day 1 portraits

Two Toes
Puppy 1
Sex: Female
Colour: Wolf Sable
Time of Birth: 16:15
Weight at birth: 418g

Named because the absolute only distinguishing feature she has from her littermates is 2 white toes on one of her back paws.  She's got eyebrows, she's got a little white chin, she's got tan arms, she's got rear dew claws on both paws.  Same as everyone!  But she has only 2 white toes and they're both on one paw.

Two-Tone

Puppy 2
Sex: Male
Colour: Wolf Sable
Time of Birth: 16:20
Weight at birth: 327g

The name is awkwardly similar to the 1st puppy's, it's true.  But this one had his name first - the second to be named, in fact.  Chosen for the colourful stripes of colour on his front legs.  This is a dangerous identification, however, because the one thing we know about the wolf sable colour is how much it changes as the puppy grows and develops.  So this little guy could end up losing his most clearly identifying feature in a matter of days.  In my defense, when he was named I thought he was black & tan.  (Is that a defense?)

Grey Wolf

Puppy 3
Sex: Female
Colour: Wolf Sable
Time of Birth: 16:25
Weight at birth: 327g

Again, I find myself with a puppy named for the very thing that is likely to change dramatically and often.  Oh well.  She was named because when the puppies are all lined up side by side, she looks grey instead of black.  Difficult to tell in these photos, of course.  Interestingly, she was exactly the same weight at birth as 2Tone and they have both increased by exactly 20g since yesterday, so still the same weight.

Dino

Puppy 4
Sex: Male
Colour: Brown & Tan
Time of Birth: 16:28
Weight at birth: 467g

No, contrary to what you might expect, he wasn't the great hulking monster who was blocking up Taika's birth canal.  He is, however, the largest puppy in any of our litters, and he was next-to-last in the birth canal.  When he came out he was enormous and looked twice as big as everyone else.  He was the quietest and slowest to come around and needed to be swung to clear his lungs.  The way you do this is to hold the puppy securely between your hands and swing it down fast from over your head.  The centrifugal force clears the airways.  However, he was so big he wouldn't fit in my hands.  Luckily Jay was there with his extremely long pianist's fingers and so he resusitated this boy.  In addition to being dinosaur-sized, he also had a very long neck at birth.  Luckily all the bones are settling where they should now, so his weird long neck is no longer in evidence.  However, when I pointed out these features, Jay promptly named him the brown-tosaurus, but as that's a bit of a mouthful, we'll call him Dino in honour of the dinosaur in the Flintstones.

Butterfly

Puppy 5
Sex: Female
Colour: Wolf sable

Time of Birth: 16:30
Weight at birth: 361g

This girl was the prettiest puppy at birth of any we have produced.  If I may speak candidly, newborn anythings are not traditionally lovely in any aesthetic sense.  However, Butterfly had the sweetest little heart-shaped head, which makes a nice change from the wedge-shaped heads that usually appear after being squeezed down the birth canal.  Again, the shape of the head changes dramatically, so I'm not expecting this to be identifiable.  Instead, she was named for the lovely and distinctive pattern of white on her chest (which, unfortunately, is not visible from the photo.  Sorry.)  She was the other puppy I originally thought was black & tan until I got a good look at her today, dry and in daylight.

So, there you have it: 2 dogs, 3 bitches; 1 brown, 4 wolf sable.  Not the rainbow litter I was expecting after all.  But they'll do just fine.