Farmington Valley Golden Retrievers

I thought it would be appropriate to start the New Year with a story of a recent bathing adventure. You know the New Year still being a clean slate and all. Amazingly we don’t have to give our girls baths very often. Despite the mud, dead material, and dirt that they continually get covered with on our runs, their thick over and under coat allows pretty much everything to stay on the surface. Like the comic Charlie Brown, where “pig pen” leaves a pile of dirt wherever he sits, we sweep up collections of all kinds of dirt when they crash on the kitchen floor after our outside runs.

Still for those in the know, the smell of a new puppy is amazing, and a freshly shampooed dog is a close second. With five Goldens, the cost of a professional cleaning is costly, and even a short visit to the kennel for a group bath can leave the pack open to a case of kennel cough, as we have previously found out. So, on a recent Saturday, we decided to have our girls look a little more glamorous for the holidays.

Here are some photo shots of the girls in all their soggy glory.

Lily:

Emma:

Riley:

Solo:

Lucy:

When they are wet, they look much more similar than different. I can’t say that they liked the experience, but they didn’t seem to find it much of a hardship either. We certainly went through a bunch of bath towels trying to dry them.

Afterwards, they gathered in the kitchen while we let them dry completely.

Of course after being well behaved during their baths and now looking and smelling great, like any young lady, they were expecting to be taken someplace to go and show off..

I decided a ride in the dog van was just the thing while I ran some errands.

We just returned from doing an ultrasound on Emma. We didn’t see anything resembling puppies. We will do a formal ultrasound in the next two weeks at the Vet’s office to confirm the situation but it doesn’t look promising.

We are heartbroken for ourselves, but more so for the families who have kept faith with us over our difficult breeding year. Last year if someone was to tell our fortune and guess what misfortunes were coming our way, I wouldn’t have believed them. First, that we would have our two year old, Solo, washed out of being a mom by minor hip issues, followed by our other two year old, Riley, not conceiving using a great stud that we didn’t know was stricken with cancer and who died a few weeks after breeding. And now, despite heroic natural efforts with Emma after the infertility vet was away at a critical time, we are left with only fractured dreams.

Emma doesn’t understand our disappointment, and she was her smiling self in the elevator today leaving the ultrasound.

She is now sitting at my feet while I type this to send out the bad news to everyone who follows the goings on here.

It is heartening to have our other four also close by waiting to see what next adventure I will take them on. Lucy, Solo, and Lily to my left, and Riley on the bed behind me. Riley has her eyes half closed resting, but also half open so she won’t miss anything!
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Having seen the havoc mother nature can wreak on the fertility dreams of many patients, I am not surprised by this turn of events. I also am mindful of how small this disappointment is in the face of the patients I saw this week who are battling life threatening illnesses. So, while my hopes have been seriously bloodied today, we will bend like the reed to this ill wind that 2007 sent our way. I will redouble my efforts in 2008 that we might again hear that so sweet music of puppies at play in our home.

For everyone waiting, I release you from whatever loyalty you have kept with us. Below are four of the best Golden Breeders in the North East. All are my Golden friends, and have done their breeding as full time careers for many, many years
Alphabetically:

• Barbara Biewer, email address: [email protected]
• Cindy Jones, email address: [email protected]
• Donna Talbot, email address: [email protected]
• Berna Welch, email address: [email protected]

Hope is eternal as they say, and I guess it is only fitting that the New Year is only two days away. Then we will start with a slate scrubbed clean of these misadventures, and a renewed spirit to try harder in 2008. God Bless.

Emma’s last litter was born a year ago today. That means our Lucy is one year old along with her six brothers and two sisters. Lucy got her own birthday card in the mail today from her brother Logan. He sent her a poem courtesy of his devoted owners Janet and Andy.

It went like this…

Dear Lucy,

Remember when we were this little? All we did was eat and piddle.

Now we are both big and strong, and most everything we do is wrong.

But our Mommies and Daddies love us anyway, cause they know we’ll be really good someday.

Love, Logan.

Here is a photo of the Logan playing with Lucy this fall on the pool cover.

Thank you Logan for your kind words!

We also got birthday wishes and updated photos from Ollie and Denis and their Tucker.

As well as from Barbara and her boy Tyson.
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Ken and family sent photos of sister Rosie’s Christmas.

And their older house mate, Holly celebrated a recent birthday too!

Our golden friend Cindy sent her best holiday wishes along with photos of her special Kati.

On Behalf of Barbara and I, and of course our birthday girl Lucy, we thank everyone for their best wishes and photos. We wish many more happy years of golden adventures for all of Emma’s most recent offspring.

We hope that when we do Emma’s ultrasound this Sunday, we will have joyous news that another generation is soon to arrive here in dogville.

The girls and I watched the sun come up the other day from the high school hilltop. We had gotten eight inches of snow earlier and then freezing rain. The dogs’ paws and my boots broke through the thin crust with every step, and so the going was very slow and tiring. We abandoned our usual route for the morning, and instead just enjoyed sitting and watching the world awaken.

It was cold, quiet, and peaceful. A great time to reflect on the year almost done, and the approaching bustle of Christmas week. Even the dogs seemed thoughtful, content to be sitting in a group rather than running in a pack.

Best wishes to all for a safe and healthy holiday week.

I am writing this post after a long day in the hospital and after what seemed like an even longer drive home. Our first real snowstorm in Connecticut this winter is still raging outside. Inside the dogs are all at my feet, tired out after a day of play outside in this wintry white wonderland.

I went to Vermont last Sunday to check out our winter home and to make sure that all the winterizing changes had been done for the season. I piled the five dogs into the truck and we stayed overnight. The mountain was deserted and cemetery quiet. There was a foot of snow already on the ground and several more inches fell as we arrived. Besides the pure white beauty of it all, with an ongoing snowfall, there is no sand on the roads, and so the dogs do not track in anything but a little clear water from their paws. The temp was down in the 20’s and with the wind blowing down from the hills, only the ice balls on their paws were what they dragged into the house. So for a change, there was very little cleaning I had to do the next morning before we made the trip back.

Golden retrievers love adventures so they had a ball running through the woods and up and down the mountain road.

Riley, our three year old, loves to bury herself in snowdrifts like the youngster she still is.

After arriving home that morning, I still had a lot of chores to do, and so I missed the nap with the girls. They had no trouble nodding off on the kitchen floor as they recuperated from their outdoor adventures earlier in the day.

What a great life they have!

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I know children everywhere are having sleepless nights awaiting the arrival of Santa in less than two weeks. The child in me is counting the days until I can do an ultrasound in two more weeks to see if Emma is carrying puppies..