Hi Everyone!
We've been busy here at SBH, helping with transports, and just general busy adult life.
Everyone has been well - we did sadly have one failed litter with our lovely Molly, aka Molasses. Sadly she went overdue and the pups were likely stillborn, so we lost that whole litter. We're very lucky Molly did fine though, and we're giving her time to recoup and hopefully will try her again with more success.
In the meantime, we've bred for a litter that arrived mid-morning today, from SBH's Lime Cordial (Cordelia) and HHH's Cashew at SBH. He's on loan and will be going back to his family shortly.
It wasn't the ideal pairing for me in some ways. We had originally bred Cashew to Molly, but the litter didn't pan out. The reason I hadn't planned to use him to Cordelia is because he is extreme dilute black eyed cream, and Cordelia is heterozygous extreme dilute black tortoiseshell. I really did not want to mix my yellow and cream!
That being said, I didn't want to lose Cashew's awesome genetics, and had no other female available of the right age. They compliment each other in many other ways though - both have the nice type from Janice's lines, with Cordy being a bit bigger with denser fur. Their temperaments are both very sweet and laid back. And - they both happened to be extreme dilute, a gene which is fading into the woodwork here in North America.
It'll set my yellow goals back a bit, but I have several cream free males and females so hopefully it won't be too hard to remove the cream!
Here are some photos of them both.
Cordelia, from last night when she was out.
Cashew, from a small photoshoot we did yesterday.
We're calling them the "CocoPups" as an allusion to the song - you put the lime in the coconut, and shake it all up! Lime Cordial... Cashew (being a nut)... anyways, haha.
I'm expecting ED and Het-ED combos, 50% golden, 50% black. I'm *hoping* Cashew is actually a ghost yellow, or even an Ee yellow - we don't have many good ED examples of those. We may get cream combinations and cinnamon combinations. 50% of the pups will carry for recessive dappled, and all will be long hair.
From an ED standpoint, I'm excited to see how the pups develop! However, I don't look forward to battling to get the cream out. Everytime I think I get rid of it, it needs to come back in one form or another. Grumble!
Anyways, updates to come, and of course, no peeking until eyes are open.