BU

(Even Sweets Granting Pleasure, born 9.2.2006)

Bu’s story is a little bit similar to La’s: this time, I was searching for a blue-merle BC for two years, but everything went wrong with my merle options: at least 5 bitches never got in heat after I reserved a puppy (!!!), one stayed empty, one was diagnosed with eye problem and wasn’t bred then… I never imagined so many things can go wrong! In desperation, I started to check black&white litters too and that’s how I found out that Liz, a mother of already 19 great agility dogs, first two placed in WC 2005 for example, is pregnant. Too late to change her mind!

That’s how I got Bu. She might not be a blue-merle, but afterall, that’s already my third dog of the wrong colour, so that must be a good sign!

It didn’t look like it at the beginning, she was a really strange puppy, acting somehow autistic, not reacting at all to people’s voice or to excitement in a voice, she also didn’t follow, but just went off sniffing around. She showed no interest in communicating with the rest of the world, showed no prey or food drive and no wish to be with you.

I admit I was shocked, I never expected that from a BC… For months, I was watching her 24 hours a day with a clicker in my hand, clicking every thought in my direction and feeding every little piece of her meals from my hand, one by one. Eventually, she started to cooperate, started to offer behaviours and learned very fast, but still didn’t really bond with me, she needed months to recognize her name and even more to put names to all that behaviours that we shaped in all that time. I was pretty desperate by then since she still didn’t show any power, any drive, any energy for doing anything, not even for playing with other dogs… That’s when I decided to put her on "low-drive-dog-program", meaning that I tied her to a fence and let her watch Lo&La play. I waited until she was barking as a monster, then went to pick her up and… Got a new dog.

Ever since, she is a great dog to work with. She is crazy about agility, loves to work with me and learns extremely fast, about 3 times faster as the second faster dog I’ve ever seen… I always joke that she is one of those autists that are genius. She already knows more tricks as La, has faster dog-walk and better turns, so I’m very happy with her now, she is lots of fun now that she is out of her autistic phase.