q x Stella litter born april 30, 2020

Pups were born April 30, 2020. The 1st three were born naturally, with assistance, and 4-7 were born via c-section.

Introducing the Happy Hops litter! Their litter theme names are based on kinds of hops found in many local Sonoma County beers. They don’t yet have their colored collars, but will soon so their followers can tell those black tris apart!

1. “Dr. Rudi'“ - Black Tri male - 13.3 oz (Red collar) (Small sickle blaze, tuxedo belly)

2. “Cashmere” - Blue Merle female - 14.2 oz (Grey collar) (Wide blaze)

3. “Nugget” - Black Tri male - 1 lb 1.2 oz (Purple collar) (Small blaze, white feet)

4. “Galaxy” - Blue Merle female - 11.8 oz (Black collar) (Smaller blaze)

5. “Mosaic” - Blue Merle male - 15.3 oz (Green collar) (Lots of dark spots)

6. “Amarillo” - Black Tri male - 12.9 oz (Orange collar) (Thicker white blaze that goes down past his nose)

7. “Simcoe” - Black Tri male - 15.0 oz (Blue collar) (Thicker white blaze that tapers like a champagne flute; front white socks)

All pups have gone to their forever homes.

We are really excited about this cross. They are both dogs with excellent temperaments and incredible athleticism. Their lineage includes some very accomplished agility competitors and working dogs. We were very fortunate to be able to lease Stella from our good friend Gina Campodonico; this will be a co-breeding between Erika Maurer/Slipstream, Gina Campodonico and Gina Larson/Windmill. Slipstream plans to co-own a girl from this litter to evaluate for suitability for future breeding and will evaluate the other pups to keep intact and/or on co-owns to continue the lines. The pups could be red-factored (Stella is RF) and/or carry the HSF4 cataract mutation (Stella carries one copy). In an unplanned development, we kept #6 “Amarillo” (now Slipstreams Tempo Change / aka Tempo) to join our household.

We did not dock tails and left front dew claws. We are planning to wean the puppies onto a variety of foods including raw and high quality, legume-free kibble.

There are a lot of published protocols regarding how to raise high potential puppies. We incorporated Early Neurological Stimulation (ENS), and followed many of the recommendations in Jane Killion (Lindquist)'s Puppy Culture and the Avidog puppy raising programs for raising this litter. Of course we were challenged for socialization opportunities given our Shelter in Place orders, but we got creative (unicorns and beer!) to help these puppies have the best start possible.

Check out our News page for updates on the litter or linked individual blog posts below.   Also - check out Dave’s Vimeo showcase of videos of the litter here.

Index to 2020 Litter Blog Posts :

• 4/6/2020 Ultrasound and 4/27/2020 X-Ray

• 5/19/2020 “Fresh Eyes” video

• 5/21/2020 “Malted Milk” video

• 5/22/2020 3 wk old photos

• 5/27/2020 “Soul Kitchen” video

• 6/6/2020 6 wk old photos

• Week 5 “Let’s Go Outside” video

• Week 8 "You Can Feel It All Over” video

• 1 year birthday video