LITTER #1- Born June 6th, 2025
We’ll update this section with news and photos all the way through Sadie’s pregnancy through go-home day. Check back often!
April 2- Sadie is pregnant! Puppies are due around June 4th and will be ready to go home the last week of July or first week of August!
April 21- The Thomas Family from Appleton has reserved the first male puppy selection in the 2025 Puppy Draft!
May 18- Sadie is starting to get big, so we spent the day building her whelping box, where the puppies will be born and will grow up until they’re ready for their first shots at about 6 weeks of age!
May 30- Sadie’s due date is calculated to be June 4th. We are now within a week of having puppies! Sadie is looking uncomfortable. I bet some moms out there know the feeling that goes with this expression! Photos of puppies will be posted within a day after they’re born. Stay tuned and check back often!
June 6- PUPPIES ARE HERE! Sadie’s first baby, Mr. Purple, was delivered at about 2:15 PM, and we were done having puppies at 7:49 PM. There were ten total puppies born. Sadly, puppy #10 was stillborn. Sadie is exhausted but is patiently caring for her litter of nine puppies. We have five males and four females. The names of the puppies reflect their sex and the color of their puppy collar.
Males- Mr. Purple, Mr. Yellow, Mr. Black, Mr. Blue, Mr. Green
Females- Miss Red, Miss Pink, Miss Orange, Miss Sky
June 8- Sadie and her babies are doing great! An average litter size for a Golden Retriever is between 9-12 puppies. It is a blessing to have a litter on the smaller end of that, as there will be no shortage of milk for the puppies to fatten themselves with. This is going to be the norm for the next couple of weeks. Puppies will eat, then sleep, then eat, then sleep. Sadie will keep them clean, and our job is to keep the plastic pool cleaned out, change and wash blankets, and make sure Sadie has plenty of puppy food and fresh water. The next milestone will be puppies opening their eyes, which will happen within 10-15 days. Stay tuned!
June 11- Amy from Appleton has reserved the first pick of Female puppies in the 2025 Puppy Draft! Congratulations to Amy!
June 14- Sadie is spending more time outside of the whelping box, but puppies are still getting more than enough to eat. Since Sadie isn’t in the whelping box as much, we’re keeping a heat lamp over the puppies so they’ll be nice and cozy while they snuggle together. As you can see from the photo, we’ve changed the whelping collars. The velcro whelping collars we started with were starting to come loose. At one point, both Mr. Yellow and Mr. Green had lost their whelping collars at the same time! These two are easy to identify, though, because Mr. Yellow is the biggest puppy and Mr. Green is the darkest, but one thing we don’t want to take a chance on is having four or five puppies lose their collars all at the same time. The colors are still the same, just different collars.
June 15- Today after church, we changed out of church clothes (obviously we don’t wear pajamas to church) and cleaned the whelping box. While we had the puppies out, we weighed them to see how much weight they’ve gained. All of the puppies are growing just like they should, some a little more, some a little less. The biggest puppy is (this should not be a surprise) Mr. Yellow, weighing in at an even 36 ounces. That’s three pounds! The smallest puppy is Miss Orange, who is currently at 27.9 ounces.
June 15- Happy Father’s Day to Hank! As you can see, Hank is taking his duties as a dad very seriously.
June 16- Today is Sadie’s third birthday! Happy Birthday Sadie! We’re glad you get to spend your birthday with all of your babies!
June 20- We took Sadie to the vet today for a two-week post-whelping checkup. Sadie gets lots of treats and pets when she goes to the vet, so she doesn’t mind going. The doc said that overall, Sadie is doing really well. She still has some discharge, which isn’t too abnormal, and she needs to gain some weight because so much of her energy is going into producing milk now. We’re going to get her some canned puppy food to encourage her to eat, and we’re also going to give her an antibiotic for prevention and a probiotic to help stabilize her tummy. Hank was in charge of babysitting while we were gone and he must have done an OK job because nothing bad happened.
June 22- Congratulations to Ashley from Madison and to the Gray family from Sheboygan! Ashley has reserved the second pick of boy puppies, and the Gray family has reserved the second pick of girl puppies in the 2025 Puppy Draft!
June 24- Here’s a look at how fast the puppies have grown. The first photo was taken when they were nine days old. Do you see how snug they all are in a little square Amazon box? Well, after another nine days, check out the second photo! Today we had to use a much larger, reinforced produce box to hold them all, and the puppies are still just 18 days old!
June 26- Sorry puppies! I’m here to clean up the whelping box, so you’re going to have to break up the snuggle pile!
June 28- Puppies are now mobile. They are walking (stumbling?) around, interacting with each other, barking, and playing. We went to Fleet Farm and bought a bunch of little puppy toys for them to play with. When we got home, they were too sleepy to be interested.
June 29- Congratulations to Kyle & Erin of Fond du Lac! They are engaged to be married and will soon have a new furry little best man after reserving the third pick of boy puppies in the 2025 Puppy Draft!
There are THREE puppies still available in this litter- two boys and one girl
July 3- If there is an MVP of this entire process, it is our washing machine. Every day, a blanket that looks like it just came out of a World War I field hospital goes into the washing machine, and in less than an hour, that blanket is ready to go back to the front. Puppies will be four weeks old tomorrow. We’ll soon be introducing them to dry puppy food and water, blended in the food processor. Some like to call this mixture a “slurry,” but that sounds a little too much like trench warfare even for us, so we prefer to call it a “Puppy Blizzard.” Happy Independence Day to all of our readers and future puppy families!
July 5- We have introduced the puppies to dry puppy kibble and water blended in to a mush. Feeding it to them for the first time was hilarious! It took the puppies a while to figure out that these new bowls in their box contained food. Then, when they did figure it out, they had to invent new techniques to get the food into their tummies! Here’s a photo dump of puppies eating, playing, and ultimately, falling asleep with full bellies.
July 8- A couple of updates today… Remember when the little baby puppies could barely fit inside a regular sized Amazon box? Then they had to move to a Costco fruit box for whleping box cleaining time? Well, now they are filling out a full-sized laundry basket while the whelpking box is cleaned!
Big News! The puppies now have teeth, which means that Sadie is not as interested in feeding them as often. We have progressed from puppy blizzards (blended mixtures of water and puppy kibble) to wet whole kibble. Within the next couple of weeks, we should be introducing plain dry kibble! Since puppies are now getting a good amount of their food from humans, they have learned to DEMAND food from humans by crowding the edge of the whelping box and barking at us whenever we go downstairs. It’s adorable!
July 11- Another day, another cleaning of the whelping box. Puppies are five weeks old today and they are quickly reaching maximum cuteness! They’re doing very well eating softened kibble, and Sadie still feeds them from time to time, as well, but never for very long. Today I decided to take a picture of a perfectly clean whelping box, then release the puppies into it and come back to take another photo an hour later. You may have to zoom in to see the full impact, but these puppies can absolutely wreck a clean blanket in one hour!
July 11- The Smith family from Manitowoc has reserved the third over pick for a female puppy in the 2025 Puppy Draft! Congratulations!
July 12- The girls got their first bath yesterday! At least two of their new families are coming to visit this weekend, so that means it’s a good time for a bath! They didn’t really seem to enjoy bath time, but they’d better get used to it. After their bath, they got to snuggle up together while Hank inspected them. You can see the little Rug Doctor in the background, we strongly recommend it! After Hank’s inspection, the girls got some time to cuddle up and nap while they dried off a bit, then they all got to play with their first visitor of the weekend!
July 14- Since the puppies all got to enjoy some upstairs free play time over the weekend, we brought them upstairs for whelping box cleaning time today. They played hard with dad, and Hank had so much fun playing with them too! Eventually, they started to get tired. Miss Orange figured out that the hardwood floor under the dining room table is a cooler place to hide out than on the carpet!
July 14- Too cute to not share! We were enjoying a birthday in the family with puppies (of course!) when Miss Sky got sleepy and crawled into a pillow cave that she found to snuggle up and nap. Here are photos of her from both ends!
The 2025 Puppy Draft has begun!
July 17- With the first pick (girls) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, Amy from Appleton selects: MISS ORANGE!
July 18- The puppies went to the vet clinic this morning for their first checkup, shots, and wormer. Hank & Sadie’s vet, Dr. Weller took good care of them and remarked that they were all such healthy weights and had exceptionally clean ears! We’ll show two or three photos of each puppy below. All of the puppies are between 7.6 and 8.6 pounds. The biggest puppy is Mr. Yellow, at 8.6 pounds, who barely edged out Mr. Black. The smallest is Mr. Green at 7.66 pounds. Puppies are now safe to go outside and play. We'll have our first outside playtime this afternoon, so expect photos of that sometime over the weekend.
Miss Pink- 8.36 pounds
Miss Orange- 7.96 pounds
Miss Sky- 8.34 pounds
Miss Red- 7.84 pounds
Mr. Blue- 8.2 pounds
Mr. Purple- 8.54 pounds
Mr. Green- 7.66 pounds
Mr. Black- 8.56 pounds
Mr. Yellow- 8.6 pounds
Puppy Draft Update! The Pick Is In!
With the first pick (boys) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, the Thomas family selects: Mr. Yellow! Mr. Yellow’s new name is Moses. Congratulations to the Thomas family and to Moses! We promise we won’t send Moses home by putting him a basket in the river!
With the second pick (boys) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, Ashley selects Mr Green! Mr. Green’s new name is Oakley. Congratulations to Ashley & Oakley!
July 19- If you’ve been wondering why the mobile site was such a train wreck since yesterday afternoon, my eight year old MacBook Air crashed trying to handle uploading all of the pictures from the vet visit and it took a while to sort that out. Apparently, it was too much puppy cuteness for this old computer! Not to worry, though. A new iMac is on the way!
The puppies got to play outside for the first time yesterday afternoon and they had so much fun exploring and wrestling in the grass! It was impossible for us to keep the who’s who straight in order to identify the puppies, so here is a photo dump of outside playtime with Hank getting in on the action and Sadie supervising from the front porch!
Puppy Draft Alert!
With the second pick (girls) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, the Gray family selects Miss Red!
With the third pick (boys) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, Kyle & Erin select Mr. Purple!
July 20- The North family from Overland Park, Kansas has selected Mr. Blue with the fourth pick (boys) of the 2025 Puppy Draft! Mr. Blue’s new name is Porter! We’re sure you’re going love living in Kansas, Porter!
July 21- The Willett family from Appleton has reserved Mr. Black! Mr. Black’s new name is Oliver. Congrats to Oliver and to his new loving family!
July 23- Welp. The puppies have outgrown their whelping box. A couple of days ago, we noticed that the puppies didn’t have enough space, so we made the decision to just let them run free upstairs for a couple of weeks. Our house is pure chaos, as you could imagine. The puppies dump their food everywhere, tip over water bowls, go potty on the floor, unplug the wireless router, snatch blankets, and instigate so many other forms of mayhem.
It’s so hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, all nine puppies and Sadie could fit in a blue kiddie pool at the same time, and now they get to live in the great big world for a couple of weeks because they’re too big for their baby home.
July 26- It’s Saturday morning mayhem around here! The longer the puppies have lived upstairs with us, the more they’ve learned to explore their surroundings and turn every day objects into toys. They spill their food constantly, fall asleep on top of their water bowl, and chase around anything that moves!
Moses & Miss Orange discovered a ribbon tied around a wine bottle and turned that into a fun sensory activity.
While I was trying to get some work done on the computer, Oakley decided to munch on my big toe.
Wrestling time with Dad is a very popular group activity!
Mr. Purple figured out how to climb stairs, but then got nervous, and started barking because he didn’t know how to go back down.
Puppy Draft!
BREAKING NEWS!
More and more puppies are figuring out that on top of the air conditioner vent is THE place to take a nap!
July 26- With the third pick (girls) of the 2025 Puppy Draft, the Smith family selects: Miss Pink! Miss Pink’s new name is Honey! We think that’s because she’s sweet and golden, not necessarily because she’s sticky! Congratulations to the Smith family and to Honey!
2025 Puppy Draft- The Draft Is Over!
July 27- In a shocking draft development, the Willett family has traded back into the draft to select Miss Sky! Miss Sky will join her brother, Oliver (Mr. Black) in their new home! Miss Sky’s new name is Olivia. Congratulations to Olivia, and Oliver, and the Willett family!
July 30- Puppies start going home tomorrow, so start watching the Forever Homes page for going home photos and updates! Also, the puppies cannot go home soon enough! When people ask if it’s hard to let the puppies go, we’re going to show them some of these pictures. There is nothing cuter or more adorable than a Golden Retriever puppy, but don’t let that fool you. These puppies are savages! Just today, they pulled a fan out of a window, ripped open a partial bag of dog food and had a feast, tore open a sack of CHARCOAL and played with it, and swam in the water dish that is CLEARLY MARKED with a NO SWIMMING sign (Hank likes to do this too). But after all of that activity, they still enjoyed outside time and eventually took a nap with dad.
August 3- Seven of the nine puppies have gone home, but two are staying until later this week. It’s much easier on all of us to only have two puppies around instead of nine. Maple (Miss Red) and Oakley (Mr. Green) are getting a lot more attention now. They also get to go outside more because it’s way easier to keep track of the whereabouts of two puppies compared to nine. Maple and Oakley do still like to snuggle up together sometimes, and Sadie has more time to relax.
August 8- This page is closed. We’ll create a new Puppy Updates for Sadie’s next litter. For updates on puppies from litter #1, please check the Forever Homes page. Thank you for following along!