RODEO: AKC Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs

The pups turn seven weeks old tomorrow, Thursday, July 17, 2014. Heading closer to that evaluation at 8 weeks which will help us match puppies to their FUR-ever homes. We are excited to welcome each family that will be coming to the North Rim and also our puppy evaluator, the esteemed Ms Pat Hastings.

We have sure enjoyed raising the pups and we hope you have been watching their progress on our Facebook Page. (RODEO Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs). Each and everyone is a delight and we are totally in love.

We have sent out some shopping list and tips to our puppy buyers. For interest we will post a few here.

We use two crates to raise puppies: a daytime crate and a nighttime crate. We let them have a little more room in their night time crate to sleep, after taking them out a lot in the evening. They have already demonstrated to us at six weeks that they don't make a mess at night. Good puppies! We use a smaller crate in the daytime as the pups are in and out of this crate a lot and we want a smaller crate to discourage housetraining mistakes in the crate. We also use the smaller crate for all car rides, so this crate is in and out of the house with us, while the night time crate becomes a "nightstand". We even decorate the nightstand as it will be at bedside for many months, so we put a top on the crate to make it more useful as a table. We find a low pile rubber backed bathroom rug is the perfect liner for crates, to keep the puppy from slipping and of course we add blankets and pads, but we take them out for feedings or if a puppy shows an interest in eating the bedding.

We feed all meals in the crate and we do CLOSE THE DOOR pretty early on. At first, we close the door while they are busy eating, and we watch every minute of the meal. Magically as soon as they finish we open the door. As they progress, we leave the door closed for a short time (a minute or less) when they finish. Then, longe.r We are careful though not too push a puppy past its comfort zone too quick, as we NEVER open a crate door for a crying puppy. So, if they start crying, out comes the stop watch as we wait for a significant period of silence and reward silence as the key to the door, not crying. We do crate our puppies from their first night home, with the door closed, and we find this is a key to a good nights rest for all. We firmly believe that crate training with a door open is not crate training at all. For baby puppies still learning their crate training, we baby gate them INSIDE the kitchen with their crate available and one or two toys (usually just one). We find a positive association quickly develops with the crate with all meals fed inside.

Our favorite toy for puppies is a Nylabone. We spoil pups with many toys, just a couple at a time, but the Nylabone (non-edible type) is a tried and true good toy for a chewing dog. The pups already love their Nylabones.

Just a couple ideas and we will share a few more as we watch our puppies finish up their final week or two with us, depending on when they go home.

Baby Wookie- Learning to love her crate

Wookie Mon puppies arrived safe and sound at home at the North Rim. Mother and brood are doing great! We have seven puppies: four boys and three girls. We are no longer taking applications for this litter. Please check back as we will add a puppy page and be sharing photos in the next couple of days. SPECIAL THANKS TO: WhelpWise (VPS); Zion Vet Clinic, Dr Casey Wittwer; Dr Janice Cain (Bishop Ranch Vet Hospital) and Sandy MacQuarrie - HugsNKisses Swissies. Sandy came from SoCal to whelp with us and we could not have done it without her, or at least not in so much style.

We are counting down the days now. Wookie's due date, May 29, 2014, is just over one week away. We are kind of guessing she will have the pups at least a little early, so we figure in less than one week from now, we will be making some birth announcements. This week we lost another really great friend, our second in two months and third this year. As such, we have decided that while all puppies will get collars with a color that we use to identify them (blue boy, pink girl, etc) that we will be nicknaming all or most puppies with litter names to honor the fabulous friends that have left big holes in our hearts. We have the names written down and will just be waiting to see a little "Richie" and "Leary" in our litter, plus more. Wookie is slowing down and her walks are getting shorter as her mamma shape makes long walks hard on her "udder". She is nesting in her whelping box a little, which Jeff made for her this weekend, Snowy Mountain Style.

Wookie is so happy to be home at the North Rim! She especially is so happy to be re-united with Jeff. Since she can still do all her normal activities, although we are making sure its in small doses, she enjoyed a few unicycles this week with Jeff.

Wookie and I have been hunting horned lizards and Kaibab squirrels (for appreciation and logging the number we see this year, not for "hunting") and she has been enjoying sunning herself on the deck and romping in meadows. We visit the North Rim Helicopter Pad daily.

In news from the other side of the country, the father to the puppies, Mon, recently won a group placement at a dog show! This is a rare accomplishment for a Swissy, generally less than 20 Swissies per year achieve a group placement. Here is the photo of the gorgeous Mon. We are so excited that his kids will be born into our hands.

Today was the big day. We traveled for the last time to see Dr Janice Cain at Bishop Ranch Vet Hospital for Wookie's ultrasound. Wookie was very cooperative and as a result Dr Cain was able to slowly and carefully find and count puppies, repeating the procedure about four times. Wookie is pregnant and we see seven normal looking puppy fetuses. So, now we have some more waiting to do. Our due date is still May 29, 2014.

Now, with our basic pre-natal care completed, we are heading home any day now to North Rim, AZ. Wookie definitely enjoyed her time in California.

Thrilled to announce that our girl Wookie has been bred to "Mon". He is Grand Champion Swiss Run's Jamaican Me Crazy, with a ton more titles on top of that, owned by Deanna and Ben Never of Swiss Run Swissys in Vermont. Mon is a gorgeous boy of size and substance. He is also smart and talented, boasting multiple obedience titles (obedience and rally), and also carting and weight pull titles. Best of all, Mon has a great personality, which is well known among Swissy people across the country. In the words of his owners, Mon loves people and animals and is often doing something to be at the center of attention. At a recent rally obedience trial, he could not resist the squeeky toy distraction and was squeeking away to his hearts delight (which we found very charming to read about). Mon's sire Stevie is a top producer in our breed, having produced many amazing offspring. We could not be more excited to breed Wookie to this striking male. And, while we had our hearts set on Mon since the 2013 Nationals last fall, Mon has emerged in 2014 as the current #1 Swiss Mountain Dog in the country (breed-standings)
To read more, visit our puppy page

Hi to our loyal RODEO Swiss Mountain Dog web page watchers! Wookie and I are still working hard on our tax season (ok I prepare the returns, she watches, asks for bits of my snacks, and we go on walks to take breaks). Since Wookie hasn't learn to read a calendar yet, she has no idea that we roughly estimate her to start her breeding season during the last week of March. So, since she won't give us any hints, we just check her daily. She has her visit with a reproduction vet coming up this week, where we will check all her fitness and health data points in advance of her breeding, and get all the planning done for the testing we will do to breed her on the correct days. Even once her heat starts, it is 10-14 days on average before we start the actual breeding, so we do know that we are at least 12 days out from any actual "breedings" as of today (March 15, 2014). We will definitely be updating our blog once the countdown starts, and keeping everyone up to date here, every step of the way. In the meantime, if you are interested in a puppy from our upcoming breeding please go to our puppy page to download an application to send to us. RODEO puppy page

We are doing "fresh chilled" breedings, with the stud dog located on the east coast, so Wookie will start getting her blood tested every other day, about six days after her season starts. At some point, her testing will advance to every day (during that time we will move into a hotel room within a few miles of the vet, for easy daily visits). Then, once the time is right, we will do two breedings, either in two days in a row, or with a day in between, depending partly on the days of the week, as we can't do a fresh chilled breeding on a Sunday. So, lots of advanced planning goes into this process, and lots of vet visits.

Lucky for me, I hope to be "off work" during puppy raising. In fact, Jeff will also be taking off a lot of time too, and we will be recruiting other trusted helpers during the first two sleep-deprived weeks when we make sure puppies are eating and not getting squished by Wookie! It is a 24 hour per day job, especially if we get a big litter. But, that also means that I am working 70+ hours per week now, as a CPA, and that I may not be able to do puppy home interviews from now until after April 15, 2014. I do respond to all e-mails, at least to let you know about our application and that we are waiting on interviews, so that we can be ready to interview when work slows down. Wookie would be happy to interview you now, but her preferred interview technique is to jump up high and give you a wet kiss in your ear or mouth (one of her special talents). In the meantime, Wookie enjoys sunning herself in the garden and enjoying an early spring. She doesn't know that she is waiting, but she is the kind of girl who is always ready to "go" and she will certainly welcome all the car rides she will be treated to when the time comes.

We have just made the final determination that our 2014 litter, planned for May 2014, will be whelped and raised in scenic North Rim, Arizona. For our potential puppy buyers, start thinking about how you might combine a visit to some of our local gems, like Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, and Grand Canyon South Rim before picking up your puppy. For those of you traveling to Arizona from out of the area, the two closest airports to us are not in Arizona! The closest airport is in St. George Utah (SGU). This airport is about 3 hours from our home. Delta offers a reasonably robust schedule, and other airlines have been adding service, including Frontier. Farther away, but might offer the same travel time and lower fares, is Las Vegas McCarran International (LAS). This airport is just over five hours from our home. However, when you consider that almost every flight into St George will require a connection, it still might offer you better travel options. Get in touch with us if you are thinking about how you and your puppy can get home from North Rim, Arizona. And get ready to start your life with your puppy with a big adventure. Our momma dog Wookie loves the North Rim and we think you will too!

We recently took Wookie to the dog show in Fresno, California. We showed Wookie in Rally Obedience (Advanced category) and in conformation (regular dog showing). We worked really hard together as a team in our first event on Saturday, Feb 1, and Wookie scored a 84/100 in the obedience. This earned her a "leg" towards her AKC title in this event. We even got a huge compliment from another exhibitor who said Holly was the best handler they had ever seen in Rally, particularly because she never gave up or lost patience when Wookie made some mistakes. Then, Wookie went on to earn highest honors at the show for a female Swissy- Best of Opposite Sex. This was a big win - a four point major towards Wookie's Grand Championship title! Of course, we got a picture with the judge!

We have just started a new website in January 2014 for RODEO. Since we have only bred infrequently over the last ten years, we had stopped maintaining a site. Now that we are planning Wookie's second litter for 2014, with a breeding planned for March 2014, we wanted to start back up again. I am sure we will be adding a Facebook page soon too. We will be populating the website in the next couple of weeks so keep checking back for new information and content. We are so excited for Wookie's next litter! We have picked out a fantastic stud dog, who comes from great lines of health and temperment, and also winning at dog shows! Our mystery man will be revealed as soon as we do the breeding. So, keep your eyes on this blog to be introduced to Wookie's latest beau.