Lady’s babies are here! Leonberger puppies!

 

My renewed excitement in life is kindled by the birth experience as I lived it through my Champion Mom Lady.  The babies were born two and a half weeks ago.

I will recall for you some snippets of moments of that experience.  Breeding a girl like Lady takes the cooperation of not only nature but the wonderful people in the Leonberger community.  We made some sort of verbal arrangement last summer.  Then we waited and waited month-after-month for her to come into season.

Lady had her first litter of puppies in June of 2018.  After giving birth, it seemed she would not go through the awful changes everyone told me she would experience — losing almost all of her coat, being skinny — but she did, in fact, go through stage.  Gradually she emerged again in glory ready for a show again.

For this proud mama, she did well.  No!  She was magnificent!  One of her puppies stayed with us, and Lady and Dara became close buddies.  I believe Lady truly forgot that she ever had puppies.  She lives in the moment.  Unlike the human trait of analyzing and thinking about how things happened, it seems intuitive that dogs are present for the moment only.  It’s not that they do not know things, they just don’t seem to think like we do.

I’m getting off track!

 

How we began again with Leonbergers

Back in the last decade of the last century, like many near empty nesters, we shifted to the canine children.

My husband says, each time a kid left, we got another dog.  We generally favored the female sex, and it has taken me nearly thirty years to be able to call them bitches.

Our sweet girls are “the girls” to us!

Our first Leonberger came because my husband went to a social event at the home of some folks with a Leonberger who quietly mingled among all the people there leaving vases and coffee table crudites for only the guests to enjoy.  But this was an illusion, I call “training.”

By nature, all the Leos we have had have happy tails which wreak havoc to those types of coffee table items!

Here is Dick back in 2013 with Maisy – who was our fifth Leo, and is still the most* loved!  She was born in May 2013 and was the sole survivor in her litter.

 

Maisy is a fighter who came with us having undeveloped lungs and a broken leg.   She was sorely wanted to fill a vacuum we had and lots of love have gone out to Maisy.  It is a miracle she is still with us today!

  • each one is “most loved,”  as each one is special.   Those are the feelings I have when I talk or think about each one.  The same with children and grandchildren, actually!

To your massive success!

Louise Shickle

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