Well hopefully today Shadow is one week pregnant and a ninth of the way through the process. I promised I\u2019d tell you some more about how everything works today so here we go.<\/p>\n
Why is it our D litter? Most Entlebucher breeders follow the convention of their first litter having names starting with the letter A, the second with B and so on. This will be our fourth litter so it is our D litter. If things go to plan and we have another girl to breed from then she will start with E and so it will carry on. It is different in Belgium where the letter relates to the year in which they were born, Alfie was Einstein as he was born in 2005, whereas his sister Helladora was born in 2008. Anyway, in Switzerland the litter that we hope will include Boadicea will actually be our friend\u2019s Z litter, so she will actually be Zena-Boadicea if everything goes to plan. That\u2019s a lot of litters! We have some catching up to do. Our Mistress has now come up with a total of 26 D names she likes, so unless Mum (Shadow) were to have 27 puppies (which is so not going to happen) then we should have plenty now. Once we know she is definitely pregnant we\u2019ll ask you to help us sort them into your favourite order. Some breeders don\u2019t name the puppies for a while, but our Mistress can\u2019t bear them not having names from the start, so she has a carefully prepared list in order for the boys and one for the girls and they receive their names in the order they are born.<\/p>\n
I should tell you something about the dad of this litter. His name is Max von der Auenr\u00fcti and he\u2019s almost the same age as Mum. He\u2019s really gentle and quiet and Mum said he was quite a gentleman. His dad is the dad of some of the other dogs in the UK, so this litter will have brothers and sisters on our Mum\u2019s side and aunts and uncles on their dad\u2019s side. Our Mistress chose him not only because he is not closely related to our mum, but because his health tests are a good match to hers, which is important. He\u2019s pretty handsome too so I\u2019m hoping that my new brothers and sisters will be a good looking bunch.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve run out of time again, so I\u2019ll ask Alfie if I can carry on telling you about all this stuff next weekend. It\u2019s kind of nice to be able to tell you lots of stuff about our breed, so I hope he\u2019ll let me.<\/p>\n
Alfie\u2019s Diary \u2013 the Book as well as our other books are available HERE<\/a><\/p>\n You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"