June 2026

We are heading to a very busy time with two litters being born within two weeks of each other. 

One could argue that we didn’t need to breed both together, but to delay means that we either have a winter litter of puppies or the mother ends up being a year older. We try to avoid winter puppies if we can, and we want our girls to have their puppies when they are at their best. 

To get ready for this we have been working hard behind the scenes to make sure we facilitate the whole process in the best way we can. We have removed the astro turf as we said we would and this has made keeping the patio’s clean much easier. We have acquired more trays to put small pieces of astro turf for when the puppies are outside for their toileting.  

Additionally we have ordered a Chicubes kennel as this will enable puppies being outside in a better way than before – previous puppies haven’t always used the existing kennel in the way we would have wanted. The Chicube will mean that we can place it where the puppies like to sleep. 

Life generally is busy for us with the dogs in the summer. As some of you know, we haven’t then heart to move our retired breeding mothers on as they are pets first and foremost. Hence we have 12 dogs!

This means three separate dog walks at each end of the day in the summer. It’s actually easier to walk them in the winter on Cannock Chase in the mornings when the nights are longer. Dogs can’t be walked off lead on Cannock Chase until August due to nesting birds – so we walk them closer to home on local footpaths. We can’t walk them on these footpaths in the winter due to deer shooting and our dogs finding remnants of culled deer. 

In short, having 12 dogs plus puppies takes some managing!