Turkish Dogs - particularly Anatolian Shepherd Dogs

The puppies are getting bigger of course. Now that their eyes and ears are open, they are responding more to their environment, which includes their littermates. They are also climbing out of the wading pool from time to time. I enjoy that since it gives me an excuse to familiarize them with the cold hard floor and other convenient surfaces, as opposed to the puppy blankets they live on now. And it gives me an excuse to cuddle and enjoy them. :)

They are so cute, opening their mouths and sometimes just laying on their backs, or sitting up in a sit, til a wobbling puppy wanders close enough to be tasted. Their little teeth are also coming through and very pointy fangs are among them! Zor sometimes doesn't look very comfy when a puppy tugs especially hard! Ouch. She'll nudge them quickly. She'll teach them to be careful with those teeth. :)


Some puppies with their mouths open as they look at each other. 3 weeks old.

That's "Darth" mouthing the back of his littermate "Batman".

They mouth each others paws, ears, fur. They mouth Zor. They mouth people too. They can certainly give one the weirdest sensation when they suck on ones earlobe or nosetip if held up in a cuddle/nuzzle! eeeeee!!! :p


Above: They aren't really playing dominance games yet, but I did find this picture in the mass of pics I've been taking lately.

That's the smallest female (of three) climbing on top of "Darth", the black headed male. In a few seconds, they just fell into a heap and went to sleep, so there wasn't the sort of hierachy going on as one sees in older dogs who are playing this way.

Their paws are enlarging now, to better support their roly polyness.


Above: Liver female, middle fawn female, and a brother (laying down).

Liver female seems to be a character. She's vocal, more active and the largest of her sisters at the moment.


Here's "Darth" kissing his mommy, Zor above.


Chocolate girl.

Did I say she is vocal? She seems to have an opinion if Zor doesn't step up with the refreshments quickly enough!

Livers and dilutes do not have eumelanin (true black pigment) in their eyes. That is, they don't have black pigment that can make the deeper brown colors in eyes. Eyes will be blueish for the earliest part of their first year. They will have a dirty tinge to it as it washes to greenish then amber. They are the ones that get the 'red eye' in flash. Eyes of dogs that have black pigment will glow a greenish color when light shines into their eyes.


And of course ... Here is Ruya with the babies.

You can see how roly poly the liver sister is next to one of the males in the litter.

Ruya is from Zor's first litter. She adores playing mommy with the puppies and is so sad, whimpering when she feels left out. :(

Ruya LOVES puppies! She wants to be with them all the time, but Zor's adamant that at least for now, to have the puppies all to herself although that is changing now with the emergence of teeth and the increasing independence of the babies. So I've not been giving Ruya regular access to the litter. Once a day at most. Puppies do try to nurse from her but no milk is forthcoming although I think if she had constant access to them, she'd be lactating. Nevertheless, the puppies sleep very soundly after their efforts with Ruya and she is reluctant to leave them. :)


So here I am trying to get cute pics of puppy faces and end up with shot after shot of all seven of them averting their heads from the camera.

They're ready to start on very soft solid food. I generally start with a messy but easy-to-digest goat milk and baby rice cereal goop with a little cottage cheese. They walk in it and get it everywhere but they get used to lapping that up, then I move them on to soaked/softened puppy chow with kefir added as a probiotic.


Naptime!

Edited Nov 13, 2006
- Nicknames of pups -
Making a small case 'j' starting with three pups making the 'dot' over the 'j' at the top:

Mr T - collar
Spot
J

Darth - black head
Neil
Coco - chocolate pup
Batman - the one with the head upside down on the left

Labels: 2006Litter

I only have ONE picture so far and haven't had much time to play with training and the other pet goals in the game. This is an Anatolian I made in the Sims 2 Pets. I wanted one that looks like Ruya first and played around with the various layers of color (using black, brown, white, and cream) that you can blend into the coat and assign different levels of transparency. Here you see her curled up on the bed, which she did autonomously when her sim person took off to go to work after feeding her and praising her for some good things she did.

The cat and dog creator in the game is really amazing. At some of the fansites for the game, people are making some really cool looking critters including an approximation of a Llama (that thinks he's a dog since the behavior for the critters is hard coded to be either canine or feline with many variations on personalities) and some really good looking bears (modeled on the dog creator)... some very cute red foxes too, modeled on the cat creator I think. There is also a Kangal dog with a pretty curly tail on ModtheSims2.com which looks as though he were modeled from a picture.

There are some rather disturbing looking lumpy critters turning up on forums here and there, but their magic is in showing how flexible the mesh can be made to create strange critters or approximations of other animal forms. I love it! Apparently the template mesh for doggies includes a pink tongue, and if you warp a mesh crazily enough, you can relocate that tongue in odd folds and lumps of simulated pixel critter being. Pretty wild. As a mad scientist type, I approve. heehee - I want to see how some of those things can fetch a stick, dig a hole or eat. ;) :D

Labels: The_Sims_2

Check out the month of October at the blog at Shepherds Rest Farm. One of the youngsters bred by Shepherds Rest Farm went with his breeder to Africa! Information on the cats and cheetah conservation program are being blogged there.

Labels: breed_info, Critters

Well, a fun weekend was had by all and this post has two overlapping sections :)

Part One:
I've been gradually catching up with sleep in bits and pieces (generally less than four hours at a time), and trying to get caught up on some of the email that has amassed over the past month or so, when I'm feeling somewhat coherently awake -- I am, alas, quite a bit behind still. Thus it was really great fun and a change of pace when some friends came to visit Sunday to meet and inadvertently help us socialize the puppies (that's serious work in case you didn't know! lol).

Right after their visit, we left for Apple Hill bringing Ruya along. She enjoyed the ride and hung out while we waited in long lines at various checkouts as we purchased our annual fix of goodies from apple harvest. She was very calm and sweet, and politely accepted a lot of petting including gentle pats and playful pokes from children who were a fair bit shorter than she. Everyone there was very courteous and asked if it were okay before petting. There were other dogs on leash to meet too, spotted doxies, a cute Bernese Mountain dog, shelties, various poo mutts, and others. She seemed interested mostly in the tiny dogs and would go on alert to gaze at them (are they puppies? she must have wondered). She was indifferent about most other dogs. She seemed to impress a lot of people and we answered the standard FAQs on breed ID, what do they do, what is her name, how old, where do they come from, etc. It was great fun!

We didn't get home til dark and with James driving, poor Ruya and I were literally drooping in our seats with fatigue from the long day (both of us had been awake before dawn). It was funny to see she didn't want to lay down to sleep during the ride but had her eyes closed and neck drooping as she snoozed and sometimes startled herself by flopping against the back of the car seat. Rinse, repeat!

Part Two:
The weekend was also part of a progression in an ongoing and smooth effort to get our Anatolians ready for when we move the puppies outside where they will live until they go to their new homes. Mama dogs don't always want all the other canine pack members to socialize with the young babies too soon, but in time it becomes okay and this is what we are working on.

The puppies learn to be more respectful of others and to have more self control when they learn pack behavior from an early age. As they get bigger, they become more aware of how their behavior exacts a certain response from other pack members and humans too. Putting them into homes before they are 7 and 8 weeks old, takes away from this experience and in companion homes, forces the people to reinforce rules that adult dogs would have nipped in the bud. Respectful behavior when they go to their new homes is a plus, considering the sizes that they will quickly reach!

One of the puppy girls will be staying here with us although we aren't certain which one yet. :)

Well, Ruya has been parking herself just outside the front door, listening to puppy sounds for the past week. Her mother Zor is very protective of her babies, and why not? They are only two weeks old just this weekend. However, Ruya has demonstrated some of what can only be described by me as yearning behavior. If she is given a treat from outside the door where she can hear the puppies, sometimes she just holds the treat and doesn't go off to eat it, but gazes longingly at the babies in the living room and sometimes whimpers because she wants to be with them. Sometimes she politely puts the treat down and sits up gazing in the doorway. If Zor sees her daughter looking in, she lowers her head and glares. Ruya respects that but the longing doesn't go away so easy. She sleeps right outside the door. :)

Ruya was born in Zor's first litter so Zor's always accepted Ruya as a family member -- so gaining acceptance isn't going to be difficult. Daddy Boone will probably have a harder time gaining puppy visitation rights as quickly.

On Friday night, I finally invited Ruya to meet the babies while Zor was on bathroom break.

Ruya nuzzles her half sibs Friday night. One of the young males paws at her.

She didn't step in with the puppies but nuzzled them and washed a puppy or two.

We've always thought that Ruya is most like her great grandmother, Sabah. She's got that same style of comportment, similar leadership qualities, confidence and general behavior that we remember so well. She is more like her great grandmother in temperament than like her mother. In fact, she isn't like her mother much at all except for what appears to be good mothering ability which all our girls have had!

When Sabah's daughter Bertha had a litter, when she had a chance to meet Bertha's new babies, she fell in love at first sight. She had already had a couple of litters so she certainly knew those puppy sounds. Bertha was out taking a bathroom break and didn't know her mother was with her babies. Sabah laid down and nuzzled and cleaned the babies, before we let her out and Bertha came back in. After a couple nights of this, Sabah began lactating. And at one point was nursing the pups while Bertha was on a bathroom break away from the babies. So we ended up with the scenario at left, when Bertha came back. Both mom and daughter cared for the litter of nine, from that point on.
So when this scenario below happened Monday morning (today), it wasn't really that surprising! Is it a start in the same direction?

Ruya explores the puppy pen.

While Zor was out on bathroom break, Ruya came in and carefully stepped around and settled down in with the pups. She curled into a maternal cupped shape and moved her hindlegs away to accomodate the seven puppies as they sought to nurse from her. They worked on her so convincingly that I thought she might be lactating already. I checked and found that she is producing a liquid, although it can't be called milk just yet. :)


Puppies converge to nurse on Ruya.


A motherly *kiss* if you can make out that tongue. Aww...

It's nature but still, it is amazing and sweet.

Labels: 2006Litter, Ruya

Eat . . .


. . .and sleep!

Nearly two weeks old now, and they can wobble on their front pegs and on their rear pegs, but not necessarily at the same time since they are sooooo roly poly with with tiny feet. heehee. :)

I saw a really cute 'crash and burn' a couple nights ago. Mind you, the pups can't see yet, nor hear and you can't say a whole lot about their coordination. But two pups were flopping (waddling?) toward each other like little seal babies, and then they crashed head on! One veered off to the side and then stabilized, and then continued for a few more flops in that direction. The other rolled on impact with legs galloping in the air -- tiny feet churned rapidly for a second, then feet wiggled slower and slower... And just about as suddenly, puppy fell asleep on his back. :D

Watching these guys is such hard work. :)

Labels: 2006Litter

The Sims 2 Pets has been released! So digital Anatolians coming this way for me soon. :D

EA Announced that Hilary Duff and her chihuahua, Lola, will be a featured Sim family on The Sims 2 Pets -- Well, I've never been one to pay much attention to celebrities and their lifestyles, but apparently Hilary is a Sims 2 fan (so there's a plus! :) ) and has been looking forward to the pets expansion like many of us Simmers. Apparently she and her family owns close to half a dozen dogs (much smaller than Anatolians!) among them are rescues and at least one special needs dog.

Lola, the chi, was not a rescue but acquired from a breeder by Hilary -- in secret from her mother. :) Every teen girl's dream to have it her way anyway. ;)

I posting this because I ran into this cute photo of a feathery pillow fight (features Hilary on the right, with Evan Rachel Wood in a pic from Celebrity-exchange.com). Although the photo isn't related to the game as far as I know, if you do have the game with the University expansion pack, there is a very cute option to do a pillow fight which gets sims happy by raising their fun and social levels. In the game, pillows materialize out of thin pixels and the flying feathers also neatly disappear once the pillow fight is over. And all the sims have a good time. How neat is that? :D

To read more about Hilary Duff's involvement with dog rescue, take a look at the page - Celebrity Dog Blog » Hilary Duff and scroll down and enlarge the pages from the magazine Hollywood Dogs

Related Links
Hilary Duff's Official Website
The Hollywood Dog Magazine

Labels: The_Sims_2

Very funny little story and picture! Zaltana Anatolians

I think Ayla's just telling her 'mom' that she could have gotten a bigger bed. ;)

And another amusing pic and story over at Ravenwood Farm Tails.

Here they are!

Mama Zor with her Boone puppies which are one week old in this picture. They were born Sunday night, Oct 8. We have four boys and three girls. All pups are fawn and one girl is a gorgeous chocolate (liver). One of the boys is on top of mom, and the liver girl is right at Zor's nose. Hidden puppy is a little girl under Zor's tail.

Things have been busy. I'm very behind on sleep, email, mail lists, and getting back to everyone -- to say nothing of this blog! Hopefully in the next week or two I'll get caught up a little. The concept of home cooking and enjoying real food again is becoming a little more familiar each day. LOL

More cuteness in puppy pics to come! :)

Labels: 2006Litter