The puppy boy is just fine

I know he looks sort of solemn here, but that is just an illusion. He is as bouncy and playful as any five-week-old puppy ever. Or Cavalier puppy, at least; I’m sure he is calm compared to a terrier puppy. He has hit every behavioral benchmark right on time, well, a tiny bit late as you expect for a single puppy. Unfortunately I’ve had too many opportunities to observe that single puppies start off slow (they are understimulated, obviously). They catch up by about six weeks.

I know I said I might swear off showing and just quit the whole dog thing entirely, other than just having dogs as pets of course, but . . . and I know that this puppy is only five weeks old, and we do not truly evaluate puppies this young, but . . . probably I am completely insane to even consider this, but . . . I am thinking that right now, this is a very, very promising puppy. For the first time, I am thinking of keeping this baby. I’m thinking that he might be exactly the type of puppy I was breeding for: a fabulous show-stopping puppy who owns the ring from the moment he steps into it. The kind of puppy who catches your eye right from the first and never lets you look away. That kind of puppy. I remember seeing this puppy’s, um, great-grandfather, in the ring. He was maybe the first dog that ever caught my eye like that. Not a perfect dog, but extraordinarily showy.

Well, well . . . early days, early days. Maybe he’ll only have one testicle descend, disqualifying him completely. Maybe his bite will go off, though it’s fine now. Maybe he’ll have serious freckles, or small eyes, or or or . . . who knows. To walk into the ring and compete right at the top, he would need to be practically perfect in every way. Which is exactly what I hoped for from this breeding. But obviously hard to get.

If I did keep him . . . maybe I would breed him just one time. Or buy a bitch who would be a total outcross and breed him to her. Yeah, that would be insane, another huge gamble. Or get with a friend and make a deal to breed him to one of her girls in return for a puppy back, or something. He would need to be so fabulous for me to do any of that. But maybe . . . argh, who knows. Where IS my crystal ball?

Anyway, I thought you all might like to know that this little guy is perfectly fine.