My Muttly Family

My life has been chaos for about a week now.  Puppy chaos that is, as I am the proud new owner of my very first high drive dog!  Hopefully.  He's a very calm and laid back dude, but that must be the calm before the storm, right?  After all he is a Border Collie X Australian Shepherd X Cattle Dog.  How could a mix like that not be high drive?

I should start by telling you about my past dogs.  I first owned Brittany, a rescue, thats right you guessed it, Brittany Spaniel.  She came with the name and we didn't have the heart to change it.  She was a stubborn lady who really only listened to my dad.  But hey, I was a pre-teen girl who loved dogs so I was happy to have any dog!  

A couple years after we got Brittany, I begged my parents for a dog of my own.  One that I could train, one that would listen to me, and one that I could take anywhere with me.  My parents finally agreed and we went to the shelter in hopes of finding a small-ish, light colored, female dog.  We ended up with Zeus...forever and always the love of my life.  Zeus was amazingly smart, so smart it was scary sometimes.  He was about 6 months old when we got him.  And he definitely wasn't small.  Our best guess is that Zeus was a Beauceron X Rottweiler.  That dog would have done anything for me.  He was far from perfect, but I loved that dog more than you could ever believe.  

Zeus

Zeus became an only child after we lost Brittany to thyroid cancer around age 10.  After a couple years on his own, we decided it was time to get him a friend.  That's when we ended up with Tycho.  Tycho is probably the goofiest, happiest dog around.  He is constantly making me laugh.  He was my first chance at raising a puppy.  Tycho was about 9 weeks old when we got him from the Abbotsford SPCA.  He looked like a purebred German Shepherd, but he never grew in height.  We decided that he must be a Corgi X German Shepherd.

Tycho

Anyways...to make a long story short, none of those dogs were particularly high drive.  They would work for me, which took a lot of motivation, but they didn't really want to work just for the fun of it.  Sadly, Zeus passed away November 15th, 2009, from complications from a very aggressive form of cancer.  7 months have passed, and I finally found myself ready to bring a new rescue into my life.  I have high hopes for Kepler and plan on keeping him very busy.

Kepler