So this weekend was the Rose City Dog Show, a four-day event in Portland, all-breeds, plus Agility, Rally, and Obedience competitions. Our dogs's breeder came to town to show a couple of her pups -- a Cardigan Corgi and a Border Collie. She dropped by for a visit, and brought three of the pups from a new litter accidentally fathered by one of her dogs."Accidentally" is maybe not the best word, since I'm sure that Marshal went at it with intention, but there it is. (Marshal is one of our dog Jude's litter-mates.)
In the puppy picture, the three pups are in the middle at the bottom, a male and two females, with our dogs Layla at the top-left, and Jude at the top-right.
We were going to watch all three of 'em overnight, let them run around and exercise, but our breeder, Denise, found homes for two of them Saturday, so we wound up watching the remaining female. A real cutie, temporarily named "Rosie." (That's her, second from the left, in the picture, next to Layla.) We were tempted to keep her -- especially after she laid on my lap on her back with all four paws in the air and went to sleep. But it's not good to try and raise more than one puppy at a time, and Layla is only five months old. She needs to be the baby for a while.
And Layla, whose ears haven't come up yet and which are overdue, got those taped today. This isn't something she enjoyed much -- nor did we -- but if we can keep the tape on for the next five or so days, it will probably help her look like a Corgi -- instead of a miniature Border Collie ...
The dog show, big enough to fill up the old convention center parking lot so people had to be trucked in from the PIR lot a mile or so away, will be on TV as part of the Eukanuba Championship series on Animal Planet, on March 3rd upcoming.
4 comments:
I thought you said you weren't going to tape Layla's ears. What changed?
Ah. Well, our dog breeder came to town, and while we don't particularly care if the ears point or flop, in the world of dogs, floppy Corgi ears are -- however unfair and unwarranted -- a reflection on the breeder.
If we are to continue running into these folks, if we are to have any respect at all, then we have to at least make a token effort to correct something that is usually easily done. The folks at the dog show took one look at Layla and said, "You are going to tape her ears, aren't you?"
We don't want our breeder looked upon askance, nor have our girl thought a second-class citizen.
Even though we aren't going to show her, she will probably wind up doing agility, and that means we'll be at the shows with her.
And we've gotten more than a few folks asking: What kinda dog is that? A Corgi? Why aren't her ears pointed?
So we opted for the path of least resistance. A week or so, she's not uncomfortable, it isn't like they were cut or anything, just held in place to set.
I recently found out that there are still people in the world who believe that if a purebred bitch gets pregnant by a dog of the "wrong" breed, the bitch will ever after not breed true. Amazing.
Certainly the level of ignorance about dogs is high, given how many of 'em are around. I can't claim any moral ground -- we had dogs for years and didn't know the basics about pack behavior. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of trainers and books out now that detail this stuff, so we're better at it than we were.
Dog are not people, but they are social creatures, and ours are part of our pack. They live inside, sleep on the bedroom floor -- sometimes the bed -- and we feed and care for them as best we can.
And we get more than we give. Go to the mailbox and come back, and the dog jumps up and down for joy -- You're back! Hurray!
Our old cat is still hanging around, at twenty years -- and he's an inside/outside kitty. One we lost a couple years back was nineteen, also inside/outside.
We figure if we keep critters around until they run out their natural life spans, we aren't doing too bad.
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