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Three Weeks :




During the last three weeks, Marley has gone from a tiny newborn, to an exploring and inquisitive puppy.

Seven-Eight Weeks

Mary tries to stack Marley & "Bluto" and Marley in the puppy pen at my mom's house. She weighs in at 8.8 pounds. Bluto  (now named "Tank") goes about 14.

Nine Weeks

Power nap, warp speed, and wondering why I keep following her around

11 Weeks

Terrorizing Big Lou  and exploring Busch Farm

We worked our first two quail this week with my mother at the Ottawa field trial grounds and did some more exploring at Jim & Linda Busch's farm. We saw her brother Bluto this weekend also. His new owners named him "Tank", which is appropriate since he is about twice her size still.

14 weeks

Playing with "Uncle Trav"

Marley graduated from Puppy Socialization this week. She went to Dog's Best Friend Ltd. in Madison, WI. Her instructor, Lisa, has worked with Patricia McConnell for 12 years. Marley won "Fastest Puppy" during the graduation games, winning over three 5 1/2-month-old Labs. We celebrated by going to the Busch farm and practiced running with a bracemate.

15 weeks (Christmas 2003)

                               
"...Dear God, will this humiliation never end?..    ...Hey, Santa me left a present....

...I wish I had thumbs...                                                                ...man these things itch...


Here I come to save the day!....                    ...whoa, look at all that food!..."

This week Marley has mastered "fetch" and is steadily increasing the time she can "stay"  - she's up to about 10-15 seconds now, which is better than the nanosecond we started with 3 weeks ago. She is also beginning to develop "eye-mouth coordination" which means she sometimes catches a treat tossed at her rather than letting it bounce off of her eyeball. Never a pretty sight.

I have let her collar out over two inches in as many weeks. So far she is growing evenly, which is unusual. Vizsla puppies tend to grow in pieces, first the front legs, then the back, then the ears, then the tail, then the legs, etc. They usually go through a serious stage of the "uglies". She is actually growing so evenly that if it weren't for her collar, I wouldn't notice the growth. We don't have a wicket that goes short enough, but I'm guessing she's about 15 inches and around 20 pounds of pure terror in a red fur suit. Probably payback for the antlers.

And (this is the big news) we have gone 3 whole days without an accident! I finally gave up and hung a bell on the door. Her normal signal that she wanted to go out was to run up to you and bounce on your leg, then run away (which is indistinguishable from the 15 times she does it for no other reason than to jump on your leg and run away). She learned after the second time I rang the bell before letting her out that if she rings it herself, humans come flying to open the door. I suspect she will be abusing the bell in no time...

 17 Weeks

Marley is advancing in her training a bit. We've been running at one of the local DNR training grounds. The dogs run, I try to walk without tripping. It's 1,300 acres of bottomland hardwood and open marsh. Basically it is a Wisconsin River flood plain, but it is really nice to have somewhere close to home that they can stretch their legs. I hear the DNR drops off a bunch of pheasant there in the fall, but we haven't seen one yet. Fatalities to hunters and coyotes, I'm sure.
 

19 Weeks

Marley lost her first tooth last weekend, and I think she's working on losing another one. We tried posing for pictures today, but you can see how well that turned out! But for some reason, I like the eyeball shot. It's been too cold here to go to the DNR grounds, so we're are doing indoor obedience stuff and perfecting our game of fetch.

Five Months

These pictures were taken while we were playing fetch in my mother's kitchen over the weekend. She was five months old February 10th. Over the weekend, Marley lost another tooth, except this time I dove fast enough to grab it off of the floor before she ate it. She's lost three so far and the adult canines are still not totally in yet.  We're now calling her Marley O'Lantern.  She also moved out of her puppy collar into a big dog collar on February 11th. 
Knock on wood, she's still growing pretty evenly. If it weren't for the fact that I can't just scoop her up off of the floor anymore and that I am still letting her collar out weekly, I wouldn't notice the growth.

5 Months

Coke bottle fetch or "Joie de V"

6 months

At six months, Marley is finally starting to show enough maturity that I can think about heavier field training and getting her ready for the show ring. She also moved into her big girl field collar.

6 1/2 Months

Action shots playing with Joe in the back yard.


 

15 Months
 

In another 3 weeks, Marley and Briggs will be off to bird dog boarding school ( www.berrysbirddogs.com ) that's currently down in Americus, Georgia y'all ! Briggs is pictured below playing with Marley and mugging for the camera in the last picture.  I caught Marley in mid-"zig"...or is it "zag". I'm pretty sure they won't be playing like this at boarding school!

17 Months

These were taken at the Tampa Bay Vizsla Club field trial the end of January 2005. Marley didn't make it in, but Briggs did. Briggs won the Amateur Walking Puppy stake. Marley, Briggs & Nika are with Gary Jagoda ( www.berrysbirddogs.com ) aka Bird Dog Boarding School, training for the spring field trial season.

25 Months

This was taken while Marley was watching me work with Nika on "whoa"