When her beloved Great Dane boy Xander sadly passed away, she decided that now was the time for her to treat herself to a puppy, after so many years of taking on adult dogs and foster failures.

So, meet Giselle! Giselle is a beautiful merle mantle girl with big brown eyes, the cutest black and pink muzzle and a most endearing expression. Never fear though, she knows how to assert herself in her pack as well!

Those big brown eyes look amazing in both colour and black and white.

Love those little white whiskers!

As a final note, Giselle is a total water baby, and super smart too! She loves playing with the garden hose and actually grabs it in her mouth, hauls it over to her water bowl and fills the bowl with water. Don’t believe me? Check out this video of Giselle when she was younger, doing exactly that. Plus more of Giselle and her water-baby ways.

Last week I had the pleasure of heading up to Brisbane to have lunch with Narelle and spending some time taking pics of all the little munchkins in both litters for her website. Nineteen in total! I was in heaven. I get to go back when they are four weeks old and take some more. They will be running around by then so something tells me it will be a bit more of a challenge.

Being a harlequin litter (the Great Dane colour of white with black patches), it’s always a bit of a lottery to see what comes out. Generally there will be harlequins, blacks (with varying amounts of white markings on the feet and chest), mantles (also called bostons) and merles (the mousey grey colour), with variations including whites, merle mantles and lightly marked merles, often called ‘merlequins’.

Narelle and co-breeder Stordansk Great Danes was lucky to get a total of seven nicely marked harlequins out of nineteen puppies, which is quite good! Always depending on conformation (how they are structured), the showable colours are harlequins, blacks (the less white the better) and mantles. Unfortunately the merles are not a showable colour in Australia, though I think they are gorgeous.

You can see all the photos here – Keisha’s litter – Jazzie’s litter – and read and see more about the dams and sire here. In the meantime, here are a few of my favourite shots.

All the puppies minus one, from one of the litters.

What a face! Don’t you just want to kiss his nose? This is a mismarked mantle/black puppy.

One litter had a total of five harlequins – four girls and one boy. Due to the way the genes work, harlequins will almost always display some merle patches along with black patches.

Gorgeous little merle mantle.

This merle boy was the chubbiest of the lot.

The only male harlequin out of 19 puppies, this little guy is pretty special.

A ‘merlequin’ (harlequin marked merle) and his merle mantle brother. These two mirrored, I have an number of photos with them doing the exact same pose mirrored, right next to each other!

Expect more photos at the end of May!

Who can resist that staffy grin.

I think Ralphy must have been a lifeguard in his previous life. He loved it up in the dunes, looking over ‘his’ beach.

Ralphy to the rescue!

Or perhaps not.

Something a bit different.

The one on the left makes me laugh every time, it captures his personality so well.

Towards the end of the session he finally slowed down for a rest, frog legs and all.

Tully’s Mum and Dad manage a holiday apartment complex in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, so there is never any shortage of playmates and admirers (or people to beg food from).