We had two sets of company today with Kelley & Marcie and then later Shelley & Cheyenne.
The Breed Standard for Australian Cattle Dogs says that they are wary of strangers and Peaches is no exception to this. She warms up to people and is fine to have them around but is generally still fairly aloof with people she does not know really well. Peaches was a COVID puppy (born Dec 2020), so she did not get all of the same kind of handling that her sons are now getting. It seems that Miss Silly Pants is enjoying all the attention now and I’m super happy to see her this way. I’m sure that most any new human Mom can appreciate that by Day 26 in this litter Peaches is at a place where is is truly DELIGHTED to have exclusive grown-up interaction even if it is for a short few minutes.
Shelley & Cheyenne helped us play “show dog” a little. We had a few rodeo moments but for a first try at conformation standing at 26 Days, they did pretty good!
We start practicing this now because we do “official stacked photos” at 8 weeks of age to analyze where they fall for long term structure expectations. It is well known within the breeding community that stacked photos taken from Day 55-57 reflect the proportional ratio of long bones and joint angles that we will see in the grown puppy at the age of 2 years. Of course between 8 weeks and 2 years the puppies will potentially go through all kinds of awkward growth stages just like humans do. It is hard not to panic when we see them being all legs or bum-high at times but we can look back at the 8-week photos with some confidence that it is just a phase. So the training we do now help to get the most reliable photos next month.
