Six Week Evaluation for the Snack Cakes Litter : Moon Pie

MoonPie at Six Weeks

 Abagail (Abba) Zabba and Rocketdog Rockford (Rocky) Rhoades got together to produce a wonderful litter of pet quality puppies. This was the third and final litter for Abba Zabba (who will be spayed and retired to our farm). This is the fifth litter for Rocky and his first as our only breeding male. This litter presented some challenges which I will note in this introduction, but the outcome today is that we have six wonderful and healthy puppies to evaluate.

We have been writing litter evaluations since 2015 using a Six Point Evaluation which takes into account the five key points of the American Kennel Club descriptive criteria for the breed, and one point which we assign subjectively and is based solely on looks and personality. It's a good idea to look at Our Six Point Evaluation page to familiarize yourself with how we determine what is important in each evaluation. There were some health issues in this litter which should be discussed prior to evaluating the individuals: 

• One little girl had heart murmurs and an inoperable double hernia, among other things, which eventually led us to make the hard choice to relieve her suffering. This was our only "Sad Puppy".
• The second major problem came in the first puppy of the litter, a little male named HoHo, who displayed a condition commonly known as "Failure to Thrive". Happily for us all, we caught this lack of eating skills defect early on and were able to hand feed him back to health and he is now a healthy and scrappy little boy.
• The third problem we encountered as the happy problem of puppies overeating and having weight become an issue in early development. Two of our pups need special training to get them up and running on their feet. We caught the condition in the first weeks and were able to train the pups with lazy backsides to use their legs as they should.

Since Abba Zabba is retiring, were are not worried about passing bad traits on to future offspring.  We haven't had health issues here since we retired Bit O'Honey early and since Bit O'Honey and Abba  Zabba are littermate sisters from the same kennel we suppose these problems were genetic in some ways, but none of this should be a problem for the breed going forward. Certain of the pups will not have the option for purchase of breeding rights and we do this for the good of the breed more than any warning of future health concerns. We expect no further health troubles in the litter and have not experienced any health problems in the past four weeks. 

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Moon Pie is a moose. The largest of the litter at 9.8 pounds. Though a well built puppy, she was one of those two which needed some help in dealing with her relatively large size when it came time to start walking. We caught this "swimmer syndrome" early and began training to get her using her back feet. Today she is a strong walker and good runner, but doesn't like standing on her rear feet unless there is a food bride near the top. Moon Pie is among the huggers. She will definetly stay on your lap and allow herself to be loved for as long as someone wants her to.

MoonPie is large, robust, and generally favors her father for skin folding and blocky structural cues. She has strong European traits: a very blocky head shape with long ears hanging from the back of an adequately domed head. A strong jaw setting without any defect. And very large foreleg bones. she is a bit weak in stance and should be given regular exercise to assure fewer hip bone problems later in life. Don't let this one become lazy or overweight and her life will be better for it.

Moon Pie is particularly well marked. He extra soft and loose fur coat is pure white at the shoulders, but her head and ears are a wonderfully distressed brown. She is a lovely little girl, but not in a show quality fashion. Of the six points available, Moon Pie receives 4 points for her AKC derived structural evaluation and one full point for being very pretty. We don't think it a good idea to breed her, but would have no objection to it since her only flaw is in eating a bit too well.