Meet Kori!

Still reminiscing, so Sharing this post From June 2013, back when my Kori was young…

Let me tell you about my sunshine girl, Kori.  She is Abby's daughter, and the first smooth collie that I ever bred.  When interacting with all the collies, she gets along with everyone, but her best friend is her younger sister, Scarlett.  The two of them put their heads together, and create a lot of mischief!  Kori is the first to make new dog friends at dog shows or the dog park.  

She is 21 months old, and will turn 2 years old on August 30th.  Kori spends most of her day playing with Scarlett and the other collies.  Throughout the day, she will check in with me, for some quick loves and attention, and then she is off playing once again.  And while she is pretty independent during the day, at night Kori curls up against me to sleep, wanting to be as close as possible to me while we slumber.

                    

Kori is very gentle, like the rest of our collies, but she is a bit of an imp.  I have watched her sit back and look around the room, searching for something to grab, or some mischief to accomplish.  Now that she is almost 2 years old, she seems to be less inclined to grab things she shouldn't, but she still slips sometimes.  And her younger sister is usually the cause, as Scarlett engages Kori in games of keep-away with things they have stolen from us.  One time, when we had company, Kori and Scarlett decided it was the perfect time to play keep-away, with one of my daughter's bras, right in front of everyone.

 

Kori is growing up to be a very pretty young collie.  We began training her to compete at dog shows when she was little, and then we waited for her to mature.  We have recently started entering her at dog shows, and she seems to enjoy them.  She isn't as excited by dog shows as Holly is, but she has fun.  Sometimes she has too much fun.  For some reason Kori thinks running around the ring is actually a race!  She is supposed to move at a nice pace, and she does move at the correct speed when we take her to handling class.  But at the dog shows, she starts running faster and faster, until she is trying to pull my daughter around the ring.  We are working hard on fixing this, by trying to convince her to move a bit slower in the show ring.

I think the root of the problem is that Kori is built for speed!  When we take her to the dog park she races around the park, and none of the other dogs can keep up with her.  She loves to run, and she is fast.  I have not seen one dog able to catch her yet, and I think she enjoys leading the chase.  So at the dog shows, when she is following the other dogs around the ring, she is speeding up because she wants to be in the lead and she wants to show the other collies what she can do.

Each of my collies is special in his or her own way.  I love them for their individual personalities, and I love them for their wonderful collie temperaments.  But out of all our collies, Kori reminds me the most of our first collie, Lad.  She resembles him, as if she were a feminine version of Lad. Since I miss him a lot, she is special to me for that reason and for the joy she brings into our lives.  I feel so lucky to have this girl by my side.

Edit to add:

We ended up giving up on showing Kori, which I regret, because she definitely could have earned her championship.  She was so beautiful, and still is, but she just didn’t end up enjoying dog show competitions.  As she matured, she ended up becoming best friends  with Holly and the two of them were often inseparable.  Kori is the center of my collie family, she is the mother or grandmother of all the younger collies we have now.  I can see her beautiful features in all of their sweet faces.

This picture of Kori was taken last night on our walk.

 

Dreaming of a collie like Lassie?

Americans have always been enchanted by the rough collie, thanks in large part to all the Lassie movies filmed throughout the years.  Lassie became a star of both television and the silver screen and everyone fell in love with the beautiful, majestic collie breed because of her.  Lassie also had books and memorabilia created with “her” image, and her very own comic book series.  (A little trivia, the collies playing Lassie in the movies and tv shows, were always male.)  People became avid collectors of all things Lassie, and for many, a deep rooted desire to one day have a collie of their own was born.  It’s really not a surprise, Lassie was a hero collie, portrayed as brave, compassionate and highly intelligent.

But how do the real life collies compare to this icon?  Well, some of the capers that Lassie found herself embroiled in were highly improbable.  No collie could perform such daring rescues, such harrowing escapes, or such problem solving feats…could they?  I have to say no, at least not with the regularity portrayed in the movies, books and television shows.  But that doesn’t mean they are incapable of greatness, I have read many stories of the countless acts of heroism and of the intelligence of the collie breed. 

Albert Payson Terhune wrote one such true story about his collie Wolf.  In his book, entitled Wolf, Terhune writes of how his brave collie saved a stray dog from being hit by an oncoming train, only to be struck and killed during the rescue.  

In 1954 a collie named Tang was honored by being awarded the very first annual Ken-L Ration Hero Award.  On five separate occasions this hero collie saved children from death or life threatening injuries.  On four of the occasions, people witnessed Tang pushing a child out of the path of oncoming cars.  And for the fifth rescue, he placed himself in front of a milk truck, barking to alert the driver that a two year old little girl had climbed on the back, saving the child from a serious fall.

In 1957, a sable collie named Blaze won the Hero award for saving his family’s two year old daughter from an enraged mother sow who was trying to protect her piglets.  In 1964, another collie named Buddy, guided a herd of goats out of a burning barn, and kept all 70 goats safe until his family could arrive to put out the fire. In 1966, a collie named Hero lived up to his name.  He won the annual award for saving his family’s three year old son from an attacking horse.  The blue merle collie was a show dog, and had a sweet, friendly temperament.  But at the time of the attack, the normally affable collie, prevented the horse from trampling the young boy by fighting off the crazed animal.  Hero suffered multiple injuries during the rescue, including four broken ribs and a skull fracture.  He fully covered, and returned to competing at dog shows a couple months later.

Buddy, with two of the goats he saved

Hero, and his boy

There are many other stories, of collies saving their families from house fires, drowning, and finding lost children.  One of our own collies showed an uncanny ability, when he escaped my sister’s yard.  He somehow found his way across town, and arrived at our Grandmother’s house, and alerted her to his presence when he barked to be let inside. What made this even more remarkable, Reggie was still a puppy and had only been to her house once before!

In the book, The New Collie by the Collie Club of America, there is a story of how my Uncle Fran’s collie, Dove, helped find my cousin when she was lost.  It was in August of 1967, on Cape Cod, where my Uncle was working as a naturalist, when two year old Martha wandered away.  Dove, using one of Martha’s stockings, was able to track Martha by scent, and led Uncle Fran to her just as the sun was setting.

Martha and Dove, Blackrobe Snow White Dove, CD

In my writing, I have extolled the collie’s compassionate and sweet temperament, which enables them to excel at therapy dog visits.  And I’ve also written of my collies countless antics, which show both their intelligence and their innate sense of fun.  So while they may not perform heroic acts on a daily basis like Lassie, I think there is a heroic heart inside every collie. 

Smooth collies are awesome too!

 (Sharing a favorite from 2012)

I love both rough and smooth collies.  My love for collies began much the same as any collie lover - I fell in love with the Sunnybank collies in Albert Payson Terhune's books, and with the Lassie movies.  There was no mention of smooth collies in either the books or the movies.  When I caught a glimpse of my uncle's first smooth collie, years ago, I thought she looked all kinds of wrong.  But my opinion has changed, and I now view smooths as the beautiful examples of the collie breed that they are.  

Funnily enough, my first collie, lad, was actually a smooth.  So were my second and third collies, Abby and Holly.  But then Ryder was born, and I just couldn't part with my sweet, fuzzy boy. 

I still find it funny that so few people even know about the smooth collie.  They have the same wonderful collie temperaments, and they are MUCH easier to groom.  And getting them ready to enter in the show ring takes about half the time as a rough.  But when we walk both Ryder and Kori, everyone immediately call out to Ryder, "look it's Lassie!"  And they immediately smile and ask to pet him, while little Kori stands waiting, wagging her tail.  I can't tell you how many times we have been asked if our smooths are collie mixes, or why did we shave our collie?  In the UK, Smooth collies are actually on the UKC's vulnerable breeds list. But I'm happy to say the smooth collie seems to be gaining popularity here in the USA.

I think you might appreciate this conversation between Kori and Ryder today...

Kori: I'm tired of everyone petting Ryder first...(sad face)

Ryder: Is it any wonder the people love me?  I AM a superstar!

Kori: You're nothing but a boy!

Ryder: Handsome Boy, super star, stud muffin...take your pick!

Kori: Oh pleeease!

Ryder: I'm going to bed, being this awesome is exhausting...

I was debating writing this…

 I had a scare last week, my sweet, beautiful Scarlett woke up on her birthday and the side of her face was swollen.  Collies are pretty stoic, by I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was in a lot of pain.  So I canceled all the fun things I had planned for her birthday and made an appointment with the vet.

Fortunately, it was just a broken, infected tooth.  They ran bloodwork, to see if she could handle anesthesia, because she’s now 12 years old, and it came back good.  But I was still a nervous wreck, because she’s 12, and that’s pretty old for a collie, and because she’s always had a bad reaction to anesthesia.  I was terrified that a broken tooth was going to be the reason I lost her.  On Friday she had the tooth pulled, along with two others, and they cleaned the rest while she was there.  It went fine, but it’s now Sunday and she’s still showing some of the effects of the anesthesia.  Yesterday she was still a bit lethargic, and while holding her, I could feel her trembling.  Today she is much better, not 100% yet, but definitely improving.

Kori is now 12 years and 9 months old.  And two months ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.  I haven’t wanted to talk about it, as it was devastating news.  I knew at 12+ years old we wouldn’t have a lot of time left, but this made our time finite.  She’s still with me, but I see her getting weaker everyday, and I know we don’t have much time left.  And knowing this, my heart is heavy with grief, because I’m not ready to say goodbye.  She’s my Kori Beanie, one of the puppies from my very first litter, my Sunshine girl.

Ryder is doing okay, but he is really showing his age, and one day soon I know he will be leaving me too.  And I can’t think about that, I just can’t.

Loving a dog brings so much joy into your life.  And every day with them is a gift, I honestly believe my life would be diminished without them.  But if you are blessed to raise a puppy, to watch them grow up, and eventually grow old, you know the heartache you will eventually face.  And it always comes too soon, long before we are ready to let them go.

If you have a senior dog, or even a younger dog, please treasure every moment.  Hug them every day, because it all passes so quickly.

National Purebred Dog Day - otherwise known as Scarlett’s birthday!

 Today, May 1st, is National Purebred Dog Day.  It’s a day to celebrate all the many purebred dog breeds that we love so much.  But for us, it’s also the day our beautiful Scarlett entered this world.  

She has given us so much, done everything we’ve ever asked of her…

And been a constant source of love, laughter, and companionship…

All wrapped up in a stunningly beautiful package!

Happy 12th birthday my love, I don’t know how these 12 years have passed so quickly for us!  If I could, I  would keep you by my side forever.