Doug,
we keep expecting that with each succeeding day, the "right one" will make him/her-self obvious. But, instead, things keep getting more complicated. Plummy has always been at the bottom of our list. For a number of reasons but mainly because he has developed more slowly and the others were so much more together physically. But over the last few days, Plummy has started to exert himself within the litter and when we stacked him, he suddenly turned himself into a show dog right before our eyes.

We've vacillated between Big Blue and Red Boy as our "pick" for ourselves. Because we really would love a nice boy. Sigh. However, both of the girls are quite nice and now all of a sudden Plummy has gotten under our skin. And, today during a play date with 5 other puppies that were born the day after ours, the owner of the stud dog for that litter picked Plummy as her favorite.

For me, it will come down to how well they move. When they trot, you can see how solid the overall structure is. You can see how well they move on their rears and fronts and how well the toplines hold up when they are trotting. All of that presupposes that they actually can trot and at this age, that ain't a given. The great news is, there is not a puppy I would not be delighted to have part of our family. All five of these kids are really cool dogs. Confident. Playful. Sweet and loving. I can hold each of them on their backs and they simply look confidently into my eyes and dare me to put my nose close to those teeth . No, actually they love to snuggle. They use their needle-like teeth with great restraint. Yes, we love them totally irrationally .

I'll share our decision as soon as we make it. It is possible we'll actually hold on to a boy and a girl. Not likely but possible. Stay tuned.

Jim