My Sister Princess, The Best First Dog I Could Ever Have.

Chapter 7: Champ and Boo Bear A Hope For Tomorrow.

The little mutt name Princess was a wonderful first pet for me. After her death my family and I grieved the loss of her life. We cried for days/ weeks. After awhile my family and I sat down and talked about her life and how the only way to stop the tears from flowing was to look for another dog to join our family. We sat and thought about all that we wanted to do with this future dog. We decided that we wanted to look at a young dog or puppy over senior dog.

Topics that we talked about were things like what kind of dog would fit our life style. Did we want a dog that had long fur, short fur, or wire haired fur. My mom and I both agreed that we did not want a wire haired dog like a terrier. We also thought about what we wanted to do with this new dog. We both said that we wanted to be able to do dog agility with him or her. At the time the place that we wanted to do dog agility at did not allow mixed breed dogs.

Do to this ruling we told ourselves that we could not look into a mix breed dog. We then did research on what breeds of dogs do the best in dog agility.  We found over 150 breeds that do well in agility. Some of the top dogs in the list include, the Border Collie, which is the top dog in agility, as well as the Australian Shepard (Aussie), the Shetland sheepdog ( Sheltie), Poodle (all sizes), Papillon, Jack Russell terrier, German Shepard, Rat terrier, Golden Retriever, and the Pembroke Welsh Corgi.  My parents said that they wanted a small dog. I said up to 30 pounds.

My parents agreed no more than 30 pounds. Sadly that knocked out most of the large breeds. Border collies are to high energy and some can be more than 30 pounds when full grown. Same thing with the Aussie. My mom is afraid of German Shepherds and they were way to big anyhow.  The Golden Retriever is also a little too heavy as well.

That left the toy and miniature poodle, the Sheltie, the Papillon, the Jack Russell terrier, a small Rat Terrier, and the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. From the list of top dogs for agility. Princess liked agility too so really any dog can possibly like and do well with dog agility. My family thought about the fur type again. I myself like long haired dogs over short haired because of the fact that the fur covers the whole body unlike the shorter haired dogs.

Looking at the list the long haired dogs were the Sheltie and the Papillon. We looked into both breeds. Bonnie my mom's friend knew of someone who had a Papillon that might be a good match for us. The only thing wrong with this dog was that he might also be show quality. If this was true the owner might keep him. (I explained this some back at the end of the story about Princess.)

My father and mother talked back and forth over the phone with the owner trying find out if this puppy was show quality or not. The day came that they found out that this little dog was in fact a show quality dog and that the owner had decided to keep it.

My mother and I looked further at the two breeds. We found out that the Papillon would need to stay in the house most of the time due to the size and weight. We had been told that because of the weight of smaller dogs, hawks and other large birds might swoop down and pick them up if left alone outside. We wanted a dog that we could leave outside alone if needed in our fenced in back yard.

My mom also asked Bonnie about the sheltie breed. Bonnie used to breed shelties a long time ago. Bonnie assured us that the sheltie was indeed the best small dog in agility other than the Papillon. The one down fall to the breed was that they could sometimes be very vocal and could bark at anytime.

With everything that we had learned about the sheltie breed in minded we looked into the Shetland sheepdog. (Sheltie) They can weigh anywhere from 10-35 pounds depending on the size of the dog. This weight range was the perfect weight range to be able to leave without fear of large birds. I started looking online for breeders that had shelties. I found one place, but after talking on the phone with this person it sounded like a puppy mill.