Work is Play

Change is in the air

2009-04-23T16:37:00.002-04:00

Today was the first really warm day of spring. The snow is gone, it finally stopped raining, and Sadie took us out for a long romp when she got home today. We saw that the scary woodchucks from last summer had been busy, even if they were too afraid of us to stick their noses out. So we stuck our noses down their burrows instead.

Malcolm was a little braver, as you can see. But then, he'd never cornered one of these little buggers and seen for himself how they hiss and snap at you. Yikes.

We had lots of fun racing around the fresh garden plot. The sun and fresh air felt and smelled so good that we even listened to Sadie when she told us not to run in the fresh dirt. Look at the fun we had! We even smiled for the camera.

After a while, it got a little too warm for us shaggy-haired doggies. We posed for one last picture and came inside for ice cubes. Now all the trees and flowers need to bloom, so that the land gets as pretty as the weather.

Her name was Ashley

2009-04-21T10:53:00.003-04:00

Misha was the smallest of nine puppies. Nine puppies meant that mom Indy couldn't feed them all at once, so someone was always fighting for a place to eat and getting pushed around. Being the smallest, Misha was usually that one. When Sadie and Jeremy came to look at the puppies, Misha was woken up and taken out to a pen beneath a party tent. It was June, and raining, and cold. Misha was tired and cross, and didn't understand why she had to leave her warm whelping box to shiver in the rain while large strange humans messed with her.

Some of her siblings came with her, those who weren't already claimed by human families. One of those was Faith. Faith came right up to Sadie and Jeremy when they entered the pen. She wagged her tail and looked at them with bright, curious, gentle eyes. While Misha tried to cuddle up with her sisters, Sadie and Jeremy played with Faith. She was everything they'd been told to look for in a puppy: a perfect 10 for temperament, and she was a blue merle like Misha.

They took Misha home in the end, but only after lots of debate about which puppy to keep. Kim would only let them take one (Malcolm came along later, after Sadie and Jeremy had proven they could look after a dog). So they took Misha because she was so tiny and had such a delicate personality. They worried she would not find a good home with anyone else. They had no such reservations about Faith, who was confident and loved everyone.

Faith went home later with a lovely man who lived by himself and needed a dog to love. He named her Ashley and took her everywhere: to work, to the coffee shop in the morning, for runs, for visits with other people and dogs. They were never apart, and Ashley rewarded the man in the way only a border collie can: by entertaining him, loving him, inviting him into games she made up.

The man's job transferred him to Florida a few months before Ashley's (and Misha's) second birthday. He rented a pull-behind trailer, put all his things in it, and hitched it to his Suburban for the drive. Ashley had the back seat to herself, and a wonderful drive with her owner. Life was good.

It happened somewhere in Georgia, on the interstate. A tractor trailer misjudged its distance and hit the rear of the man's trailer. The trailer bounced and twisted. The twisting forced the Suburban out of control and it rolled over at high speed. Upside down in midair, the man looked back and saw Ashley airborne. She was terrified. The Suburban landed on its roof with a crash and all the glass in the windows shattered. The man made a grab for Ashley. His fingers caught a fleeting brush of her sleek merled body, and then she was gone. She ran through the broken window, off the shoulder of the highway, and into the trees.

The Suburban, the trailer, and all the breakable things in it were destroyed. The man lost almost everything. People stopped to help. The man struggled out of his seatbelt, out of the overturned vehicle, and ran after his dog. He searched and called. She didn't come back. The police arrived and the man had to file an accident report and do all the legal things he did not want to do. He called every radio and TV station for fifty miles and begged them to tell his story, and to ask people to watch for Ashley. He went to a hotel and came back to search for his dog every day.

Three days later, a driver on the interstate heard the missing dog broadcast and called the radio station. He had just seen a dog that fit that description on the shoulder of the road, next to a mile marker. He told the station the spot. The station called the man, who got there as fast as he could.

Ashley was lying on the shoulder alone. There was not a mark on her. "It was like she had just lain down and died," said the man. After that, he couldn't say anything else for a long time.

She was Misha's sister, and her name was Ashley. We don't have any photos of her to share, but she was a lovely girl with a sweet and curious nature. We are sad to lose her, and we are so sorry for her owner.

Pleased to Meet You

2009-04-16T13:16:00.007-04:00

Hello, world! We just moved to Blogspot to share what life is like through our eyes, and especially our ears and noses. We might be dogs, but we have sharp little minds just the same, and the world is always a fun and challenging place.

We were born almost a year apart at the same place: Gentle Shepherd Farms, in the foothills of New York's Allegany Mountains. One of us (Misha) is a blue merle female, daughter of a frisky girl named Indy and premiere black and white working dog called Dash. The other (Malcolm) is the black tri son of Samuel Blue, whose puppies have won one agility championship after another.

Not that we care so much about where we came from. We're working dogs, and are happiest when we have a job to do. Doesn't matter if the job is going through agility courses, catching balls and frisbees all day long, or chewing the sofa cushions to pieces. We don't have any fancy AKC papers, although we could if we wanted. What we want most is to spend the day playing, running, and interacting with the two humans in our life and anyone else who wants to know us.

Misha as a baby (born May 30, 2007):

Malcolm's baby pictures (born April 4, 2008):

Okay, now you have our vital stats and know what we looked like as puppies. We've sleeked out into a couple of beautiful dogs, if we do say so! More on that later, though. Right now, it's time for a frisbee session out in the new spring grass.