08.08.10
August 8th
Mostly photos for those wondering how things are going. Tinni is awesome and the spitting image of both Skella and Klói in character, he’s a sensitive smart dog so quick to learn that it’s best to be two steps ahead of him as he learns through eye contact as a reward it makes it very important that he not get eye contact except for good things, he seeks out eye contact all day long. We think it’s awesome to train him. He acts more like a grown up dog than a puppy at least at our house we hardly know he’s here and we were worried he’d drive the other dogs nuts during his stay. Hehe Just like Klói he loves to help out around the house and Klói has already gotten him to bring mail to Rúnar. Klói took one letter and Tinni followed him with another, copy cat! He also comes into the laundry room with me and watches everything I’m doing, it’s like we have Klói as a puppy again. Klói is such an awesome Dad it’s amazing to watch him. It is so heartwarming as well to have Tinni here because he has all his Mom’s good qualities and he prances around with the same movements as she had, his ears, eyes and expression is hers. I feel like she is here with us. He’s running around here with her favourite toy (the grey cat), so sweet it brings a tear to the eye, it’ll be hard to give him back.
Having lots of fun with him here and it’s sad the week is already over tomorrow. 
I’ve been getting him used to TTouch and he’s starting to like that, as well as playing Crate Games (from Susan Garrett) and some other training. We have decided that the next litter will play crate games before they leave us if possible from a very young age! Not just getting used to the crate but love their crate, we never thought of doing the games with puppies although we’ve used them for the older dogs before. I’m curious to know how it goes with pups.
Tinni seems to feed off the energy of the others dogs very well so that when they are laying down sleeping he does too, but like my dogs he also feeds off of my energy and the energy of people so when I get anxious (like when a wasp got too close to me today) then the dogs get excited as well. I must try to control my adrenaline through deep breathing or something. They sure are doing their best to teach me to deal with my anxiety better. 
Rúnar helped me put photos into a slideshow, I hope it works. I wonder though if those with dial-up can see them…please let me know if you can’t see them like this.
Here is poor Hófi, I wonder why I thought she wasn’t fat enough. She is finding it very hard to find a comfortable position lately. I feel sorry for her now with 1 more week to go until her due date! Maybe she’ll decide to have them early although I hope not because I’d rather she had them on the weekend when Rúnar is at home. Pregnant or not she still loves visitors and tries to charm them.
As for Birta we think she is pregnant given how she acts and the fact that she also has swollen milk glands but she is still thin (her coat fools you) so we wonder if there is one or two. She still has 2 weeks left until her due date so we’ll have to be patient.
We were thinking of taking her for an ultrasound but it’s expensive and we don’t have time to go now that Rúnar will be going back to work on Monday. We have been SO busy, hardly at home lately and when at home we’ve had guests or been doing other things. Rúnar went into Reykjavík on his own (with Birta and Klói) yesterday and did a bunch of errands including getting puppy food (we use Robur). We still didn’t get everything done that we had wanted to do while he was on holiday but he did get a bunch done in the yard, we took some junk to the junkyard today and cleaned up the puppy room a bit and he used yesterday to build Hófi a whelping box and it’s really nice. The bottom has plastic tablecloth material so it will be easy to clean and we can take the cloth off after the litter and put a new one on in future for the next litter. It cost a bit to get the materials because we wanted a more sturdy one that we can take apart and store better as well. It’s not very big (maybe a little bigger than their wire cage (that 4-5 dogs fit in in the car) but we also got a new lower puppy play pen so that we can take the front off of the box early and just let the pups have the play pen as soon as they start getting too big for the box. It should also help with housetraining as well because they always like to go outside the box if they can as every breeder knows they start that pretty much as soon as they start to be mobile. Hopefully I won’t be injuring myself on that playpen since it’s easier for me to lean over and climb in. I’ll try to post photos of the whelping box soon, although there are a couple photos in the slide show where Rúnar was putting finishing touches on it.
The past few weeks have flown past and we feel like Rúnar didn’t have any holidays poor guy. My chest and lung ex-rays came back already and were fine so that’s good news.
