A Girl, and her Girl...: A new year - so

Well its the beginning of a new year with so many new goals to set and so many new goals I get to break. Come one - surely I am not the only one that goes through this at the beginning of each year am I?

2011 has to have been simply one of the best years of my life. Both work wise and personally ( which I guess are one and the same thing) and again , I got so busy that life with the "girl" just flew by and before long, I would not see her for days, even though she was by my side all day long ( well okay - when she was not outside with her flock of 1)

We added a new addition to our house over the holidays and it was, yet again, a case of the dog found us not the other way around. This is our new girl Jess. She came from "paws for Thought" rescue in Sydney after being saved from death row at Renbury Pound. She is fully grown and all of 5.5 kg, about 1 year old and the vet has classified her breed as 100% pure pocket rocket ( he did have a laugh how I seem to end up with these zippy rescue dogs). She is Jacks dogs exclusive;y. She sleeps with him, sits on him, adores him and follows him. When he is away at school or for a sleep over, she just hangs very quietly by my side but the moment Jack comes back she lights up with pure joy. As some put it, they may have just rescued each other and I think its safe to say from this photo taken on Australia day, they are a perfect match.

Jack is really looking forward to starting agility when he turns 10 and when we stopped and looked at the dogs we had, it became clear that none of them would suit him and encourage him to stick with it.

Firstly, we have Ben

Rescue dog extrodinar. Saved from death row given everything including a whole new knee and a place called paradise to live in. And in return we get the "I only work at exactly 18.1 degree with zero dew point and 12% humidity at exactly 1.05 am". Anything out of this results in the paw being stuck up at us and a growl/snap to follow. Not the ideal dog for a new handler to "enjoy".

Then we have "the Girl" - Bug

As simply beautifully natured as she is, she gets a little over excited as does any Koolie and if you are not giving her instruction well and truly prior to what she needs to do, then she will keep going until stopped. Adorable and she simply adores Jack as well - but just to fast as the first dog for him we think. She will be a brilliant step up dog though when they have both had time to grow up and learn a bit more.

Then lastly we have hmmm.......Maverick

Simply put - Mav is a wild child. He is head strong yet vague. It has taken me many years to learn how to work Maverick out and I am a much better person for it I have to say. Has lead me to pure frustration and back and with this in mind, he could not be further from the ideal dog for a novice to learn on.

So - you can see we really had no option ( well we could have said no but where is the fun in that) than to look further ahead and see that Jack needed something of his own.

I am happy to say that he has shown such responsibility already from holding a towel under her head while she is car sick to standing outside at 4 am in the rain waiting for her to go to the toilet. Welcome to our forever home Jess and I guess now it will be a double girl blog