Rufus is a Cairn Terrier who came to live with us in May 1992 (isn't he cute?) . He used to swim and fetch sticks (I have pictures!) His favorite activity was lying on the kitchen floor or some other cool surface or sniffing around outside. I guess fetching was a puppy thing.In the retriever training book there is a part where you leash your dog to you while you go about your business. Fred and I figure it would be like pulling a little sack of rice if we did that with Rufus. He was trained at the Westwinds Sporting Dog Club which uses a modified Koller method. He was really good on a leash and would sit or lie down on command off leash as long as he thought you could see him. Come is not a word he admitted he knew. Rufus didn't swim for a reason. When he was 4 or 5 months old we went out fishing on a river in a 16 foot motor boat. We were using the kicker motor to trawl and Rufus was fascinated by the bubbles the prop made...so fascinated he leaned over until he slid into the river! Luckily I had him on a leash so I could pull him close to the boat to scoop him out of the water. I have NEVER had his attention like I did when he was being reeled in....after that Rufus only explored creek bubbles and had a highly developed instinct for where the shore is when we are on a boat. He was a great dog for the city. He was very friendly, approachable and non-threatening. Kids could do anything to him - which always surprised me as we don't have any! He mixed well with other dogs, even ones that don't like small dogs. They just sensed that he didn't think of himself as a small dog:) Rufus was sorely tested by the addition of Teak to our family. It would seem that black labs are great to play with but he wouldn't want to live with one or any other kind of retriever. Even though he rarely played with Teak he was still quite protective. No other dog could bark at or chase Teak without Rufus getting in there to run interference. But Teak introduced new dog activities to our household. Rufus took an agility course. In spite of all the years of encouraging him not to jump, he jumped! He also went through tunnels but his favorite thing was to go on the high things like the dog walk and the wall. I'm sure training was great facilitated by the use of jalapeno havarti cheese as the treat for a job well done. He didn't compete but did get to do Hotdogger shows. Rufus died very suddenly on September 17, 2002. We were all out on a walk and he wasn't very enthused. Teak was being a bad dog and running way ahead so I left Rufus on a sit stay to get Teak. When I got back to him he fell over instead of getting up to walk. I'm sure the whole neighbourhood knew because I was yelling at him to wake up. I thought he would live a lot longer. We had an autopsy done to see what was up; he had a heart abnormality.
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Rufus' ResourcesBreed Book |
