Saphie's Ear Woes - by mum

Well, I took these pictures last week.



Saphie continues to be airedorable of course, but as you can see, her ears have other ideas other than being proper!


It's been a month since her ears came unglued, and our quest in getting the proper glue has been anything but smooth. When Saphie's ears came off 4 weeks ago, I could tell they would need to be reglued. I contacted my breeder Bonni, and she sent me a bottle of the glue, which we could not get in Canada. Helen also ordered the same glue on Amazon, again from the US. Well neither bottle made it here! We don't know what happened to the Amazon order as we could not get in touch with the merchant. The bottle of glue that was sent by Bonni was held at the border, and then returned to her. She had just gotten it back. Not sure why a bottle of glue can't even make it across the border... When we went to visit our friends' future pup over on the island a couple weeks ago, Mary who was the breeder very nicely offered me a brand new bottle of the same glue that my breeder used. When I got home, I realized the bottle had dried up inside...thus, unusable!

Anyway, Helen was worried that we were losing valuable time with Saphie's less than perfect ears, so she went to a local fabric store and got a fabric glue that had "non-toxic" on the label. So I stripped all the puppy fluff off Saphie's ears, and we tried using this glue to do her ears. We tested on one ear. Here Helen was holding the ear with the glue, to hopefully have it stick,


Well, the glue did nothing!! Saphie ended up socializing with Jaffa, and Emma the client dale I was grooming.


She was such a good pup, didn't do anything bad while I was busy grooming Emma,



I also took some time to strip her fuzzy puppy fur off. She has a beautiful, wiry coat. Exactly what the standard calls for. My breeder Bonni had wanted to see how Saphie was maturing, so Helen and I tried our best to stack Saphie. I had the noose a bit too far down her neck, otherwise, she looked very nice.


I have shown the above picture to not only Bonni, but a few other local breeders/retired breeders/Welsh breeder, and they have all commented on how beautifully built Saphie was structurally. Everyone thinks she should be shown (if she continues to mature nicely, things can change). Might be a fun grooming project for me, afterall, show strip differs greatly from a pet strip. We'll see what happens! Of course, we have to get her ears under control before anything else could happen!

Fast forward, Bonni wrote me a couple days ago to tell me that she's mailed out the glue yet again to see if it gets through custom this time. Meanwhile, I decided to contact Margaret, a retired Airedale breeder who now volunteers for AireCanada Rescue. All of Margaret's previous show/breeding dogs all had Loc Aire bloodline in them, so when she heard Saphie was a Loc Aire puppy, she was very interested in seeing her. Margaret very nicely to offer to provide the glue and glue Saphie's ears for us.

So yesterday, Helen and I took Saphie & Jaffa over to Margaret's house. Margaret had invited both Sunshade and Jaffa over as well, but I did not think Sunshade would enjoy time with Saphie so she stayed behind.

On the way over, Saphie sat in the front seat while I sat in the back. Saphie gets a bit car sick unless she was sitting in the front. Helen will get her a seat belt soon. Saphie kept an eye on Helen while she was awake,



Then she fell asleep,


Margaret has Fox, who is 13 years old from her breeding, AND "Lizi", who most of you know her as Girl A or the "Sunshade clone". Yes, Margaret was only suppose to foster Girl A after I got her out of the terrible home she was in. Well, Margaret "fostered" her for exactly 3 days before naming her Lizi, and adopting her!



From left to right, Saphie, Jaffa (who really needs to be groomed), Fox and Lizi with Margaret at the end of their leashes,


The process,


Ears cleaned,


Letting it dry and aire out,


Glue applied,


All done with paper tape to hold the ears until the glue sets,


What a good puppy!


Everybody went outside to play,



Lizi the happy girrrrl! I was so happy to see her so loved and well taken care of. She so deserve it after 6 years of misery. Margaret put Lizi on a raw diet right away, and she's managed to lose quite a bit of weight. She's looking very good now!


Jaffa and Lizi having a good time :-)

We had a great time talking about Airedales the rest of the afternoon, and Helen learned a lot from Margaret. Margaret was totally in love with Saphie. She had so many good things to say about her, from temperament to conformation wise. She even told me that she would mentor me if Saphie was to be shown! Before leaving, Margaret made a comment about how she was really itching for a pup now, after seeing "such a fine specimen of the breed"!

This was Saphie on the way home. We took them for a short walk in the pouring rain, so she was drenched!


Lastly, Saphie has started doing something that I find pretty amazing. Since turning 12 weeks old, she has been scratching at the door whenever she needs to go pee or poo. Last week when she was at the apartment while I was grooming Emma, she started scratching at the apartment door after a couple of hours. Helen took her downstairs and sure enough, she peed as soon as she got out of the lobby door. I found this quite amazing as that was the first time she'd ever been to the apartment. She was practically house trained at 12 weeks old. I remember Sunshade started scratching at the door at 12 weeks old as well to let me know when she needed to go. Such easy pups to housetrain! Jaffa was housetrained at 12 weeks as well. He whines when he needs to go out.

That's it for now for the Saphie update. Her ears will hopefully stay up 2-3 weeks and then we will see if they need more gluing.