I just heard the exciting news that “Sure Shot’s Baloo” went winners dog at the Potomac. There were 40 dogs in his class, and likely over 500 males entered as the total was around 1200. Congratulations to Susan Eberhardt and Baloo- that is a huge accomplishment.

Here is a photo of him taken by Carrie Eberhardt at the San Diego specialty, he got WD there also!

There is no way to describe what a major win this is except to say that at 7 1/2 years and this his third specialty win it is nice to know that he is being put up due to his temperament and his soundness. He acts and shows like a three year old. I love this dog and am very proud to be a small part of his past as he is also a grandbaby of ours, his grandfather is “Lennon”, Matilija Joshua Tree. Lennon is a full brother to Ch. SureShot Ready Aim Fire, Matilija Mad About You, and Matilija NDSDF Rosa. Lennon minored out with 12 points. Lennon and Aimee will be 12 years old on June 19. They are from my very first Poppy litter sired by Brodie. I repeated the breeding two years later when I saw what the first litter had produced. Poppy was one of the first bitches to be bred to Brodie, now a famous producer in our breed.

Baloo has two sisters that have been bred and was in a pet home until last year when Susan found out he was available and took him home. He passed his clearances with flying colors and with some major dieting soon entered the show ring. He now has 13 points, all majors and all specialty wins.***FLASH*** Baloo finished at LRCSC in April!
We are expecting Baloo puppies out of our Annie on June 2. This is the first time I have gone back into my lines as Annie is a great- granddaughter of Poppy’s. I can’t wait to see how many little baby Baloo’s will be born.

Canine bitch physiology 101 is a class that most folks in the United States don’t sign up for.

BUT if you have a dog you are showing in the breed ring- then they are not spayed and it is good to understand the heat cycle of your dog urrr bitch. I get reminded of this when the girls come in season and I get calls from co-owners saying that Blondy is having “her period”. So just to set the record straight, unlike primates (which we are) all dogs (okay, not Basenjis) cycle twice a year and that cycle is called estrus. The estrus cycle is broken into stages, the first stage the dog’s body is getting ready to ovulate and there is a build up of blood cells. The extra cells are sloughed off and that is the bleeding you see. This goes on for about 12 days. So with primates the blood occurs after ovualation as a clean out of the body and in canines the bleeding is really in preparation for ovualtion and then implantation if pregnancy occurs. After that first stage then ovulation occurs, the bleeding gets lighter and progesterone starts to rise. With the rise of this hormone behavioral changes also occur which result in the dog being receptive and ready to breed. It is no use forcing dogs to breed, if they don’t want to it generally means that they are not ready. Once they have been bred they quickly go out of season and the progeserone stays high for the whole 63 days post ovualtion. The progesterone stays high regardless of if you have bred your bitch or not, that is why we don’t have a pregnancy test for dogs. All dogs basically go through a false pregnancy (with a variation of the severity of symptoms) because that progesterone is bathing the system for 2 months post estrus. Here are some charts to look at that spell it out and are easy to understand. It is a complicated cycle!

http://www.vetmed.lsu.edu/eiltslotus/theriogenology-5361/ces.htm