Had a busy day today getting school shoes & uniform for the kids going back to school on Thursday & the holidays have flown past. The funny thing is I thought they went back next Monday & if it had not been for my Mum speaking to a Mum of one of my kids friends today they would of not gone back to school until Monday.
Got a couple nice photos of both litters of pups today & if you click on the photos below to see full size.

Dolly's pups are now 3 weeks old & I think you can see from the photos below that they are now mobile & are developing their individual characters. It is lovely to watch them play with each other & now lick & chew at your face & hands when you pick them up & even at this early age you can tell the which ones are the more out going & the one who are a bit more laid back about things.
I think Alfie is going to be a confident one as just found him on his own half way across the room. Picked the rascal up & told him he's abit to young for big adventures yet.
Have still not got to the bottom of not being able to caption my photos, but took all the photos below today of Dolly's Cavapoo pups at 3 weeks old, so please click on the photos to see full size.

Got an update on Charlie today who is Smudges sister & from Millies Litter born in May 2010. He is about 15 weeks old now & is a very good looking young man.
Got a lovely message with it as well, as this is the first dog that Tess & Lorraine have had & they put a lot of time into deciding on this to be the right dog breed for them & to read in their email that they made the right dicision is great. The message reads "He has settled really well & is such a fantastic dog. I would definitely recommend this breed with other first time owners." Cavaliers are a good breed to have for first time dog owners as they are kind & willing to be trained as long as they get paid with lots of love & I think that Charlie gets lots of that.
Thanks Tess & Loraine for the update on Charlie & will look forward to hearing from you all again in the near future. Also recieved four beautiful photos of Charlie below.
Click on photos below to see fullsize.

This is the last Bank Holiday weekend of the year & were has the year gone Christmas seems to be just aroud the corner again.
We have just moved all the Mums Dolly & Ysabel & their pups into are sitting dining room. We have put them into crates now with a lamp above to still make sure they stay warm. To put them in crates is about safety, because as much as I would love to have all the pups running around all the time the risk to them being stepped on, squat in a door or chewing or eating something not good for them is a real one. Being in the crates in are living area allows them to become fimiliar with all the bussle & noise of a household. When a bit older & more mobile they will be allowed out & about. We have a large walled patio & a puppy run on are lawn & if the weather is lovely these places are great for pups to play & have adventures safely. My children regularily nurse the pups & I think properly supervised this prephars them well for family life & from birth makes them used to human contact.
Dolly's pups had their first taste of solids yesterday & they did not need to be showed what to do, as they tucked in & cleared their plate. Dolly was around to clean them up after they straddled through it & they also took great pleasure in licking it of each other. I feed a whole dry food which when you start them on it you soak it in water to make like a porridge for them.
Ysabel is doing her pups great & it looks like their eyes will be open soon. They are tubby little girls & are all really well marked.
The photos below are from the last couple days & unfortunatly I can still not caption them. Hope we can get to the bottom of why I can not do this
 soon, as I am going to have a lot of photos to catch up on putting captions to.
Click on photos below to see full size. 

Lovely day here today finally after all the rain we have had the last couple of days, so I loaded up dogs & kids in the car & we all went down along the river Taw for a walk which was great, forgot my camera as lots of opportunities for photos of kids & dogs will remember it next time hopefully. Smudge came with us & found it hard to keep up because of all the lovely smells in the grass & hedges. After the rain then Sun & a bit of humidity, sent smells lie heavy & the countryside then becomes an aray of even more interesting smells for dogs, every little creature that has scurried across the path you take has left its sent for your dog to decieffer with its amazing sense of smell. How developed the sense of smell in a dog is hard for some to comprehend, but I would imagine for a dog to have its sense of smell taken away would be like losing your sight for a human, as humans in this day & age relay more on sight than any other sense. 
Smudge though is fast asleep with Bobby on the sofa now probably dreaming about all those wonerful smells.
All Mums & pups are doing well & will hope to have more photos tomorrow. Lastly the caption option on my photo gallery is not working at the moment, so bare with me & hopefully will be able to caption the photos on my last 2 blogs soon. 

Ysabels girls are now 8 days old so time for their weigh in. By eight days you would easily expect all of the pups in any litter to of doubled their body weight by now. I can see they have gained weight, but weighing them helps me to be sure they are gaining the right amount of weight. Not gaining weight can be indications of problems with Mum or that the pup has something wrong with them.
Ysabel has done them really well & all have easily more then doubled their weight in 8 days. The first born girl weighed 8oz at birth now weighs 18oz. The second girl born weighed 61/2oz at birth & now weighs 15oz. The third girl born weighed 6oz at birth now weighs 15oz & the last girl born weighed 7oz at birth & now weighs 16oz. From these weights I can see that Ysabel is coping & doing her girls proud, all of them have gained over an ounce a day for a small breed like Cavaliers that is really good. The girls are also looking fit & well & starting to pigment around their eyes & nose, as when born their noses are pink & it takes at least 4-8 weeks for their noses to fully turn black.
Click on photos below to see full size.

Had to go & get emergency supplies this evening as down to last box of cereal & when my husband announced that I had no dishwasher tablets left, well I did not fancy emptying out the dish washer & hand washing the cereal bowls for tomorrow morning, so have been to the temple of food called Tescos. Do not really enjoy shopping, will have to start doing it on line, but have been saying that for the last 6 months ever time I need to go shopping.
All my dogs are doing fine Bonnie is still on heat, so we are still playing magical doors at the moment ensuring Charlie & Oscar do not have a clandestine meeting with her. Lucy her sister should be in heat any day now so we will be on are toes making sure that she is safely out of the reach of Charlie & Oscar. 
Dollys pups are now 17 days old & all their eyes are open now & their ears are opening to. They are all getting really mobile now, wobbling around their bed like they have been on the beer.Dolly is looking really well, but is moulting now as with all the hormones realised in her body this now causes her to loss her coat & some Mums can go almost bold when this occurs.
Ysabel is looking really well to. The birth & feeding her girls seems to be not taking to much out of her, as 4 pups is a nice size for her & most Mums should cope easily with this amount of pups. Her pups are now a week old, amazing that has flown by.
Click on photos below to see full size.

Been a couple busy days with my three boys doing a Mini Rugby camp & the weather being not the best with very heavy showers & the forecast for tomorrow morning is for torrential rain so they have finished the Rugby camp a day early. So no running aroud tomorrow morning looking for gumshields & boots. Is it me or are all boys the same, it can be right in front of them & they will not see what they are looking for. I do believe this affliction carries on into adult hood as my husband seems to have the same problem or is it his genes.
Enough about me & let me tell you about Dolly's little family, her Cavapoo pups are really getting going, wobbling around their bed blindly on all fours now. Their eyes are almost all right open, but they do not start to focus until around 28 days, so at the moment every thing is a bit blurry. Their ears are just starting to open & that is a lovely moment when they start to respond to your voice. Also it is lovely now to see them wobble up to Mum & on contact wag their tails. We have had a few litters over the years, but all of these little development stages feel me with joy & wonder. Watching pups develop from birth, being allowed into such a trusted position with my girls & for them to allow me to witness their labour never showing no malice to me just makes me feel very privileged. 
Ysabel's pups are podging up as I watch them. They are 5 days old now & are starting to get pigment in their noses & are quite a lively bunch of girls already.
Lastly Smudges final bloods have come back & nothing has been found in them to know why she has had a couple seizure. The next step is to have a MRI Scan & take fluid of her spinal cord or the other option is after two weeks on anti-seizure medication to then take her of it & see if she is still having them. I have talked to varies people & looked on the internet for information & some times like children young pups can have an episode of seizures that then cease & no one knows what caused them or why they had them. So we are going to see how she is when she comes of the medication & hope the seizures have stopped if not then we will go down the MRI scan route. At the moment she is very much a normal pup, running around like an idiot, chewing, eating any old rubbish & then sleeping. In my heart I think that she may have been jarred by one of the older dogs & I am actually feeling that the seizures have stopped, so faith & fingers crossed for 2 weeks time.
Click below to see photos full size. 

Lastly I got this lovely email today about Oliver, one of my pups. Madeleine who owns him took him to a Charity Fun Dog Show today for some socialising & he won Best Puppy & Best Pedigree Puppy, she is so chuffed & so am I. Well done Oliver & Madeleine. Fun dog shows are a really good way to socialise your dog & have some fun.

Ysabel although losing a pup is doing fine & the other four girls are growing before my eyes. They are all nice marked pups & I took a little video below for you to see how well Ysabel is looking after them. Ysabel is such a sweet little thing & is really into her little girls.