Happy Mother’s Day (& A Junior Mascot Update)

Happy (early) Mother’s Day from me, Ellie, the puppies and all the rest of the crew here in the Annex!

By way of a puppy/junior mascot update, today I took mother and babies outside for a little picture taking. They will be two weeks old on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Thus far, Ellie has been more than accomodating in allowing me to examine and hold her puppies. In fact, I think she welcomes that, as nursing seven puppies (another was lost in the first week) can likely be very tiresome.

Ellie has a little “photo phobia,” though, as as soon as she saw me getting out the phone to take photos, she eased out of the way of the ‘line’ of dogs I tried to line up in that first photo. I think she has some “vanity” issues related to the fact that her breasts are a little saggy and large at the moment. She rolled around in the grass a few feet away while I fooled around trying to get the puppies to lie still in a row. As you can see, none have this task down pat (a couple went to sleep) yet, though an earlier blurry photo I took did have all but two in a row. The puppy one each end decided to try and climb over its brothers and sisters, causing total disruption as evidenced in the first photo.

I also tried to randomly group the puppies to get some photos; for the most part, that worked OK, except the solid black ones kept turing around and trying to crawl blindly through the grass while sniffing around. In the photo at left, you can see the two dogs will turn out with that nice brown color Ellie has. The one at left was as dark as the one at right last week, and has lightened up considerably to look more like Ellie. However, Ellie doesn’t have quite as distinctive markings, nor does she have a ‘patch’ of black over one eye. The one on the right, though you can’t see it in this photo, actually has one black ‘patch’ over each eye with the little white strip down the middle connecting the nose. Also, something you can’t see, his mouth-area coloring is quite wild, with small and large black dots of fur and skin throughout.

These two were asleep almost as soon as I brought them outside and, through all of the commotion of other dogs running here and there and to and fro and waking them up briefly now and again, they just seem to have decided “screw this,” and passed out.

The puppies’ eyes aren’t open yet. I don’t know how long it takes for dogs’ eyes to open after birth. I’ve been told two weeks and, if that’s the case, then anytime after monday, we can expect some eye opening. That will no doubt be followed by tremendous mischief.

The puppies are also getting very, very plump. The biggest one is the one on the left in the first photo.

And, names have been decided upon, although not awarded, pending definate determinations on their genders. (I’ve tried to check, but the dogs don’t like being rolled on their backs, so we’ll just wait until we see the vet week after next. The names used will be as follows (some are ‘generless,’ so that’ll help): Jordan (after Barbara Jordan and a reader recommendation for boy or girl); Lyndon (after Lyndon Baines Johnson, for boy or girl); Laney (after Pete Laney, another genderless name); Senfronia (after Senfronia Thompson, clearly for the most outspoken female puppy that exhibits leadership skills early on); Leland (after Mickey Leland, another reader recommendation, thinking we’ll go genderless with that one, too); Mattox (after Jim Mattox, going genderless on that one too), Stevenson (after Coke Stevenson, has to be for a boy), Briscoe (boy or girl, after Dolph Briscoe) & Houston (a boy’s name, after Sam Houston). Hopefully, we’ll be able to use Senfronia and Stevenson. If not, Briscoe and Houston are the alternates.

Of course, since not all of these dogs will be saying in the Annex Family, I’m sure others may be inclined to change their names, but I’m going to discourage that by claimiming it is terribly traumatic to change a dog’s name…or something.

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