The Week of the Tennis Balls

This is the week the pups discovered playing, deadly serious playing. Their activities, as we saw them, can be divided into several discrete categories: cavorting in the flowers, goofing with tennis balls, fighting, and untying shoe laces. When they were alone, they were exploring or resting. The lap missile phase appears to be over, except for the Pink Princess who found her Life's Work early. So here's what we saw.

Smelling the Flowers

The poppies are off to the far side of Marian's yard, so it probably still qualifies as an expedition for these guys to go over and explore. The leaves and grass were lush enough so that they could still get lost.

Tennis, Anyone?

Someone brought over tennis balls and created a revolution, similar in scope to the importation of Pepsi into China. ALL the pups, even the Pink Princess, have to play with the tennis balls. The preferred mode of play involves at least two of your buds and if you're lucky, it segues right into a good, growly puppy fight.

Puppy Wars

Right after Tennis Balls, the best thing to do was fight. Oouch! Some of those look like they hurt! Ooops, I can verify that!

Digging Deep

Mr. Brown and Mr. Teal were the most committed diggers, although, like most construction sites, there were plenty of sidewalk supervisors.

The Ever Popular Shoe Lace Pull

You can see Mr. Red back there zeroing in on the lace while Mr. Purple and Mr. Teal distract Chuck. After some jockeying, success - a completely lose shoe lace. Damn, these are talented dogs!

Can you smell that?

For the more mature pups, the contemplative occupation of smelling has started to exert it's mystic doggie draw:

Puppy Pile

Okay, they still had to clump into puppy piles every once in awhile. As a matter of fact, these pictures are the best way to see how much they've grown - the space they cover is much larger now.

Just Pups

Every once in awhile, one of the pups would collapse or wander off to investigate. Here are some photos of that. I particularly like the first one - that's Miss Hot Pink waiting for the Big Girls to come out. Those puppies are so callow!

Robin and Chuck

Robin and Chuck are also getting one of the males from this litter, and they looked pretty happy. Robin, particularly, was a pup magnet. She called "Pup, pup, pup, pup!" in a high, soft voice and those guys came from the far corners of the yard. She strode the yard like a collosus!

Sassy

Sassy is Leia's mom, so she is the Grandmom of 10 of the pups, and is the sister of Sava, so even though she will not be on the pedigree of Flare's pups, she is certainly a doting Auntie. FYI, in 2001, she was tied for #2 Top Producer of Champions as tallied by the Vizsla Club of America. Sidenote: that's a credit to Marian and her posse, since they had to get the champions finished for Sassy to make the list. She's eight and on her way to a competition this weekend (10/26/02) - if attitude wins, she'll win.