Our latest Cocker news Here's what's new with our dogs and our web site

July 2010 is a period of good news and bad news at our house.  The good news is that Joanna delivered a beautiful litter of puppies on July 21st! 

See more pictures of Joanna's current litter here

This is kind of a big deal around here, because it's been a long time since our last litter of puppies.  Our dogs didn't have any litters at all in 2009, so I've been totally ready for all the fun of having a bunch of puppies to play with again.  There's just absolutely nothing like the kind of fun you can have with a litter of Cocker pups around...  I always say that there's no anti-depressant as effective as having a litter of Cocker Spaniel puppies around.

And I'm afraid that I'm going to need it!  After 29 years of marriage, my wife and I mutually agreed in July that it was time to call it quits.  She moved out just a few days before Joanna's due date.  So, I'll be counting on those puppies to keep my spirits up for the next two months...  until they go to their new homes on September 26th.  Unfortunately, the divorce means that it's time to end our Cocker breeding program.  Breeding Cockers was do-able with a partner, but I just can't see doing it alone.  So, this litter from Joanna will be the last of the Zim litters, I'm afraid.

A June 2010 photo of Joanna (left) and Haylee (right)

And there was more bad news recently.  Haylee, our champion show dog, has very rapidly developed cataracts in both eyes.  In fact, in less than one month she went from being on top of the world to being basically blind.  This is so frustrating for me, as I had high hopes of making some great puppies with my first-ever champion show dog.  But cataracts can be passed on to the next generation, so Haylee will definitely have to be spayed.

The other frustrating thing about the Haylee situation is that she isn't a good candidate for surgery to remove the cataracts.  As soon as we discovered the cataracts, we got Haylee in to see a Veterinary Ophthalmologist...  and we were all set to go ahead with a $4000 operation to restore her sight.  But after a detailed examination and evaluation, the Ophthalmologist told us that Haylee really wasn't a good candidate for the operation, as it was quite likely that after the operation that Haylee's eye would reject the lenses.  As you may know, we went down this road once before with one of our dogs.  Our chocolate & white girl, Reese, developed cataracts in one eye and the Ophthalmologist did the surgery to restore her sight in that eye.  It cost somewhere around $3000, and it was all wasted because the lens ended up getting rejected.  But luckily for us, when Reese later got cataracts in the other eye, the operation was completely successful and Reese can see today out of that one eye.  Reese and Haylee are completely unrelated, by the way, in case you are thinking that there's a connection.  It's just one of the health problems that sometimes crops up in Cocker Spaniels...  even if you do everything right!  For example, Haylee came from one of the most-respected kennels in the Cocker show world...  and came from parents who both passed CERF exams.  But even a dog from that kind of nearly-perfect background can end up with cataracts.

Here's a look at Haylee earlier in the year when she made her big splash in the show world.  After 40 years with Cockers, I finally got my first champion show dog!  A few years ago, when I saw Bryon and Marie Santos in the ring at the American Spaniel Club's big national championship show, I would never have dreamed that one day that place one of their dogs with me.  It was such a wonderful vote-of-confidence that they would place a pup with us.

Haylee did very well at her dog show debut in Portland, Oregon, in January...  winning 10 points and two majors in the first three days!  A few weeks later, she got two additional points at her next show.  She wrapped up her championship at her fourth dog show...  winning four additional points on February 19th at the San Diego Cocker Spaniel Club's specialty show!

See more pictures over on Haylee's page.

My Cocker Spaniel photo book has been published and is now available!

I spent quite a bit of time last summer going through all of my Cocker photos and picking the best ones to include in a coffee-table book.  It's a 100 page hard cover book, filled with over 160 Cocker pictures that I think you'll really enjoy.

To learn more about the book, head on over to this page for a lot more information about it...  including a look at a few of the pictures that made it in to the book, and information about how to order the book for yourself or how to simply view it online for free.

Meg has now moved on to her "forever home", after we made the decision to not have her become a part of our breeding program.

As you may recall, Meg was the pick-of-the-litter from Joanna's 2008 puppies.  We kept her in hopes that she would grow up to be a good addition to our breeding program.  But as Meg matured, it became clear to us that she didn't have "the right stuff" to pass along to a new generation of puppies.  Because of her timid personality (Cockers are supposed to be "merry") and tendency to pee when feeling a little intimidated, we decided that she wasn't the kind of dog we wanted to use for breeding.  Right around her first birthday, we had Meg spayed and then we placed her in her new "forever home" with Alice Soria of Huntington Beach.  They seem to be a really good match.

Meg was the second one of our dogs we decided to re-home in 2009.  The other was Pipa, who we decided to spay after lingering questions about orthopedic issues with her and her father.  Because we place a big emphasis on health issues in our breeding program, we're extremely conservative about what dogs we'll breed...  and if we're at all uncomfortable about a dog, we'll spay or neuter rather than risk making unhealthy puppies.

An April 2009 photo of Pipa

Even though Pipa did pass OFA and CERF testing in 2008, we made a conservative decision to spay and re-home Pipa due to some uncertainties regarding orthopedic issues.  The last thing we want to do is make a litter of puppies with health issues...  and because lingering orthopedic questions made us less-than-certain about Pipa's ability to make healthy puppies, we felt the right thing to do was to be conservative and have her spayed.  You can read the full story here.  Pipa will be heading to her new home in Michigan with our friends Karen K and "Krash" during the first week in May.

As you may know about us, we don't ever want to become one of those breeders with 50 dogs on the premises.  We only keep a handful of dogs, so that each can get the attention and care it deserves.  So, when one of our dogs is spayed or neutered, we place that dog in a new home.  And that opens up a spot to bring in someone new...

Meet Haylee, the newest addition to the Zim family!  She joined us on April 22, 2009.

Haylee comes to us from one of the top names in the Cocker show world, and has a pedigree with more champions in it than I've ever seen!  If she passes OFA and CERF testing (after turning two years old) she'll have a place in our breeding program beginning in 2011.  You can see a few more pictures of Haylee (and her siblings) on Haylee's page.

Now here's a photo I shot to show the four gorgeous Zim girls that lived with us as of January of 2009.   Usually I shoot individual pictures and then just merge them together in to a collage...  but , I decided to see if I could actually get them to sit together and all look at the camera at the same time.  Surprisingly, they actually cooperated! 

That's Meg on the left...  and then Morgan, Joanna, and Pipa.  In the year after this picture was taken we made a couple of big changes to our breeding program...  spaying and re-homing Meg and Pipa and adding Haylee to our family.

Here's a new picture of Meg, enjoying some snuggle time on the couch with Mo, the cat!

Things quieted down at our house once Angel (Joanna's pup, with a cleft lip) moved on to her new home.  Angel and Meg had a lot of fun playing together, and so Meg had to find new playmates with Angel gone!

Dodger has now moved on to his "forever home" with Phil & Susan Stonesifer.  Here's a picture of the three of them at our house, when they were just getting to know each other.

We made the decision to retire Dodger from breeding after two of his puppies ended up with patella problems.  It wasn't an easy decision, as we suspected that the patella problems actually came from the mother of the puppies, but in the end we decided that removing Dodger from our breeding program was the safest thing to do to ensure that our future litters are healthy.

There are more changes to come around here...
This Spring, Pipa will be going to her forever home.  We had her spayed in the Fall of 2008 after deciding that it would just be too risky to breed her, given lingering questions about orthopedic issues with her and her father.

With Dodger gone and Pipa leaving soon, it's a pretty safe bet that 2009 will see the addition of some new faces to our breeding program.

Things have settled down a bit at our house now that Joanna's 2008 litter of pups has gone to their new homes.  Joanna delivered six beautiful puppies on September 9, 2008...  including the only two sable & white puppies that we've ever had in any of our litters.

It's a little difficult to see the subtle differences in the shades of the coats in that last picture...  they all pretty much look like red & whites in that photo.  But only the top four are, and the bottom two are sable & whites.  Here's a photo of Meg (at ten weeks old) that does a much better job of showing the black hairs mixed in with the lighter red hairs in her ears...  a classic sign that you are looking at a sable:

Meg is a keeper!  The pick of the litter, she is only the third pup in the history of our breeding program that we've decided to keep for ourselves.  Read more about Meg, and see lots of photos, on her new web page.

One of the puppies, Angel, was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate.  We had to keep her a few weeks longer than the other puppies in order for her to have some surgery to fix the deformity.  Having Angel and Meg together for a few weeks after the other four puppies had gone to new homes was great!  It really made the transition easier for Joanna, Meg, Angel, and us, too!

On November 20th, Angel had the surgery to repair the cleft lip and cleft palate.  It was a challenging two hour procedure, but it went well.  She'll need one more surgery in about three months to complete the repairs.  Here's a before and after picture to give you a look at what was done in the November surgery.

Before the surgery
Notice the area below the nose on the right side

After the surgery
Things are looking much more "normal" in that area now.
I'm looking forward to getting another picture in two weeks, when the stitches come out.

You're going to see some big changes in our breeding program over the next year.  We've decided to retire two more of our dogs from breeding (one that never got started) in order to be sure that we are making the healthiest possible puppies in the coming years.  Two puppies from Reese & Dodger's 2007 litter ended up having patella problems...  so we spayed Reese last year and now we've decided to neuter Dodger, too.  I think the patella problems came from Reese's side of the pedigree, but I couldn't guarantee that...  so neutering Dodger seemed like the best way to ensure that we don't have other Zim pups with patella problems.  In a similar situation, we spayed Pipa this year after having orthopedic concerns about her and her famous father.  You can read the full story here.

This leaves us with Joanna as the anchor of our breeding program, and Meg as the one that we've got our hopes riding on for the future.  In 2009 you'll probably see two new faces added to our group...  once Pipa and Dodger go to their new homes.

Reese has gone to her new home.  We retired her from our breeding program in 2007 after a routine check by our Veterinary Ophthalmologist showed she had cataracts.  We had Reese spayed, had surgery done to remove the cataract in one eye, and fixed a problem with a fold in her lip.  With all that behind her now, it was time to place her in a good home.  We chose Wayne & Gail McMorran to be Reese's new owners.  They live only about ten minutes away, so we will definitely be seeing lots of Reese in the future.

Reese with her new owners

A lot of people are shocked when they hear about us re-homing any of our dogs.  The reason that we have to do this is that the zoning regulations in our neighborhood only allow us to have five adult dogs on our property.  Because we always spay or neuter any dog in our breeding program that fails a health test or has puppies with serious genetic health problems...  we would have long ago ended up with absolutely no dogs that could ever be bred if we had kept all the ones that we retired from breeding.  The only way to keep our breeding program alive and still remain in this house is to re-home our dogs once they retire from breeding...  so we can bring in a new dog to take their place in our breeding lineup.  In many ways, we're actually happy about that 5-dogs-only policy...  because we've been to the homes of a few breeders that keep every dog forever, and after a while they end up with 100 dogs on their property and the only ones that get much attention are the few that are making puppies.  We think placing our retired dogs in new homes works out much better for the dogs.

Here's a photo of Reese just a few days prior to undergoing cataract surgery.

The Veterinary Ophthalmologist requested that we shave off the hair on her ears prior to the surgery, so I thought I would get this one last photo of her with a beautiful full coat before I had to ruin it.  If you scroll down the page a bit, you'll find the information that I posted earlier this year about Reese's cataracts and how we had to remove her from our breeding program.

Some good news about our web site and Cocker forum...

We moved the site to a new server in February of 2008.  The forum just had gotten so popular and so active that we totally outgrew our old web host and server.  They had this limitation that only 20 actions could happen at any one time for each account on their server.  As we often had more than 20 people on our forum at any given time, each trying to do things all at the same time, we often ran up against that 20 item-at-a-time limit.  It was a big deal to move all the files associated with our web site and forum (there were over 43,000 pictures people had posted to the forum!) but between me and the technical genius who is our son, Jeff, we were able to get it done.  We're looking forward to smooth sailing for our forum in 2008, no matter how popular it gets!

I finally completed a project that I've been talking about for a long time...  a DVD all about how to groom a Cocker Spaniel.  People have been asking me for grooming advice for years, and I've always said that someday I would have to make a video on the subject.  Someday is finally here!  It took me almost two months to tape all the segments and to edit them together in to a professional-looking program.  In the end, I think the results were entertaining and educational! 

The DVD is geared to regular ol' pet owners looking for tips on how to trim their Cockers using electric clippers.  In addition, there's a segment on grooming show dogs by my pal, Julie Hydro, a former professional dog groomer.  While I doubt any of the people who watch my DVD will ever groom a show dog, I think there are some good tips you can pick up from watching a show groomer.

Click here for more information about my new grooming DVD, including how to get a copy of your own.
 

You may have read news stories about people that see the face of the Virgin Mary in a shadow somewhere...  and thousands of the faithful tie up traffic by making a pilgrimage to see it.  Well, we've warned the neighbors to expect large crowds when word of this latest miracle gets out!  Look what came out of our toaster recently:

Many have written to let us know that similar items have sold on eBay for huge sums of money...  but we have no plans to try to get rich off of our little miracle.  Is that because we would never exploit a gift such as this...  or because the whole darned thing is just a photo hoax?  You decide.

In addition to news about our Cocker Spaniels, did you know we have another page with news about the human members of our family?  Click here to see it!

I'd like to recommend a TV show that I think would be helpful for all dog owners to watch.  It's called "The Dog Whisperer" and it runs on The National Geographic channel several times each weekday.

The show features a dog trainer by the name of Cesar Millan, and he's got a great way with animals.  He goes to the homes of people with misbehaving dogs, and helps them to overcome their dog's problem.  There's a lot we can all learn from this guy!

They ran a marathon of back-to-back episodes on the President's Day holiday, and I was so impressed.  A common theme I noticed was the need to provide daily exercise for your dog in order to release some of the dog's energy and aggression.  He's also very good at showing people how to take control of their dog, rather than letting their dogs control them.  Do yourself a big favor and check this show out!

Planning on doing some shopping online?

All purchases through the Amazon.com link on the left will generate a small commission for our family.  It's a simple way you can thank us for taking the time to keep this web site updated, and it helps us to fund little things like the equipment that brought you the PuppyCam.  We're hoping to be able to do some upgrades to provide better quality live pictures for our Spring litter.

We thank you very much, and hope your new year will be filled with many Cocker kisses!

There is a LOT more to this web site than just this page!
Please explore the rest of the site by viewing our table of contents,
or by clicking on one of the quick links below.

All About Our Cockers       Zim Family Home Page         Meet Jim Zim        Cocker Spaniel Forum

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