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Written by Jewel
Blanch, our New Zealand author and correspondent.
I have told a story
elsewhere of Wendy, [Calahorra The Snowbird CDX] an Afghan
Hound bred by Wendy Slatyer of Sydney Australia but owned by me.
Now I will go to the
other end of the size scale and tell you of a Maltese, Twinkle
[Ch Oelrich Twinkletoes] bred by Billee Farnell of Auckland
New Zealand. I bought Twinkle as a baby puppy in 1965.
She was the first Maltese
I owned, and she became the foundation brood bitch of my Lilliput
Kennels. In the personality stakes, Twinkle was a queen amongst
dogs. Never will her like be seen again. When God created Twinkle,
he broke the mould as the cliche goes.
If you have read Wendy's
story you will know of her spectacular performance in the Obedience
ring, and how this contributed to her gaining her CDX title on
her first attempt, but this tale is of a wee dog who tried valiantly
on a number of occasions to get those three letters after her
name, but through circumstances beyond her control, she failed
every time.
Before Twinkle and
I enter the ring for the Companion Dog Trials, I will give you
an example of her quite phenomenal intelligence [I am sure that
you will excuse my prejudice].
The location is the
Canterbury Canine Obedience Club in Christchurch New Zealand.
On this particular occasion, the class was doing an individual
dumbbell retrieve.
For those readers who
are unfamiliar with the sequence of commands in this exercise:
it commences as do all exercises with the dog sitting at the handler's
left side.
At the steward's command,
the handler throws the dumbbell out into the middle of the ring,
but the dog must remain with its bottom in close contact with
the ground until it is given the command to "fetch". It then progresses
smartly to the dumbbell, picks it up, returns, again smartly,
to the handler, sits close in front, holding the dumbbell in its
mouth until the handler takes it, and then, "ahh ahh ahh, wait
for the command"!" it is told to "heel". Whereupon,
it passes around the handler's legs in a clockwise direction,
and sits again at the handler's left side.
Now that you have that
straight in your minds, we will return to where Twinkle and I
are awaiting our turn to do the retrieve. All starts as it should;
Twinkle is sitting, and I throw out the dumbbell when I am told;
at my command of "fetch", Twinkle runs out, picks up the dumbbell
and returns with it. sits in front of me,
And then, she drops
it. now, something almost unbelievable occurs. I command Twinkle
to "fetch", and expect her to pick the dumbbell up, which she
does. "What is unbelievable about that?" I hear you cry! "patience
dear reader! I'm getting to the point!"
Twinkle knows as well
as I what "fetch" means, so carrying the dumbbell, she runs out
into the middle of the ring, puts the dumbbell down, picks it
up, runs back to me, sits and holds it perfectly.
The steward is rendered
speechless for a moment or two, and when she regains the power
to articulate, she says "Now, there goes a really well-trained
dog!" some of the less generous might say "Now, there goes a really
well brain-washed dog!" but you wouldn't be so unkind would you?
Whether it was training
or brain-washing, I almost felt that I was redundant. I could
just sit at the ringside, and Twinkle would do the exercises without
my interference. Now that you have been convinced of the intelligence
of this truly amazing little dog, we will embark on the real essence
of this story ie Twinkle's battles with the CDX bogey.
In this case, said
bogey was the "five minute down stay, handler out of sight". I
had never failed to return to Twinkle after this exercise in our
training sessions, but she never quite believed that the next
time I disappeared mightn't be the last time she saw me, and this
was a prospect she simply couldn't face.
None of the other exercises
in the CD presented any problems, but this five minute down seemed
to be an insurmountable obstacle. To get a CD or CDX title, the
dog must get at least 75% of the marks in each exercise, but in
the long down, marking does not even begin until the dog has completed
half the time, so if it should move before 2 and a half minutes
have elapsed, it has flunked the exercise, hence the entire trial.
I think that Twinkle
and I had a crack at the CD five times, but fear not, I do not
intend to bore you with recounting all five, as three of them
had the same scenario, ie, as soon as I left the ring, Twinkle
followed my example, not to mention my footsteps! However, on
one notable occasion, she did not, but it was only 45 seconds
that she managed to keep herself prostrate before she stood.
It was quite obvious
that she had two streams of thought running through her ingeneous
little brain. One, She knew that I had told her to "stay", but
two, she also knew that she had to find where I had gone, so she
tried to satisfy the two opposing urges by running on the spot!
her legs were doing what they must do, but she was staying where
I had left her.
The judge, a very kindly
woman, could see that the dog was in a panic, and as she had blown
the exercise, she picked Twinkle up and handed her to a spectator,
who brought the little scallywag to where we were hiding.
On the second occasion
that I will recount, the events followed a very different pattern.
Came Twinkle's trial by fire, the long down, and she did it, stayed
like a rock for the entire five minutes. One might have supposed
that a CDX was a certainty, but the gods can be very cruel!
I found that I had
left my regular cloth for scent discrimination at home, and the
only suitable cloth I had on me was a handkerchief. The minimum
size for scent cloths was 6-6 inches. The handkerchief was larger
than that, and if I had had any sense at all, I would have ripped
it in half, but I didn't.
Consequently, when
Twinkle sorted it out from the other cloths, and started to come
back to me with it, the edge was dragging on the ground. Half
way back, Twinkle stepped on the trailing edge, and came to a
halt. She stood there, holding the cloth, not knowing how to solve
this impasse, and the rules forbade me to speak to her., so there
she stood, and there I stood until the minute allowed for completion
of the exercise was up.
That was the last time
we competed in the Companion Dog trials. I may be slow in the
uptake, but by this time, I had decided that fate had decreed
that Twinkle was to go CDXless, and what difference did it make
anyway? She was still the wonderful little dog she always had
been, and always was, for the rest of her life!
If your
appetite has been whetted by these stories, they and others are
to be found in "My Life With Guide Dogs". The book is available
directly from the author, Jewel Blanch on 3.5 inch computer disk
at a cost of 10$US, p&h inclusive. Jewel
Blanch
Text
and images copyright 1998 Jewel
Blanch
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