The first of the Rock X Bella puppies are with their new owners, a bittersweet time for the entire Jacobs family.  With those pups go untold hours of training and development of both sire and mother, in fact, generations of names on this litter's pedigree.  A lifetime of days and nights of planning and observation in the field and around the home and kennel, of watching and worrying, of fretting over newborns, of socializing and nurturing toddlers, of vetting and communicating with owners, arranging shipping and scheduling visits, of agonizing over which puppy or puppies should remain there at Huntmore for development and evaluation as hunters and possible bloodstock.

The robust tricolor male will stay behind for now, carrying all manner of high hopes born from when Bella first came home with the Jacobs family from Shoeleather Kennels in Indiana.

The loving intimacy and attention to detail of a family operation is maybe personified by Zachary Jacobs, Eric and Anna's youngest son.  As we've written before, all the boys and Anna join Eric in spending as much time as possible with each puppy born on the farm.  But with this litter, the photos Eric has sent of Zachary on "puppy duty" have been especially telling, redefining the expression "labor of love."  Looking through these  images, even the most jaded of dog lovers (if there can be such a thing) cannot help but be reminded of how how springs eternal in a waddling bundle of genetic expression.  The sudden sobriety and can't-help-it freeze of the Rock and Bella's litter's first points fetch memories of young Toby and Bleu, the Huntmore renaissance in Parker, Laurel, Mia, and Bella.

With every Blizzard's Huntmore weanling comes prayers for great care, for a close, thoughtful companionship with new hunting partners, for good health, and of course, for what, in the end, proves out generations of careful selection and the bottom line of this breeding program - opportunity, lots of it, on wild game birds.

Zachary and his brothers Chesney and Jaxon gain much through the raising and placing of a litter.  They learn consideration, sense of obligation, patience, and the notion of giving up for the greater good, as every litter brings favorites for each caretaker and fierce debates over which puppies are made available for placement.  The Jacobs prefer not to air ship puppies, a stressful experience for all concerned, but the boys are in on that, too, learning rules meant to protect the puppy during air freight as well as "procedural" hoops that one must endure just to do business.  The latest was the requirement for all metal fastenings on crates purchased new with the standard issue plastic ones.  A mad scramble for legal hardware at the last minute turned into a team building exercise, as the boys and their dad worked together to get a Rock X Bella puppy back to the freight desk on time.

I think of Zachary, especially, and what it must be like as his playmates from this litter, one after the other, move on to their new lives, new families, to coverts on the other side of the country, far away from his mountain home.  There's a life lesson here, and not an easy one - the sweet sense of accomplishment tempered with the bitter taint of loss, all part of growing up Huntmore, all part of a family mission to produce quality Llewellin hunting partners to enrich the lives of others.