we know how to do it in a little bit kinder fashion now and a little bit more effective fashion.

So these books and resources I’m going to refer you to reflect more what is current and the approaches we take, as I said. So the first one I’m going to tell you about is Dr. Sophia Yin. Sophia Yin most closely mirrors what we do with our dogs. She’s had a huge influence on us and how we raise our puppies, how we raise our adults, and our whole general thinking towards puppy raising. So I will give you links below in the video here for everybody I’m mentioning. The one item of Sophia Yin’s that I find that I like to recommend most highly is her book “The Perfect Puppy in Seven Days”. Now Dr. Yin has her books in video form as well. So if you have young children, or yourself, if you prefer watching videos, you can have it all in video format. And I do find when you have children they learn much, much more and they pay attention more if it’s in video format as opposed to in written format.

The other person we really recommend is Ian Dunbar. Dr. Dunbar has been a vet for a very long time. He has really good, practical approaches to things. And he too has many different products available, videos, books. He has specialized information. He even has Udemy courses online which are only about $15. So, again, you might want to search through those and see if there’s something that looks like it would be great for you or for you and your family. And his book that I really like to recommend to everyone is “Before and After Getting Your Puppy”. So it’s a really good book. It’s a practical book. It tells you some things that you need to know beforehand but it also takes you through to after your puppy’s an adult. A lot of the training books stop once the puppy has reached about six months of age.

And the final one I’m going to suggest, I’m going to recommend for sure that you read this book. It’s an outstanding book. It is my favorite book of all time to do with dogs and our relationships with them. But you might want to wait until your puppy’s about six months old. Get the practical things out of the way, get the house training out of the way. Get everything into a routine. And at six months your dog’s pretty much mature in any event. And then take some time and just enjoy reading the book more like a novel. And that book is “Bones Would Rain From the Sky” by Suzanne Clothier. And this is not a how-to book. This is not, “If you want your dog to sit, this is how you do it.” This book is just a story of relationships. It is the author herself who is a trainer and dogs that she has worked with that other trainers didn’t have success with, and how she was able to bring them around. So I highly recommend that.

And her book is the antithesis of how Cesar Milan approaches dogs that other trainers have not had success with. So we don’t recommend his style as it’s not appropriate for Labradoodles. Labradoodles are a very gentle breed. They have been bred with great care to be wonderful with people, children, older people, and to work as therapy dogs. So dogs with that type of temperament do not respond well to a heavy-handed approach. So Mr. Milan’s approach is much more about being the alpha, the dominant in the relationship. We don’t recommend that at all. We don’t practice that at all. We don’t have any alpha or dominant things going on in our house. Our puppies are certainly not brought up that way here. We don’t have any of the things about you have to eat first and your dog has to do exactly what he or she is told. We prefer to earn our dog’s respect and to enjoy our mutual love for one another and make that pretty much unconditional. Very similar to how we would raise our children.

And that’s it for the resources. I think that’ll keep you busy for the time being. There is only a few short weeks before these puppies will be leaving us and going to live with you. We do have some extra spots in this litter. So if you have been thinking about getting a puppy from us but were somewhat deterred by the rather long waiting list, now’s your chance to get in there. A couple of them have already gone, but we do have a couple of spots that are still available. And if you would like to be considered for one of these puppies, please go to our website, which is www.vanisledoodles.com. And under the puppies tab or the home page or the purchasing tab, you’ll find a link to the application form there that you can send in.

And that’s it for this week’s video. Next week we’re going to talk a little bit about what has changed. There will be big changes in the first week. We’ll go over what their weight gains have been, how Breezy’s managing with them, and how everybody’s managing with 11 hungry mouths and only eight spots at the milk bar. And I know that either Breezy and the puppies will have worked it out or we’ll have helped them. But we’ll have it all worked out. So I really hope you enjoyed this video. We’d really appreciate it if you’d give us a thumbs up if you liked it.

If you have any questions or comments, then please, please put them below. I’m always happy to answer all of your comments on our videos. And the links are there for you as well, which I really hope that you’ll follow through with. So we will see you next week. And be sure to subscribe to our channel, and you can get all the updates as well for the Cinnamon Swirl litter, the Razzle Dazzle litter and the Café Noir litter. We have 27 puppies right now and four videos a week coming out. So there’s lots and lots of puppies to look at and enjoy and lots of information to get from our videos. Thanks for watching.