Three Doves

06/17/2026

🍽️ First meal day at Three Doves! 🐾

Our "Game On" puppies (BlazE × Etta) just hit three weeks old — and that means their very first taste of solid food! On the menu: soft Royal Canin puppy mousse with a splash of fresh goat's milk.

Meet Purdey, one of our biggest eaters, who could NOT get enough. 😋 And of course, no first meal is complete without Mom on cleanup duty — Etta in her snood, keeping those gorgeous Springer ears out of the mess.

It's messy, it's a little gross, and it's one of our favorite milestones. 💛

📺 Watch the whole thing on our blog:

There’s a particular kind of joy that comes around the three-week mark in a litter, and it’s a messy one. This week our “Game On” puppies – the litter from BlazE and E…

06/16/2026

Three weeks old today — and almost overnight, the Game On litter learned
to talk.

In the last seven days these eight English Springer Spaniels went from
paddling around on their bellies to standing up, walking across the pen,
and — the big new development — barking and growling at each other. Turn
the sound up on the video. Those tiny, buzzing, completely unconvincing
growls are brand new this week.

There's real science under the cuteness: their ear canals have opened, so
they're hearing for the first time, and hearing is what makes vocalizing
worth doing. The barks and growls aren't temper — they're the very first
reps of how dogs talk to each other. And the wrestling that comes with it
isn't fighting; it's school. Littermate play is exactly how a puppy learns
bite inhibition and how to read another dog. It's one big reason our
puppies stay with their litter until they go home.

Eyes open, ears open, up on their feet, and full of opinions. The best
week of a litter's life to watch.

Full update on the blog:
https://three-doves.com/three-weeks-old-the-game-on-litter-finds-its-voice/

By Albert & Terra Collver · June 16, 2026 Three weeks old and the Game On litter has discovered two new things this week: their feet, and their opinions. Sound on. Two weeks ago we wrote that t…

06/14/2026

Father, meet son. 🐾

This week BlazE met one of his puppies face to face for the very first time — and the puppy he met was Tracker, our yellow-collar boy from the Game On litter (BlazE x Etta, born May 26).

If you know BlazE — Ch Vinewood Three Doves Plays With Fire — you know him as the most confident dog in any room: conformation champion, accomplished hunter, certified therapy dog, fearless dock diver. So it was awfully sweet to watch him go a little shy in front of one small, wobbly, liver-and-white creature that smelled a bit like home and a bit like Etta. Ears forward, brow furrowed, a careful sniff, a gentle "...hello?"

Etta — Three Dove's At Last, Tracker's dam — supervised the whole introduction and did not miss a single thing. A new mother's radar is a remarkable instrument.

Every first meeting at Three Doves is brief, calm, hands-on and closely supervised: puppy held the whole time, dam present, nobody rushed. We never leave these moments to chance.

Read the full story (and the "why" behind a dad meeting his pup) on the blog 👇

There are moments around a litter that don’t make it onto the weight chart or the milestone calendar, but stay with you anyway. This week we had one of them. For the first time, BlazE met one…

06/13/2026

The Game On litter has reached Day 16 — and that means two things: ENS and ESI are officially complete, and grooming prep has begun! 🐾
Terra uses a simple electric toothbrush to introduce our puppies to vibration at just 2.5 weeks old — mimicking clippers on their head and a Dremel on their toes. They're not always fans at first. That's the point.
Small steps now = calm, confident dogs later. That's the Puppy Culture way.
Read the full post and watch the video on the blog 👇

The Game On litter hit a big milestone this week. At 16 days old, our puppies have completed the Early Neurological Stimulation (ENS) and Early Scent Introduction (ESI) phases of their development …

06/11/2026

A small mystery on Day 16 of the Game On litter, and an honest “we don’t know what to make of it yet” – which we think is the right place to start when something unusual sho…

06/11/2026

A small mystery in our whelping box this morning.

For two days in a row, the three black-and-white puppies in our Game On
litter — Purdey, Domino, and S***t — have been piled together in one
corner of the whelping box, separately from their five liver-and-white
siblings. The liver-and-white puppies are with their mom Etta. The
black-and-white puppies, who look like their mom, have crawled away from
her and gone to lie in a separate cluster with each other.

They're sixteen days old. Their eyes opened between Days 13 and 14. The
clustering started immediately after.

We have four theories — from the boring (ni**le territory established in
the first week, accumulated tactile bonding) to the more interesting
(now that their eyes are open, are they orienting toward siblings who
visually resemble their mom?). We've worked through the prior probability
on coincidence — about 1.8% — which is uncommon but not astronomical.

Full post, with photos and all four theories, on the blog:

https://three-doves.com/a-curious-day-16-observation-our-puppies-have-started-sorting-themselves-by-color/

If you've ever seen something like this in a litter — of any breed —
we'd love to hear about it in the comments. Breeder-to-breeder anecdote
is how observations like this turn into real questions worth studying.

A small mystery on Day 16 of the Game On litter, and an honest “we don’t know what to make of it yet” – which we think is the right place to start when something unusual sho…

06/09/2026

Two weeks old today. Eight English Springer Spaniel puppies, eight pairs of
newly-open eyes, and five of the eight have just crossed their first
kilogram of body weight — most of them inside a single twenty-four-hour
window.

The Game On litter has just sailed cleanly through two of the most
important first-two-weeks gates a litter can pass: eye-opening and the
first kilogram. Every puppy is now more than twice their birth weight, the
average overnight gain across the litter was 84 grams per puppy, and Etta
— who is doing the actual work of feeding eight at once — has earned every
nap she takes this week.

Today's post has the photos (boys-in-the-Winchester-crate, girls-in-the-
Winchester-crate, and Etta in the whelping box with all eight nursing),
the full Day 14 weight standings chart, and the firmed-up road map to
Go-Home Day on Sunday, July 26:

https://three-doves.com/two-weeks-old-eight-pairs-of-open-eyes-the-game-on-litter-turns-fourteen-days/

Two weeks old today. Eight English Springer Spaniel puppies, born into a sunflower-and-shotgun-box world, who arrived on the morning of May 26 as small content sausages and who, as of this morning,…

06/08/2026

There is a particular morning, somewhere between Day 10 and Day 14, when a
litter of English Springer Spaniels stops being a row of small, content,
sightless mammals and starts becoming a row of individuals who can see you
back.

This morning was that morning for the Game On litter — at least for five of
them. On Day 13, eyes have started to open.

Interesting small pattern: all three of our black-and-white puppies are
among the five early openers. Whether that's a coincidence or a slight
correlation worth noting for next time, we don't know yet — but it's the
kind of thing daily observation surfaces that you'd otherwise miss.

Full update — including what's actually happening behind the eyelid, why
eye-opening is a functional change in how we raise the puppies, and the
Day 13 weight standings (every puppy now over 2× birth weight):

https://three-doves.com/the-game-on-litter-looks-back-five-of-eight-eyes-are-opening-on-day-13/

There is a particular morning, somewhere between Day 10 and Day 14, when a litter of English Springer Spaniels stops being a row of small, content, sightless mammals and starts becoming a row of in…