Astrud PWDs--Visit us at www.4dpwds.com

Welcome to the Astrud PWD puppy blog! When we have a litter, this blog keeps everyone up to date on the puppies' progress. For info on Astrud Portuguese Water Dogs visit us at www.4dpwds.com   BTW, that's pronounced "Ford PWDs"... a little web humor!

We got some nice weather yesterday and the pups got a few nice romps outside. SO excited they were to run around exploring and feeling the cool grass and the breeze. They are so cute running at top speed down the hill trying to put on the breaks to keep from tumbling head over heels. Nothing like dining al fresco!

 

 

 

Finally an update at 24 days… So sorry! I’ve been spending all my time looking at puppies and inhaling puppy breath.

 

First, the names! Reese’s pieces each have a name now:

Piece of Pie (Pi) is the big wavy boy with the blue collar, sweet like a piece of blueberry pie.

Piece of Me (as in “you want a piece of me??!!”) (Mimi) is the little wavy girl with the pink collar, and my does she live up to that name—such a feisty little thing!

Piece of the Action (Action Jackson) is the wavy boy with the white collar, and he does like to move.

Five Easy Pieces (EZ) is the purple collar wavy boy, so named because he is so easy going.

Piece of Luck (Luck of Roaring Camp) this is little Brownie—we are so lucky to have her and her mother here with us.

 

And finally—Pansy. She came up with her own name, I’m afraid. We called her Tank due to her massive size, but Ellie decided Panzer was nicer, and it was quickly shortened to Pansy, which is much more in keeping with her delightful personality. She is a piece of work, but I can’t make that fit the name Pansy, so she’s just Pansy.

 

 

The pups are doing very well, and are now a bit closer to each other in size. As of May 28 (age 23 days) Pi is 3 lb 12 oz, Pansy is 3/11, Action is 3/6, EZ and Mimi are both 3/1, and Luck is 2/10. We’ll start solid food in the next day or so, so they’ll probably really take off once that gets started. It’s so fun to watch them play with each other and with their toys, and each day brings new abilities, and for some, new teeth. I’m doing my best to keep nails under control for Reese’s sake, but the teeth are another matter entirely. Another good reason to get them onto solid food.

Everyone is toddling around with (usually) great facility now. Little Luck is the most stable underway, but she has a few days on the others age-wise, and being lighter helps a lot too. The PWDs are big lugs compared to her, but that does give them an advantage for full-body wrestling takedowns. First real trip outside today for a short while—it was a bit cool and breezy, but they had enough time to get the feeling of a new footing and a taste for exploring the outside world. It’s supposed to warm up and dry out the next few days, so they’ll enjoy their new found freedom outdoors.

I’ve added a few photo albums at various ages and will get some action shots when we get them outside. Nothing cuter than those little tails straight up in the air as they cruise around.

Bella has made a full recovery and is quite settled into the routine at Martha’s house in Portland. India is happy too, particularly since Martha is taking her to agility. I’ve offered Martha $20 if she finishes India’s weave poles while she’s down there and hope she takes me up on it… We really miss the girls, but are just crazy about Reese—she is a wonderful dog all the way around. We are doing our best to spoil her completely—sleeping on the bed, begging for food, and appreciating all the indulgences due a dog of her talents. Very soon we’ll have her thinking she’s a PWD with all the rights and privileges  thereof…

Well, my life with dogs is nothing but a wild roller coaster ride without a seat belt...

 

We have 5 beautiful pups here now, two curly girls and three wavy boys, all are black with small white blazes on the chest and a few white toes on some of them. They were born early on Monday May 5. All are doing well and gaining steadily, crawling around the whelping box and, typical of a PWD, making plenty of noise! Today (Thursday May 8) they are up on all fours and barking—hold onto you hats, folks!

 

Bella went into labor Sunday night (May 4) and I ended up taking her to Pilchuck Emergency in Snohomish at 2:30 Monday morning. Early Monday morning (May 5) Bella had an emergency C-section (we lost 1 pup then). She seemed to be recovering fine, and we took her and the pups home. Unfortunately, she then had intra-abdominal bleeding that sent her back to Pilchuck in shock. She had a transfusion; they opened her up again, but didn't find any major blood leaks, just a lot of blood. Got her closed after her BP crashed, and managed to save her again.

 

She has been holding stable since Tuesday afternoon, and an ultrasound on Tuesday showed no additional blood accumulating in her abdomen. Her hematocrit was holding at 18 (30 is normal) but was up this morning (Thursday) to 21, indicating that her bone marrow has kicked in production of new red blood cells to replace what she lost. She is apparently perky and protesting—back to her normal self—but she will stay at Pilchuck until her red blood cell values are close to normal. She may be able to come home in a day or two when her RBC count gets high enough, but will not be able to nurse her puppies without risking her life.

 

So in the meanwhile, the litter has been adopted by a wonderful Malinois named Reese. She had a litter 6 days premature on Friday and lost all but one little preemie girl. Reese and her puppy are here and she is being a wonderful mother to Bella's pups. The little preemie is doing well (I have been feeding her about every 2 hours around the clock) and is almost caught up with Bella’s pups as far as development. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to save her, as a sort of Karmic compensation for all that her mother Reese is doing for our girls and boys. It was a stroke of luck all the way around. Reese’s pieces are certainly a lucky group of little PWDs!

 

Long story short, I sent India down to Portland with my sister-in-law Martha who was up to help whelp the pups (she has Bella's other daughter Sailor) and we will take Bella down there too as soon as she is stable. Both will stay there until the pups are weaned, since Bella will not be able to take care of the pups. The surrogate mother is extremely protective of her new litter and I know it will be very hard on Bella to hear the pups in the house and not be able to get to them. We hope that after they are weaned Reese the Malinois will be able to go home with her little girl, and Bella will come back and take over the maternal role with her 5 pups.

There is no doubt that breeding is not for the faint of heart… When things go as planned it is a joyous and tiring adventure. When things don’t go right it is a nightmare. Those of you with PWDs know how deep our affection runs, and it is like a member of your human family is in jeopardy, not “just a dog.” I am very lucky to have my Bella safe and sound, have my puppies safe and sound and with a loving surrogate mother who can do more for them than I ever could do with an orphaned litter. Finding a surrogate is not common—I’d almost put it in the miracle category, actually. So all in all, things are going as well as could be hoped for, and I’m feeling like I can relax a tiny bit at this point.

Pups (including little Brownie the Malinois) will get dew claws done and vet check today, but they all look fine at this point. The poor little one that didn’t make it was quite small and in a very cramped and contorted place in the uterus. (We had seen her on the X-ray and were suspicious that she might not be in good shape based on size and position.) Ultrasound before the C-section showed that she was already dead at that point. We are so grateful to have our five healthy pups here now and our Bella on the mend!

 

 

In regards to health testing, please follow the key below:

OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) certification numbers for hips and elbows. An OFA number indicates that a dog has been evaluated by x-ray by the OFA and found to show no signs of having Hip Dysplasia  at age 24 months or older.   Passing OFA ratings for hips will indicate whether the dog’s hip structure has been found to be “Excellent, “Good” or “Fair”.  Parent OFA rating is important in predicting the tendency to hip dysplasia, as is the OFA history in the pedigree. OFA also evaluates elbow x-rays and rates elbows as “Normal” if no indication of elbow dysplasia is found. Elbows are rated by the OFA only on a pass/fail basis. 

CERF (Canine Eye Registration Foundation) All breeding dogs should have an annual CERF examination.   A CERF exam is only good for one year and can only be done by a board certified ophthalmologist.   A CERF exam can detect such problems as cataracts, Persistent Pupillary membranes, retinal problems, and other congenital ocular anomalies.

OptiGen - Research has lead to a DNA test to identify dogs that are either normal, carriers or affected with Progressive Retinal Atrophy.  PRA is caused by a recessive gene. Pattern A and A1 are dogs that are normal, i.e., do not carry the gene. Pattern B or B1 are carriers (have one recessive gene), and Pattern C and C1 are dogs that carry two recessive genes, and thus are affected with PRA, leading to blindness. Pattern B/B1 and Pattern C/C1 dogs should only be bred to Pattern A/A1 to avoid producing PRA-affected puppies. Before this genetic test was available, PRA blindness was a serious risk in most breeding lines, but since the advent of the test, there is no excuse for producing an affected dog.

GM1 - Storage Disease (GM1 gangliosidosis) is a recessive, genetic disorder. It is produced only when two carriers are bred together. The disorder is caused by a lack of an enzyme that allows the build up of toxic substances in the nerve cells.  It is fatal to affected puppies.

UPenn Cardio – Juvenile Dilated Cardiomyopathy is a recessive genetic disorder. If both parents carry the gene and pass it on to a puppy, that dog will be affected with Cardio, typically resulting in death due to reduced heart function at an age of a few weeks to a few months. After extensive research funded by the PWDCA and the PWD Foundation, researchers at U. of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have very recently developed a DNA linkage marker for Cardio. The test indicates non-carriers (Normal, type 1-1) and carriers (type 1-2), and is yet another great advance in genetic testing to help breeders produce healthy dogs.

Bella is rated OFA Excellent for hips, and OFA Normal for elbows. Both of her parents are OFA Good. Her CERF is clear, and she is OptiGen B (PRA carrier), GM-1 Normal, and Cardio Normal 1-1. She was bred to an OptiGen A1 (non-carrier) sire, so there will be no risk of producing PRA-affected offspring. In addition, her MSU thyroid assay is normal, suggesting no tendency to inherited thyroid auto-immune disease.

Spencer is OFA Good for hips, and OFA Normal for elbows. His sire and dam are both OFA Good. His CERF is clear, and he is OptiGen A1 (non-carrier), GM-1 Normal, and Cardio Normal 1-1.

We arrived in Tokyo on Saturday Jan 21, having nearly missed our flight from Seattle, in the midst of the biggest snow storm that Tokyo has seen in years. We circled for over an hour and were lucky to land at all since the airport had been completely closed earlier that afternoon because of the snow. Our wonderful friend Takao was waiting at Narita despite the snow, and helped us through the dog rabies quarantine clearance (no problems there…) and drove us through the snowstorm to our house in Fuchu, in western Tokyo. He had kindly stocked the house with food, tp, soap, towels, and all sorts of necessities which eased out first days here after a long trip and a hefty dose of jet lag.

            Jet lag and all, Ellie started school on Monday at ASIJ, the American School In Japan, and left on Wednesday for the 8^th grade field trip to ski at Naeba, north of Tokyo. The poor exhausted kid got back on Friday—her parents made her dive right in head first! ASIJ seems like a great school, and they have been very supportive of Ellie during the transition. The facilities are fantastic, with a pool, tennis courts, and a new performing arts theater coming this fall. Ellie seems to be getting into the swing of things, and has started tennis after school and guitar lessons start soon. I have been substitute teaching in the middle and high school as well.

            Our house is directly across the street from ASIJ, which is great for Ellie. She can leave home at 8:29 and still make it to school for 8:30 classes. ASIJ is set into the corner of a very large park called Nogawa Koen (park) that is bisected by a small river, No Gawa (river), really more of a stream. There is a trail for walking and biking along the river for miles in either direction, so Bella and I can set out from home for walks as long as we can handle. There is plenty of area along the river for her to run off leash and play in the water, so she is getting lots of exercise every day. The park is lovely, with wonderful wide open grassy spaces, large groves of trees, and cherry trees that are going to be spectacular in just a few weeks. Large crows are everywhere with a loud and distinctive caw, and Bella loves to chase them on the ground or around the stream. They are nearly as big as she is! The stream has some huge koi in some of the larger ponds, lots of ducks, and a couple of species of egret, the Little and the Intermediate, I think. Spring is starting to show signs of arrival, and I saw for the first time a fantastic Kingfisher along the river. He was an eye-dazzling shade of iridescent turquoise with an orange-red breast. Just about the most beautiful bird I have ever seen—almost looked like a giant hummingbird flying along and diving into the water for food. The willows are starting to green up, the plum blossoms are coming out, and the cherry trees are showing hints of pink. I expect a few warm days will transform Nogawa Koen into a Japanese garden of the most exquisite sort. This is a wonderful area—not the urban jungle we envisioned when we were first considering a move to one of the largest cities in the world!

            The area around ASIJ is very suburban, almost rural in feel but of course high density. The buildings are two-story houses and apartments, with typically narrow streets and tiny gardens. There are little truck gardens scattered around too, though those are disappearing as the area continues to grow in popularity. Our local “town” centers around Tama station, a little train station on a small rail line that runs north and south to the main commuter rail lines. There are a couple of small markets for meat, produce, and groceries, and a few restaurants around the station. The station is a 6 minute walk from our house. I do grocery shopping at a number of places, sometimes at the local shops, sometimes a 10 minute bike ride to a couple of larger grocery stores, and now and then a train ride away to Musashisakai to the large grocery store in the basement of the Ito Yokado department store (depato). We got a shopping bike (a mamachiaro ) early on, and you’d be amazed at how much you can carry in those baskets.

            Japanese seem typically to shop for food daily. I try to limit myself to once every two or three days, and have been able to do it by making a couple of trips to Costco to stock up. Yes, Costco—just hop the train, change a few times, and an hour later you are at a station that is a 10 minute walk from Costco. It has an odd and interesting mix of American goods (Kirkland toilet paper, Tim’s potato chips, Skippy, and bagels) and thoroughly Japanese items (fresh octopus, frozen yakitori, dried smelt, and 10 varieties of rice in 10 kilo sacks). Don’t worry about getting too much to carry home on the train—they deliver! A nearly full cart cost me 1000 yen, $10, to deliver to my door the next day. Since many people don’t have cars, or have very small cars, delivery service is available nearly everywhere for almost any item you can buy.

            There are other stores within a walk or a bike ride away. J-Mart has been invaluable, sort of a K-mart little-bit-of-everything type of store. Bella loves her J-Mart trips. Dogs are welcome as long as they ride in the shopping cart, and they have special carts with a sheet of vinyl flooring on the bottom for them to sit on, and a set of steps to help the larger dogs get in and out of the cart. Most people have small dogs—long haired dachshunds, cavalier king charles spaniels, and shibu inu are especially popular, but I saw a full-sized lab in a cart the other day. He just about tipped the thing over every time he wagged his tail. It is a hoot to see everyone pushing their cart with a dog in it. They do love their dogs here, and are intrigued by Bella, having never seen a PWD. It is hard to get our J-Mart shopping done since we have to stop for oohs and ahhs in every aisle!

            Japanese food is an adventure, typically fresh and simple. Some of it is definitely an acquired taste, but we are easing into it gradually, trying something different every time we go out and pushing back the taste frontiers. Haven’t done too much real Japanese cooking at home. I have yet to decipher most of the ingredients in the stores, but am going to schedule a shopping trip with a Tokyo native to help out with that. She’ll also do a Japanese cooking class in our home to demonstrate ingredients and techniques. Japanese cooking is very seasonal, specializing in certain items during each season. I will be very sorry to lose my favorite winter season item, yaki-imo, or roasted sweet potatoes. Yaki-imo is sold by a little old man off the back of a pickup truck with a big wood fired roasting oven sitting right over the gas tank. Stacked on the truck right next to the oven is his wood for the fire. He drives along or parks and calls out “yaki-imo” in a singular nasal drone, very mournful, almost like he is lamenting the loss of his beloved sweet potatoes. They come hot out of the roaster in a paper sack and a re a great way to warm your hands for the walk home on a cold winter day—just fantastic! Spring food will be wonderful I’m sure, but nothing can match the complete experience of the yaki-imo man—sound, smell, taste, and what a sight it is!

Check out the photo album called Japan Update Part 2.

 

Despite not speaking Japanese we are able to get along fairly well. Many Japanese speak at least a few words of English (after all, it is mandatory in school), and there is quite a lot of English used for product names on food packages, etc. We are beginning to feel a bit more at home, and know already that we’ll miss many things when it comes time to leave—truly fresh produce that keeps for two weeks  in the fridge, unfailing if superficial politeness, unmatched cleanliness, the yaki-imo man, and of course the incomparable Toto washlet toilet seat, the superman of toilet seats. A toilet seat, you ask? Yes indeed, this is no ordinary toilet seat. This one requires paragraphs of instruction and cautions and a whole control panel to operate. You know something is different when you sit down on a warm seat. Too chilly for you? You can make it warmer or cooler to suit the season. After you are finished, the magic begins. The electronic panel to your right controls your bottom washing functions—bidet, stream or spray with warm water and oscillating function if you so desire, and adjustable water pressure (from a soothing stream to a pressure-washing blast). I always keep the pressure low--I just don’t have the nerve to try the enema-quality wash. And after you have freshened up, there is a blow dryer to finish off with. Zip up and you are good to go. May sound over the top, but I for one am completely sold, and will have a Toto washlet in my suitcase when we go back to the US. Don’t laugh until you’ve tried it!

            I am jumping it to Japanese classes starting April 10. I am enrolled in an intensive 10-week class at Kichijoji Language School a few train stops away. It meets 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks. If I am not at least rudimentarily conversational after all that, then I know it is hopeless! In the mean time I have been learning the two phonetic alphabets—Hiragana (for Japanese words) and Katakana (for words of foreign origin). I can now read and write them both, though it is very slow and laborious (visualize a four year old sounding out words and scrawling letters on that paper with the really wide lines). Just knowing HOW to read, even if I don’t understand the words, is a great leap in my opinion, and it has been real help. I can read place names at the stations (always written in Kanji characters, but they also have signs in Hiragana so the little kids can read them) and decipher some food names in the stores and restaurants. The real boon is Katakana, though, since there is an enormous amount of transliterated English in the Japanese vocabulary that I can sort of read now—food names, objects, etc. For example, the Portuguese Water Dog is not translated into Japanese as Mizu Inu (water dog) but rather is called Po-chu-gi-zu uo-ta doggu  and a Labrador retriever is  a Ra-bu-ra-do-ru ri-ta-ri-ba.  Sometimes (actually most times) it is a challenge to decipher the transliteration, but if you say it enough times it can come through to you. Japanese is sound-poor compared to European languages, so clever substitution can be required to approximate the English—try “ta-ku-shii” for taxi, “ton-ne-ru” for tunnel, and “su-na-kku” for snack shop. I admire the Japanese for their attempts to use English. It is an extremely difficult language with a lot of subtleties of meaning that aren’t present in Japanese, not to mention the impenetrable pronunciation! Sometimes the meanings truly are lost in translation though, and a misplaced “e” in the name of a pet store can spell the difference between “dog wise” and a puppy piddle sample from the pet store “Dog Wiz.”  I really need to start collecting some of the mangled English phrases I see, particularly on T shirts, they are hysterical in an endearing sort of way.

            All in all, things are going well. I miss Alex and the family, and my doggie friends and activities, and we definitely miss our darling Miss India. We love the house and the area we live in, though I don’t think Peter always feels that way as he braves the rush hour commuter train. Yes, you really are packed in tighter than sardines in a can and they really do have guys in uniforms and white gloves pushing people in so the doors can close. Thankfully Peter can usually go in after peak  rush hour, but he describes days where he has passed up a train after watching the guy in line in front of him get onto the train by leaning back into the mass of people on the train and pushing himself in by his heels wedged against the edge of the platform. I’ll be facing that madness for a short trip every morning when I start my Japanese language class, but at least I can ride in the “pink cars” at the front of the train which are reserved for women only. They aren’t much less crowded, but at least you don’t have to worry about getting groped, which is why they started them in the first place.

            Japan is an odd mixture of the tranquil and the over the top, leading edge and hide-bound tradition. What fun to be experiencing it first hand!

Check the photo album "Japan update part 3" for pictures for this entry.

 

A couple of weekends ago we made our first foray outside of Tokyo to go skiing in the Yuzawa area. This is the same region that Ellie visited on her ASIJ ski trip, but we went to a couple of different ski areas. Ellie had Thursday and Friday off, so we took advantage to avoid the notoriously intense weekend ski crowds. We left early Thursday morning and took an hour’s worth of commuter trains to the Shinkansen (bullet train) station at Omiya in northern Tokyo, hopped on board the train and sped at 200km/hr northward through the mountains (literally) to Yuzawa. We arrived at 10:15, went to the hotel to change for skiing, and hopped a shuttle bus up to the Kagura ski area to ski for the afternoon. There is a great system of gondolas and chairs up the mountain—lots of capacity up the hill, but not many trails coming down. There were very few people there since it was Thursday and the mountain was pretty socked in with fog, so there were no crowd problems on the trails. The ski areas are typified by acres on unskied snow and J-pop music blaring from loudspeakers on every lift tower. No one goes off-piste at all—we tried once and fell deep into a whole winter’s worth of uncompressed recrystallized snow—totally unskiable. The J-pop blaring constantly is really annoying, but it does help you navigate down the mountain when skiing in total white-out conditions. You don’t need to see where you are going, just follow the music.

            Yuzawa is a smallish town with LOTS of snow—piled up 12 to 15 feet high along the streets and on the buildings. It has been a huge snow year, and an article in the paper described how the spirits of the people have been broken by dealing with all the snow. I laughed when I read that before we went, but I can see that it is an enormous task to deal with all of it, not to mention paying for the bulldozers and front loaders to haul the stuff off. Lots of wet, heavy snow, so skiing was on par with Washington, not the Rocky Mountains.

            On Friday we skied at Gala Yuzawa, which has a Shinkansen station right at the base area. Hop out of the train, pick up your baggage which of course you have had delivered in advance, change, and ride the gondola up the mountain. Gala Yuzawa is actually includes three ski areas that interconnect if you spring for the 400 yen add-on to your 3700 yen lift ticket ($37). As is typical, there are lots of lifts up and few runs down, and you can of course enjoy J-pop while you ski. Weather was much better on Friday, even got a bit of sun, and we enjoyed warm spring skiing the whole day. Lunch was a bit of an adventure, but fortunately we got a bit of help. The cafeteria was a ticket-shop type, with a large ticket vending machine where you buy a ticket for the selection you want, then hand the ticket to the food servers in line. Of course we couldn’t read a single word on the ticket machines, but a nice young fellow took the opportunity to practice his English by translating for us. I was actually sort of excited to just pick a few things at random and see what we got! The crowds started to pick up by Friday afternoon and I could begin to visualize the description of Japanese skiing as shoulder-to-shoulder going down the mountain en masse. I will leave that scene to my imagination only—I don’t dare try to ski on the weekend!