3 Jazz x Max pups (2F/1M) left the whelping area in the house and are now in the puppy room of the barn looking very healthy as they come up to their 3-week birthday. Glad to have my house back! Here for another 3 weeks before going to the large group kennel, making way for Gail and her pups.

Puppies are fully mobile now, walking not crawling, playing with one another, eyes and ears both open, those sense continuing to develop over the coming weeks. One female is larger and more assertive than the other two pups.

Jazz’s puppies will be 2 weeks old on Monday 3-June. This weekend, they are opening their eyes (and ears) for the first time. If you look carefully in the video, the first puppy (also the first one whelped) has her eyes open (hard to see with the black mask) at 11 days.

The puppies still mostly sleep and eat, but they will start to be animated over the next week as explore one another and their surroundings with their new senses. The 2-week no-care honeymoon is just about over for me.

In another week, they will start to be walking and truly mobile. At 4 weeks they leave the house and go out to the barn.

After what seemed like an exceedingly long warm-up, Jazz delivered up 3 *extra large* pups by Max this afternoon. Pups have classic collie markings, will be long and lean like the sire. 2F and 1M pups.

The pups are well looked after. Jazz is a calm and attentive mother, unlike wild bitch Nel, who dumps the work on me. No puppies screaming because mom has neglected them or because they are being rolled by mom. Every pup should have a mom like Jazz.

These two awesome pups from Donal Mullaney, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland arrive in Boston on 10-July.

Nel is going to be bred via frozen AI to Rob Ellis’ Bran, the reigning Welsh sheepdog champion and runner up the year before, coming 3rd in the International Supreme Championship.

Rob Ellis with his 2023 Welsh Sheepdog Champion, Bran.

Jazz entering her 7th week (last trimester) of pregnancy had a chunk of her leg ripped out just above her pad and a tear in the flesh beyond it. A serious wound, at critical time.

In addition to oral antibiotics, friend and theriogenologist (repro specialist) Dr. Sylvia Bedford-Guaus DVM, MS, PH.D DIP ACT suggested that I use Manuka honey from New Zealand on the wound, something I had never heard of.

Manuka (Leptospermum) honey is a medical-grade honey that is harvested from bees in New Zealand, that has unique, natural properties to combat antibiotic-resistant strains of infections, such as MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus), making it ideal for wounds and burns. Not expensive ($10/ tube) and combined with the oral antibiotics, Dr. Bedford-Guaus told me Jazz’s progress was “amazing“! Surgery post-pregnancy to repair the flesh tear behind will likely not be necessary.

8 month-old Mike (Clwyd Bob x Nel) went to 5th generation farmers Fred & Barbara on Cape Cod joining their border collie, Bella.

Transition was so smooth. Fred took Mike for a guided tour of the farm. Barbara administered the TCL. And less than 24 hours after he arrived, Barbara wrote to say Mike was all smiles and “I love this dog! ❤️ “

I told Barbara, it all starts with good breeding. She said, ” It does for sure! You are amazing 👏!! ” Fred & Barbara are ‘amazing‘ too and Mike is going have a super life.

Easter is a time of reflection on man’s relationship to God. It should also be a time of reflection on man’s relationship to nature …and our changing climate. The news from Antarctica is not good. In fact, it is terrifying.

I asked my friend and neighbor, Gus Speth, if I could use one of his poems this Easter as complement to the news from Antarctica. A Rhodes Scholar and clerk for legendary Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Gus is a lifelong champion of the environment. He was Jimmy Carter’s Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House, founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and World Resources Institute, Dean of the Yale School of Environmental Studies, and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, who is often referred to as the third most senior official within the UN System, after the political appointees (Secretary General and Deputy Secretary). Gus is the author of many books of law, policy and the environment. In his retirement he has taken to poetry (publishing 5 volumes) to convey his reflections of 60+ years of public service and pleas to all of us to celebrate and care for our planet.

Happy Easter!

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Bread and Roses [by Gus Speth]

When the big sea has stopped rising
and the maps we’re through revising
and I can think of storms as friends,
I’ll go down to the beach again.

I’ll stand still there in that bright surf
and sing a song to this dear Earth.
I’ll sing for climate change to end.
I’ll sing tears for where we have been.

I’ll sing to things that we have learned –
the fossils we should not have burned
releasing the power of former suns,
bringing losses that cannot be undone.

Sad losses the children will inherit.
Species gone without much credit,
thanks to the piles of money earned
and all the corners left unturned.
I’ll sing to anger rising still.

Our leaders let firms do their will.
The people did assert control
but not before the barons stole.

Our job is now to make the best,
finding purpose in what is left.
It is a joy to live to fight
and on that beach to fly two kites.

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I missed on my timing …Max and Jazz took advantage of my mistake.

Puppies for Memorial Day