7th of March - Bringing Murphy Home!!!!

After speaking with the breeders we decided to go with getting a crate for Murphy as his kennel at home. This is what he is used to and so it would make settling in a good bit easier. For traveling in the car, as he is going to be such a large dog we wanted him also be in a crate so we bought a travel one that folds up from pet barn as well.

Things we packed in the car for pickup day:

• Travel Crate
• Puppy pads for the bottom of the crate
• Towel for over the puppy pads
• Water bowl
• Water
•  Clock – (to act like the mothers heart beat, it would be wrapped in a cloth with the sent of the litter and mother on it)
• Soft toy (preferably with sown on eyes and not buttons that can be bitten off and swallowed)

That was it. We headed off and arrived at the house at 3pm.

Murphy was out of the crate running around with Col. They had separated him the previous night from the litter so he was used to being on his own for one night with them. Which I thought was a very clever idea. After getting a lot more information on the do’s and don’ts when we got home we felt ready to head back to Sydney. Col carried Murphy out to the car and put him in his crate. Murphy settled down immediately and nuzzled up beside his teddy. We put a small bit of water in his bowl and hit the road… slowlyJ

We stopped once along the way to get some ice cream and Mark peaked inside and Murphy was fast asleep. We continued on our way.

Once home we anticipated the clean up job we may have ahead of ourselves in the crate but to our amazement he didn’t pee or poop at all!! We carried the crate into our front garden and opened it up, put the lead on him and walked him out. He walked about on the stones for a second and then peed straight away. We gave him a lot of praise and then decided to bring him into the house.

He was immediately confused and started to get quiet upset. I came to the conclusion there was just too many new things to take in so we took him out the back garden. We set up his crate outside and filled up his water bowl. He hadn’t been fed yet so I got started on preparing that. Which wasn’t difficult, as the breeders had pre-prepared his food for us along with 3 weeks worth. That has definitely taken the stress out of the first few weeks for us.

As I thought might have been the case he didn’t eat much of his food at all. We tried feeding him inside and then I thought he wasn’t used to that so I brought the food outside and he had a bit more. I didn’t push him too much.

Throughout the whole time I must mention that he was whimpering a lot. It was pretty constant but once we left him alone for a little while he calmed down more. We put him to bed around 10pm, that was actually quiet easy, as he was very used to going into a crate at nighttime.

8th of Feb – Picking from the Litter

My brother and sister had just arrive from Ireland for a 3 week holiday and in time to take the journey down to Crookwell with us to pick out our puppy. Beforehand I read about 50 articles and snippets about what you should look out for in the puppy, how to know if they are healthy and what traits to look out for that you should avoid. I think I overloaded myself too much with information but it made me feel prepared.

We had an awful time leaving Sydney with the traffic. We hadn’t anticipated how long it would actually take. I was thinking 2.5hrs but it actually was a good 3-hour drive… so we missed the time slot we were given to pick our puppy and they let us join the people at 3pm. They were very nice and understandable about it.

So I decided that I wanted a male. No real reason why. I think it was just based on the fact that my dog growing up was male and so I couldn’t shake the idea. Mark didn’t mind. He was angling towards a girl for the same reason; his dog growing up was female. He was happy to go with a male.

We had the 2^nd pick of the males. As someone specifically asked for a longhaired German Shepard and he turned out to be a male that brought the count of boys down to 4. Then as we had 2^nd we had the pick of 1 out of 3.

The breeders put different coloured collars on the pups as soon as they were born to tell them apart. We had the choice of either the green, blue or brown (yellow in pics).

We arrived at the breeders which was a lovely country house, on a large plot of land with horses and a large shed with at least 3-4 adult GSDs in there own pens. All the puppies were in a caged off area by the back door of the house under a verandah with plenty of space to play and run about. They were pretty active and playing with each other a lot. One or two were sleeping in the corner on top of each other.

We got to meet Plato first, the dad of the pups. He was younger than I expected, almost 2 I believe. He was beautiful. Long temperament, his coat was shiny and silky smooth and generally a very happy dog. You could tell the breeders looked after them all very well.

We went inside to the sitting room where a blanket had been placed on the floor. We sat down and Shirley brought in the puppies. The green and blue puppy came in first. The brown (yellow collar in photos) one came in a few minutes later. I guessed that he was one of the sleeping ones and she didn’t want to wake him and drop him in to a lot of people straight away.

The green collar pup was the most active. Attacking my toes straight away. He then went over to Mark and started pulling on his shirt and then went over to the side of the blanket we were sitting on and started pulling that. Mark and myself looked at each other and pretty much thought in unison “Not that one”. He was gorgeous and healthy but the display of nipping and not being too interested in us ruled we weren’t a good mix for each other. The blue pup was much quieter in comparison. He was sweet, enjoyed getting petted and was quite calm however he still wasn’t too interested in us. He went off to the corner and went to sleep. The brown pup was now in and he was playing with Mark. He seemed more keen on playing with toys and not with our toes and he stayed with us longer so we sort of felt like he picked us. He also didn’t mind being on his back and when you tickled his belly his back paw did that typical shaking thing dogs do so that was it. That sealed the deal.

A note from the breeder was that all the pups at 4 weeks of age are all the same pretty much it’s just the mood they are in on the day. So who knows what he will be like at 8 weeks when we pick him? My personal opinion is that you pick based on how the dog reacts to you and how you like him/her then you can never say you picked the wrong dog for you. I tried out a few little things from the Internet that I read but really I didn’t bother. I think the most important points to look out for is how healthy they look, what conditions are they being kept in and what they’re parents are like. We didn’t meet the mother of the puppies as she was a bit stressed from feeding all 8 puppies now that they have teeth and she was given some alone time to rest up. We were both happy with that answer and we didn’t press to see her.

On the road trip home the 4 of us tried to come up with a name… six were short listed but one stuck with us over the next couple of days…Murphy!!!

12th of January – Puppies arrived

I came home from grocery shopping, opened my emails and I had an email telling me that the puppies had arrived. I was delighted! Blossom had 8 pups in total 5 boys and 3 girls. One of the males was also a longhaired German Shepard, which is quite rare.

Throughout the month of January we received updates and photos of how the puppies were doing. We set the date to pick out our puppy, the 8^th of Feb. We were counting down the days.

Breeding

Takimbre had a breeding scheduled for October, which would mean the puppies would be ready to go home the first week of January 2014, but it unfortunately it wasn’t successful. So the next breeding was scheduled for November which would mean the puppies would be ready to come home early to mid March. This mating was successful and so we got very excited.

Picking the Breeder

This wasn’t as difficult as I first thought. Earlier in the year I did a quick search for breeders and there was such a massive list I closed the browser and filed that away for another day. When I started looking again I took a different angle on it and found that there was an Australian German Shepard Society that broke down all the registered breeders into states. I then visited all the websites for each breeder in the state of NSW. For me first impressions count and as I am in IT if they had a bad website I marked them off the list pretty quickly. 

I found the perfect one with Takimbre breeders based in Crookwell. They are 3 hours south but their website outlined what they excepted of owners to do for one of their pups and this ticked all the boxes for me. I got in touch with them and they informed me about their process and when they were breeding again. The timelines were tight as we had just started looking for a house to buy but I put our names down anyway. I didn’t tell the other half this at the time ;-)