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| Name: |
Blue
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Age: |
Six and a half years old
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| Gender: |
Male |
Breed: |
Shetland Sheepdog
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| Home: |
Oklahoma, USA |
At the age of just eight weeks, he was taken to the vet to be put down, due to him being completely deaf. His mother was a double merle, deaf and almost completely blind. Double merle is when you breed two merle dogs together. Some are born blind, some are born deaf, sometimes both. Or sometimes they don't have any problems at all, if they're lucky. He was the only completely deaf one in that litter. But why chance it? Fortunately, the vet she brought him to, was living at my house at the time. It was December. She ended up bringing him home that night, and when I saw him, I was already in love. He was a gorgeous little fluffball. Hyper too, as any other sheltie is. I kept begging and begging to my parents to let me keep him, but it was up to the vet, and she was planning on re-homing him. Later on down the month, when it was near Christmas, they put a little red ribbon around his neck and gave him to me.
I immediately started teaching him the basics of obedience(Keep in mind that I wasn't even 13 yet). Sit, down, shake. I don't remember what inspired me, it was like it just came naturally. We eventually started going to Obedience classes. We thought he needed that due to him being completely deaf. He was amazing, he was definitely in the spotlight. And he knew it too. He'd always watch himself in the mirror when we were practicing heeling. After he knew all the basics, we started going to Rally Obedience classes. I wasn't planning on competing with him, just something to do for fun. Until we got talked into registering him in UKC. He already knew everything and all the hand signals, so why not? Later on, we entered him in a local UKC Rally competition. All three days. I was super nervous. Everybody there was really supportive, which helped me a lot. At the end of it all, he ended up placing Fourth three times, and he got his very first title. All scores were in the 90s. Not bad for our first competition, huh? Sadly, that was our first and last Rally competition. It was fun, yes, but I knew Blue just wanted to run.
While we were still in Rally, we decided to start him in Agility. He absolutely loved it. He always had to show off during his runs, as well as in Obedience. After he completed his weaves and his running contacts were good, we decided to enter him in AKC Agility competitions. We always did all three days. I thought Standard was boring(his running contacts were getting kind of sloppy anyway), so we stuck with JWW, since we both loved to run. The funny thing is, every single time we competed in Agility, it was either we got in first place, or we didn't qualify. So he has a lot of blue ribbons from Agility. But he's been retired for a while now due to a shoulder injury that never quite healed correctly.
Through all that time, I've been trick training with him for fun as well. He knows over 15 tricks. I honestly don't think I could've asked for a better dog.
Here's a video of him competing in Agility. It's unfortunately the only one I have. I have other ones, just not agility ones. The rest are pf him being goofy. Here's Snow Blue, Attack the Leash, and Spinny Blue and when he was Happy Dad came home.
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