You say it's your birthday?

It was six years ago today, that I was at a conference for work when I got the call.  Angel was in labor, she was going to be delivering her puppies soon!  Lad was our first collie, and he brought us so much happiness.  We decided we wanted another collie, specifically a collie puppy from my sister’s collie, Angel.  So we waited, and waited, and finally she became pregnant.  We couldn’t wait to see her new puppies, and meet the puppy who would one day be ours!

 

I snuck out of the conference a few times that day, to call and check on how Angel was doing.  I was so happy when her first puppy, a sable and white smooth girl, was born.  A little later a second puppy was born, another sable and white smooth girl!  One last puppy was born a short time after that, but this puppy was much smaller than her two sisters.  She was a pretty, tri-color puppy, but she was very tiny.  Sadly, she only lived a few hours, she was just too tiny to make it on her own.  But there were still two healthy, beautiful sable girls.  Which made us very happy, as we were hoping for a little girl.

 

We visited the puppies a couple times a week, watching as they grew and changed.  They were both very sweet, and they had very similar personalities.  But the first born puppy seemed a little more attached to us.  She was named Abby.  Her sister, CC, seemed to be more attached to my sister.  And so it was decided, Abby would be ours and CC would stay with my sister, and Angel.  Because there were only two puppies in the litter, and since we only lived a mile from my sister’s house, Abby and CC stayed together until they were 11 weeks old.  And then on Christmas morning, after we gathered with our family to celebrate, Abby came home with us.

Abby on the left, CC on the right. (Christmas morning)

 

She so easy to train, you only had to tell her once not to do something, and she remembered.  And she loved Lad, she became his shadow.  He was a big, young two year old male at the time, and wasn’t sure about her at all.  She was a typical pesky little sister, she always wanted to play with whatever toy he had at that moment.  And she loved to take the tip of his tail in her mouth, and follow him around the house, holding onto his tail like a child holds onto an adult’s hand.  

 

As she grew, she became more beautiful, and she had a successful show career.  She finished her championship, she excelled at herding sheep, and she became Lad’s best friend.  We lost Lad last year, and I think she misses him as much as we do, even though she is very close with Holly collie.  (who joined our family in 2010)  Finally, we decided to attempt breeding our own collie puppies.  We searched for a long time, until we found the right stud dog for Abby.  The first time we bred her, she missed.  So we had to wait another 7 months to try again.  The second time worked, and she became pregnant.  We ended up with three beautiful puppies, and kept two of them, Ryder and Kori.  We decided to try again and the next litter produced four smooth puppies.  Two tricolor boys, one sable boy and one sable girl.  We ended up keeping the little girl, and named her Scarlett.

 

Abby is a sweet, gentle soul who sits quietly in the background while the other collies jostle for attention.  She will lay by chair when I am on the computer, or by the bathtub when I shower.  When I am alone watching a movie, she will curl up on the couch with me.  But if my daughter is watching the movie with me, Abby will go lay in “her” chair.  She sleeps at the end of my bed at night, always in the same exact spot.  She doesn’t demand attention or treats, she just patiently waits to be noticed.  She’s always there, always by my side, and I treasure her companionship.

 

Happy Birthday Abby!  Thank you for being my special Abby Dabby girl!