new poll

I've been rooting around looking through the blog archives and enjoying the puppies all over again. It's hard for me to believe, but I haven't had a poll on the blog since Sept 08 when Maija's litter were going off to their new homes. Has it really been that long? The polls are fun and when there are puppies in the house there are loads of events to have a little game about, so I thought I'd kick off with the first one about Taika's litter.

Hoped for litter. Do you suppose I'm jinxing the whole thing by even referring to it? There is one school of thought - the School of Superstitious Paranoia - that says you should keep your mouth shut about stuff until it happens. But where's the fun in that?

So, I'm giving readers plenty of time to vote in the poll as these news-less days I know many people only check in with the blog occasionally. The most votes I think I ever had on one of the puppy polls was 16, which was pretty good, actually. However, there are a lot more people reading these days. I've had messages & emails from all over the world from all sorts of strangers saying how much they enjoy the blog, and that's very nice, folks - thanks! So it will be interesting to see if some of those readers participate in the polls too and bump up the number of votes.

In 3 weeks Taika will be scanned to see whether she is indeed pregnant and how many puppies she is likely to have. By the time the scan date rolls around we'll probably have a pretty good idea whether she is pregnant or not, but the number of puppies is always a big mystery. Kath, the woman I go to for scanning is excellent, I must say. With my first litter she said "It's a bit early but I can definitely see 7." And Neka had 7. With the second litter Kath very kindly agreed to see me as she was practically on her way out the door heading for the airport and her holiday. It was the earliest possible day it's even worth scanning and I was on my way back from a show. So, we were all in a bit of a hurry. She had a very quick rummage before Neka shifted position and she lost the image and said she saw 7 again but that if she had more time she might find more. Yep, that would be the 9 then.

So, Taika will also be going to see Kath but it won't be so early. With Neka, either by the time of the scan, or literally 2 days later, it was very obvious that she was pregnant. So, I guess we'll know with Taika too, even if we suspect bad news and don't want to admit it to ourselves. The poll, then, is this. How many puppies will the scanner find?

I was going to add an option to vote that she won't be pregnant at all, but that really would be tempting fate, so I'm just not going there.

For those of you new to the Infindigo polls, you can find the voting buttons at the top right of the blog. Happy voting! Check back in 3 weeks for the result. And if, in all the excitement, I somehow forget to post the results, I'm sure someone will remind me.

Now we're off to the beach, so photos later.