Welcome to the 2021 Pax x Luna Litter micro-blog! This page is intended for new owners to get a weekly update on their new puppy. Please send us a message with any questions. Thank you! – Kim
Dog Shows. October 17th. Day 50. Hello from a dog show in Henderson, Nevada!!! I was here this weekend to show three Barrett dogs. The purpose of a dog show is for a third party to evaluate an exhibitor’s breeding stock. I’m proud to say that we won. 🙂 In short, it means the judges we showed to this weekend thought our dogs were the best examples of the Weimaraner breed that he saw that day. For us, it’s affirmation that we’re breeding dogs that conform to the Weimaraner breed standard.
Bird Drive Testing. October 15th. Day 48. I’m about to head out of town for the weekend again (surprise!) so I took the puppies out for some bird drive testing this morning. We’re pleased to report that while some puppies showed more intensity and prey drive than others, all of them demonstrated some level of interest in birds. We used both dead and live bobwhite quail today. Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you’re curious about how the test was conducted. At the end of the morning, all of the puppies went down for a nap.
Observation. October 14th. Day 47. Puppies are at an age now where their individual personalities are really starting to show. We’ll be temperament and aptitude testing them in a few days to really see how they score. (If you’re curious about how your puppy scored, let me know! I’ll be happy to share the results with you.) Below is a series of photos from tonight’s time in the front yard.
White Collar Girl oozes confidence and independence. At this age, she’s the only puppy in the litter interested in venturing off the front porch and into the dirt to explore her surroundings. In just a few short days, even this front yard will be too small for her curiosity. This trait of ‘independence’ will make her a great candidate to be a competition hunting dog (which is what I bred this litter for).
She also used this time to pee in the dirt. Good girl!!!
You’ll notice that in this photo, White Collar Girl’s tail is up, and Purple Collar Girl’s tail is down. Generally speaking, the tail is a barometer of how a dog is feeling (up = good!, down = uncertain or unsure). However, at this age, any experience is a new one, and it’s expected for puppies to be uncertain and unsure. (White Collar Girl is just an early bloomer.) Evolutionarily speaking, this trait has ensured their survival in the wild. It is expected that in the next two months, you will be socializing the snot out of your new puppy so that new experiences will be met with excitement and curiosity (with tail up!) instead of fear and reactivity. Keep an eye on your dog’s tail at all times to understand how he/she is feeling.
Exploration for Pink Collar Girl
In addition to exploring horizontal planes, I really like that these puppies are also exploring vertical planes. In other words, they’re not only exploring what’s in front of them, but what’s above them as well.
Everyone’s a stair master!
Green Collar Boy looking to come up
Yellow Collar Boy on the move
Stacking. October 13th. Day 46. Puppies got some more outdoor time this evening and they LOVE exploring our potted plants. Once it got dark, everyone came in for a photo-session of puppy stacks. For those who are curious, all Barrett Weimaraner puppies get “stacked up” for photos so we can evaluate their structure. There’s a lot that goes into it, but we’ve used Blue Collar Boy as an example below to show you some of the types of proportions and angles we’re looking for. In summary, structure outlines that exhibit symmetry and balance translate into a dog with proper form, type and function.
Blue Boy, marked up
Overall, Blue Collar Boy is stunningly gorgeous (which was not expected since this litter was not bred for the show ring). Here’s part of what we’re looking for:
Red – Measurement of shoulder angle. The angle created by the point of the shoulder blade (top red circle) and elbow (middle red circle) should create a 90 degree angle.
Orange – Measurement of forelegs. The distance between the shoulder blade (top orange line) and elbow (middle orange line), and the distance between the elbow and the front feet (bottom orange line) should be equal.
Yellow – Measurement of rear legs. The length of the thigh (upper yellow line) should equal the length of the tibia (lower yellow line).
Green – Top line. The top line, or back line of a dog (green line) should be gently sloped from the front to rear in a straight line.
Blue – Measurement of muzzle. The measurement from the occiput (knob on the back of the dog’s head) to the stop (the slope at the top of the nose), and the distance from the stop to the tip of the nose, should be about the same.
Purple – Forechest. If a dog’s shoulders are built correctly, the forechest of a dog is visible.
And there you have it. Welcome to the nerdom of breeder evaluations.
Blue Collar Boy
Orange Collar Boy
Green Collar Boy
Pink Collar Girl
Yellow Collar Boy
Purple Collar Girl
White Collar Girl
Enrichment and Socialization. October 12th. Day 45. The SINGLE most important thing you’re going to do as soon as you get your puppy home is to enrich his/her brain and get as much socialization in as you possibly can. Please take a moment to print out the Puppy Enrichment and Socialization Checklist, and keep it handy for the next couple of months so you don’t forget to work on checking off the boxes. In the meantime, we’re acclimating your puppy to the Swiffer WetJet, which we push around the house on a daily basis. Everyone loves chasing after it.
Escape. October 11th. Day 44. It appears we have a consistently naughty little puppy in the litter. !!! White Collar Girl was the first one to escape the whelping box. First one to climb up and down the stairs. And now, she’s the first one who magically appears in the living room… because she figured out how to climb out of the puppy pen (and she’s teaching the others to do it, too).
After dinner, our evenings are now filled with ‘living room playtime,’ complete with exploration, tracking for kibble, and feeding off of Mom.
Even though this litter was not bred for the dog show game, we stack up puppies anyway, just to see how they look. Blue Boy is gorgeous!
Green Boy is also stunning (and he’s the same color as Blue Boy, he just looks lighter here because of the photo).
Field Trial. October 10th. Day 43. Greetings from a field trial in beautiful state of New Mexico!! We are here this weekend to compete with some of our field trial-bred dogs, Soba, Steven, Gracie, Zara, and Scarlett. For the uninitiated, field trialing is a sport where bird dogs run a 30-minute course where the objective is to hunt game birds. On course this weekend was bobwhite quail. And because these dogs are extreme athletes, the only way to keep up with them is to follow them on horseback. The 20-hour drive there, and 20-hour drive back was exhausting, but it was well worth it to see our dogs do what they were bred to do. And for the record, the Pax x Luna dogs should be very capable of participating in the field trials. One puppy out of this litter will be staying with me so he/she can grow up and compete at the field trials. Which one will it be? That will depend on temperament and aptitude testing. The one I pick will be confident, ambitious, independent, and fast… all the qualities needed for a dog to compete at this level. Remaining puppies not selected for competition/performance life will be placed in homes that suit their personalities.
First brace of the Open Gun Dog course in Bernardo, New Mexico.
Stairs. October 6th. Day 39. One And just like that, puppies are now big enough to go outside. We spent some time on the deck this afternoon and the puppies had a GREAT time. This is the first litter I’ve ever had where puppies decided to go up and down the stairs on the FIRST day they’ve been outside. We usually don’t hit that milestone until puppies are 7-8 weeks old. Back inside the house, we also tried stacking up puppies for the first time. No surprise, they all handled the experience well. These guys are special!
A note about coat color; they vary in this litter. Three puppies are dark (Pink Girl, Purple Girl, and Orange Boy), and the other four are light. The darker-coated may have a propensity to have a thinner, coarser coat than their lighter-coated siblings.
Friendship. October 2nd. Day 35. One of the best parts about breeding Weimaraners is the friendships we’ve made over the years. This weekend, I’m up in Northern California at Mark and Kim Urbani’s house. We initially met when Mark and Kim purchased Ruby (2017 Boulder x Lenka, and also a littermate sister to our girl, Mango). Over the years, common interests (like drinking wine, ha!) have turned us into really good friends. Mark is an enologist (aka the scientist behind chemistry and biology of winemaking) and invited me up for the weekend to help harvest, crush, and press grapes for future bottles. I couldn’t resist, so I left Barry at home with the Luna puppies and went to NorCal for a couple days of adult fun. And because we don’t do anything without multi-tasking, Mack (black boy from the Skeeter x Tennessee litter) came with me for some socialization.
Sweet Scarlett, Barbera, and French Colombard grapes
Rinsing before going into the automatic crusher
A glass of last year’s French Colombard harvest
In addition to Ruby (white collar), Mark and Kim now have Captain (blue collar) and Silver (pink collar). The little one is Mack.
Mack on his first big road trip!
It was also Mark’s birthday, so I made him a French Vanilla Cake with Swiss Buttercream. The live pansies are edible. 🙂
More Play Time. September 30th. Day 33. Tonight, puppies went downstairs and spent time in the living room in pairs (mostly because this was more efficient than taking them down one at a time). They also spent some more time with the other adult dogs in the house. I’m already seeing that overall, this is a confident, inquisitive bunch. New experiences are met with curiosity, not fear. Puppies are cautious instead of reckless. It’s going to be a nice litter!
Play Time. September 29th. Day 32. We decided tonight was a good night to bring the puppies downstairs, one at a time, to let them explore the living room while we were in there anyway watching television. For puppies that had never been out of their pen before, they did astoundingly well! As a litter, we’re finding these little guys to be bold and curious. No one was fearful about meeting Britta and Friday (the old ladies in the house) and everyone covered the whole room, sniffing everything as they went. Luna supervised from her perch on the sofa until she fell asleep.
Weaning. September 27th. Day 30. Puppies are now getting weaned onto solid food! This week, we’re starting with a blend of raw goats milk and pulverized dry puppy food. They. Love. It. Over the next few weeks, we’ll gradually transition milk to water, and pulverized bits to larger bits, and ultimately end up with a blend of whole kibble splashed with some water (which is what the other dogs in the house get everyday).
Random Objects. September 25th. Day 28. With eyes and ears open, and little feet that like to go pitter-patter everywhere, it’s amusing to place a different foreign object into the box every single day and watch the puppies to see what they do. At first, they paused and sniffed. Now that they’re used to seeing weird things, their first inclination is to explore and bite. If this later translates into your puppy finding your new sneakers for the first time and mauling them instead of being curious about them, apologies. But… go ahead and just make sure your shoes are put away for the next couple of years so we don’t have this problem!
Exploration. September 22nd. Day 25. The baby jailbirds now see what’s outside their world, and they’re wanting OUT!!! It’s another sign that they’re outgrowing their space so we’ll be moving to bigger real estate in another few days. Meanwhile, everyone’s enjoying time with Mom, chewing on toys, and looking over the ledge. (Or if you’re Yellow Collar Boy, actually trying to get over to the other side.)
Bonding Time. September 21st. Day 24. My favorite part of coming home from work everyday is sitting in the box inhaling the puppies. Snuggling them and messing around with their feet also gives them tactile stimulation and molds them into learning that human touch is a good thing. Luna’s so happy about me helping out that she now spends her evenings on the guest bed resting, and watching me to make sure I’m doing an adequate job. 🙂
Activity. September 20th. Day 23. At week three, puppies really begin to get active. To keep things interesting, we added a platform and some stairs tonight, along with a box of “week three toys” for the puppies to discover, play with, and chew on. In the next week or so, we’ll share how the platform and stairs play into the next phase of puppy development.
Coat Color and Pigment. September 18th. Day 21. Some litters we produce are very consistent in coat color. In others, we get a little variety park. As typical with our hunting litters, there are two distinct colors of gray in the mix; light, and dark. (For those who wish to nerd out on Weimaraner coat colors, there’s an article here.) The lighter-colored puppies have lighter noses and feet while the darker-colored puppies have darker noses and feet. The three darker puppies will grow up to look more like their mom, while the four lighter puppies will grow up to look more like their dad.
Nails. September 17th. Day 20. Surprise! We’re #nailsnobs. In other words, we are fanatics about nail care (for both ourselves and our dogs) so nail care starts now. By the time these puppies are old enough to go home, they will have been clipped more than a dozen times and also introduced to a nail grinder. Please keep up the work we’ve started so your puppy’s nails don’t turn into nasty talons that scratch your patio doors and etch your wood floors. Also, some cute photos this evening:
Wrastlin’. September 14th. Day 17. Kiddos have officially entered the stage where they play with one another, bite one another, and wrestle altogether. And then they all pass out like drunken sailors. In the next few days we’ll introduce the puppies to a few toys with different smells and textures, and we’ll also introduce new flooring to get them used to walking all over different surfaces.
Bio-Sensing Puppies. September 13th. Day 16. Eyes are open!!! Also, since the third day, we’ve been diligently bio-sensing puppies. At day 16, we have one more day to go, and then we’ll move onto the next development phase. The biggest boy continues to be Blue Collar, and the smallest girl continues to be Pink Collar. Everyone’s doing great!!
6:22 AM with the puppies before leaving the house for work.
Growth. September 8th. Day 11. While I was away at the field trials, husband Barry held down the fort and took great care of all the little puppies. (For the uninitiated, field trials are sporting events for hunting dogs, and many Barrett dogs compete in them across the country throughout the year.) Their growth over the last ten days is quite astonishing. Tails and dewclaws are done and they’re all growing like weeds. Luna continues to be an outstanding mom, spending her entire day in the guest room with the puppies.
Milk bar
Puppies on the puppy cam!
Birth. August 28th. Day 0. It started off like any other morning. Luna woke up, went out to potty, came back inside for breakfast, and napped in her crate. Around 9:15 AM, she started panting, signaling to me that today was going to be the day. (Since she was live bred over a few days and I didn’t record her progesterone number everyday, I actually had no idea what day she was actually due. We were just guessing it would be sometime this week.) Around 10:00 AM, I brought her upstairs to the guest room/whelping room, an at 10:14 AM, the first puppy made his way into the world. In textbook style, Luna delivered four boys and three girls in about three hours, and then spent the rest of the afternoon nursing them and cleaning them. Below are a few photos of the day.
I am leaving town in the morning and will be away for the next 10 or so days, so the next puppy update will be posted here after Labor Day. Cheers!
This was around 9:00 AM… Luna giving me her “today’s the day” face.
Second born girl, now wearing a Purple Collar
Official group photo
29 photos from the day
Announcement. July 6th. In collaboration with Rugerheim Kennels in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Barrett Weimaraners is pleased to announce an upcoming litter with Pax and Luna. Luna is confirmed pregnant with puppies expected in late August. The purpose of this breeding is to produce puppies that will grow up to have their mom’s bird drive and their dad’s extreme hunting range. The best puppies out of this litter will become field trial prospect dogs, and the others will be placed in casual hunting homes. Active and/or Weimaraner-experienced companion homes will also be considered pending aptitude testing at seven weeks of age. Prospective families may fill out a questionnaire here to be considered for a puppy out of this litter. 8/27/2021 Update: The interest list is now closed.
Luna (our keeper from the 2015 Bo x Mika litter) is on the smaller end of the breed standard. From a hunting perspective, Luna is a dark colored medium range gun dog with good ground speed, an excellent nose, and reliable retrieve. Luna is also a natural water dog and will happily swim anywhere she’s sent. At home, Luna is an easy keeper. She’s not much of a barker, quiet in her crate, and gets along with everyone in the pack. Luna is also happy to provide pawtographs to anyone who wants them; After being hired by Hollywood bigwigs to appear in a television miniseries with Cuba Gooding Jr., Luna now thinks she’s hot stuff. LOL. Luna’s litter will be bred for hunting ability.
Pax (2019 Echo x Gracie) was bred to be a field trial powerhouse. As a youngster, Pax lived with Mark and Kim Urbani in Central California and was given a proper start with basic training and socialization. As a juvenile dog, he went on to stay with Terry Chandler of Rugerheim Kennels and participated in the 2020 Field Trial Summer Camp program. It was there that he made big strides in his training, and made the cut for the Autumn season. By November, Pax had learned to hunt with extreme range and intensity… earning himself both a Second Place Ribbon and a Third Place Ribbon at both regional and national level Field Trial events. In May, he came back to Barrett HQ for a hot minute to participate in his Show Futurity and earned a Third Place ribbon in his class. This also makes him the fourth Barrett-bred dog to earn a Futurity placement on both sides, field and show. !!! Next up: Getting steadied up for adult field trial stakes.
Pax – Third Place in Open Derby
Health clearances for Luna: Hips: OFA EXCELLENT, Elbows: OFA NORMAL, Thyroid: OFA NORMAL, Eyes: OFA NORMAL, HUU: N/HU, HYM: N/N, SD: N/N
Health clearances for Pax: Hips: OFA Prelim EXCELLENT (Final OFA has not been completed due to COVID), Thyroid: OFA NORMAL, Eyes: OFA NORMAL, HUU: N/N, HYM: N/N, SD: N/N
Pax at his Show Futurity
Not just huntin’ dawgs, Luna’s puppies from last year are now making their way through the show circuit – at left is Tatum and at right is Zara
Zara (2020 King x Luna) on the move
Zara as a puppy
Puppies from Luna’s 2020 litter arrived on the afternoon of August 6th
As a litter, they tested out very well on birds
This is me with baby Luna around February 2017 at a field trial. She was about six months old in this photo.
Another photo out on the training grounds.
Baby Luna at home.
Every now and then, Barry and I would take one of our dogs with us to dinner in town. This is at a local Italian restaurant. Luna is always well-behaved when we take her out and about.
Luna’s first litter arrived in Summer 2018. This was the first litter we raised in our Cedar City, Utah house.
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