Connor

OTCh., U-OTCh. Sunazie’s Black Diamond, UDX5, MX, MXJ

Aug. 26, 1994 - Aug. 31, 2009

I said good-bye to Connor this morning.

Honestly, I didn't think he would leave me this soon but he had a different idea. Figures. He always did think he was in charge. I was the luckiest person in the world to share 15 years with him. If you knew Connor in his glory days, please send me a memory. You can post it in the comments or e-mail me direct at tervnmal@iowatelecom.net.

Connor was an accident. I had no intention of getting a puppy in the fall of 1994. I was showing my first sheltie Jess, who was 5 years old at the time, and getting a puppy was the last thing on my mind. I didn't even want another dog. Then I went to an Iowa City Shetland Sheepdog Club meeting and there he was: an adorable, obnoxious, HUGE, tri-color sheltie puppy, climbing out of the x-pen, stealing things out of purses and generally being a nuisance. I remember his breeder saying, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that one.” Connor came to live with me two weeks later.

Connor was the first dog I actually taught to heel with attention (this was during the golden era of Terri Arnold’s focused attention camps) but I can’t take much credit for it. He just plain loved to heel. When we trained, I often took breaks from working other exercises to do “recreational” heeling. I didn’t actually learn how to TEACH a dog to heel until Jamie and Phoenix came on the scene. And some days that was questionable.

Connor had a lot of "help" in training. That silly cat was always right in the middle of everything.

Connor taught me to listen to everyone’s advice but make up my own mind about things. Early in his obedience career I took a lesson from a very accomplished trainer. She told me Connor would never amount to anything because he paced instead of trotting. She was right. He did pace. He paced his way to his OTCh. with multiple perfect 40-point heeling scores, High In Trials, High Combineds and two trips to the AKC National Obedience Invitational.

I wish I'd counted all the run-offs we were in over the years. Connor loved them (more heeling!) and his enthusiasm eliminated any nerves I might have. We won more run-offs than we lost because for him, it was another chance to go back in the ring and do something he loved. He made me look good and covered for my awkward footwork more times than I can count.

He was my first Obedience Trial Champion and the journey to that title was worth every exciting, frustrating, soul-searching, disappointing, rewarding, intense, insane, beautiful step of the way. The day he finished, we left at 4 a.m. to drive to a trial in Illinois. While loading the van, I was thinking how crazy this was and how I could be asleep snug and warm in my bed instead of driving across two states in the cold and dark to show in an unheated fairground building against all those "good dogs from Chicago.” Then I saw a shooting star blaze across the sky and automatically made the wish I’d been wishing for the last year: “Connor’s OTCh.” Seven hours later he won a huge Utility class for 26 points, exactly one more point than we needed to finish.

He was my first agility dog, too, although he spent most of his agility career trying to figure out how to get back into heel position. I tracked with him a little and he enjoyed it immensely because it involved food. He was so pleased to find each bit of hot dog on the track. He would eat it, then spin around and pop into a front in hopes of getting another cookie.

Phoenix, Connor and Jamie, Oct. 2008

Connor was a big boy and we called him an “estate sheltie” or a “street sheltie.” He measured 18” at the withers and stewards sometimes had a hard time deciding what breed he was. At one trial, a steward came out to my group of handlers as we waited on the Long Sit and said anxiously, “Who has the border collie? The judge wants you come back right now.” We all looked at each other. There were no border collies in our group. “What’s it doing?” I asked. “Running back and forth across the ring, barking. No one can catch him,” the steward said. Yep, that was Connor.

He was all Sheltie: bossy, opinionated, impatient and all about the food. He barked occasionally in the obedience ring, frequently in the agility ring and ALL THE TIME around the house. He hated Jamie when I brought him home in the fall of ‘99. Eventually they became buddies although I think he was always waiting for me to send Jamie back. Strangely enough, he totally accepted and actually liked Phoenix when he arrived eight years later. Connor could walk up to Phoenix and take a bone away from him, something that probably would get any other dog killed on the spot.

He was an enthusiastic companion and soul mate, always ready to do whatever I asked. His vibrant energy made me very glad to be his partner both in and out of the ring. It's hard to confine his spirit to simple words. He will always be a part of my heart.

This picture is the very essence of Connor: ears up, eyes bright, smiling.

“It came to me that every time I lose a dog, they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.” Cheryl Zuccaro

(Thanks, Barb B., I borrowed this from your post to Catherine when she lost Tessa. It is so perfect.)

Five Seasons cluster at Amana

Talk about your roller coaster weekends! I hadn't planned to enter Novice ever again with Phoenix but when it came time to mail entries for the Five Seasons cluster, it was clear 'Nix was not ready for Open. Since they weren't offering any of the non-regular classes, it was Novice or nothing and I certainly wasn't going to miss a show 7 miles from our house. 

Phoenix won Novice B Saturday w/199, tied for High In Trial and lost the run-off to the Open B winner. He did an amazing job of heelwork and was totally into his job, bright, focussed, bouncing on the releases and setting up quickly. This is the dog I want in the ring with me ALL the time. Yeah, I'm greedy that way.

Today, we NQ'd when he didn't hear me call him on the recall. It was one of those bad deals where the handler in the Utility ring next to him gave a very loud command at the same exact time I called Phoenix. I was 40 feet away from him, the Utility handler was directly behind him. Poor guy, he honestly didn't hear me. Well, stuff happens. Guess I need to train with loud, obnoxious people. Hmmm . . . where can I find some of them?

Funny enough, a Phoenix still won Novice B today. Julie P.'s Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever Phoenix won the class w/198. We were trying to figure out what the plural of "phoenix" is. We decided it probably isn't "Phoenii," which sounds like something you need to get your house fumigated for. "Call the exterminator, dear, we have PHOENII!"

Here's your sign

Sometimes ya just gotta wonder, "What were they thinking!?"

This is on the front door to my cardiologist's office. Good thing I left my Glock in my other purse.


I'm really hoping they just forgot to add "cookies" to this sign at the Fairfax DQ. Otherwise, I am pretty sure there are laws against that sort of thing.

Happy birthday, Skunk Dog!

Connor turns 15 today! He's a little wobbly and deaf as a post but mostly doing okay and still likes to give the Belgians hell.

Connor at 10 weeks, in November 1994
(the future OTCh., U-OTCH. Sunazie's Black Diamond, UDX5, MX, MXJ)

Connor, 5 years old

This is my absolute all-time favorite picture of Connor.

Highlights of the last 15 years:

• You were the first dog I ever trained who heeled in the correct position.

• Two trips to the National Obedience Invitational.

• Failing BOTH heeling patterns in Novice our first time in the ring.

• That crazy 4-way 199 point Open B run-off at Madison, Wis., where we kept going back in the ring over and over and over.

• Taking you to the vet school at Iowa State when you had a lung infection.

• Getting you measured at EXACTLY 18 inches for agility.

• Wishing on a shooting star and finishing your OTCh.

• The funny little growls you always made on the figure 8, like it was so much fun you couldn't stand it.

• The kid at the drive-through window who thought you were a skunk.

• Working through that list of food on the elimination diet to find out what you were allergic to.

• Lifting you off the floor in the ring because you wouldn't release your dumbbell after fronting.

• How you shared your opinions on EVERYTHING.

• Doing run-off after run-off during 9 years of obedience. Bonus heeling!

• The spring trial when we camped at Mason City and you slept inside my sleeping bag because it was below freezing.

• Your absolute conviction that no matter what you did, it was right.

• The total rush of going into the obedience ring with you because you loved it.

Love you, Skunk Dog!

C3P0, May 2008 - August 2009

Alas, C3P0 is DOA. She will either have her engine rebuilt or get a brand new one. She is currently at the local GMC dealership, being “torn down.”

Yeah, this came as a shock to me, too. I've had her 15 months and she only has 33,500 miles on her.

C3P0, like her namesake from Star Wars (yes I know he was a HE but all cars, ships, planes and helicopters are SHEs, that’s just how it works, except for Marsha’s Shorty), believed in keeping me up to date with every possible bit of information a driver could need and quite a bit more I could have lived without.

She told me about tire pressure, oil quality, engine temperature, fuel status, traction control, the weather, what language she was programmed in and how soon I was going to hit something while backing up. I got used to her obsessive/compulsive desire to keep me informed about every little mechanical detail and her symphony of beeps and buzzes were part of my daily routine. She was a bit of an alarmist and liked flashing a variety of warning indicators just to shake me up. (Between her and Phoenix, it’s little wonder I have a heart condition.) Most of the time they were false alarms, a sensor that was wired too tight or something like that.

Monday morning on the way to to work, a new icon popped up on her information center. It looked like a little engine. Great. No good could come of that. There was no message with it. Just that little image, glowing ominously. I consulted the owner’s manual. That thing is 327 pages long and do you think I could find that little picture anywhere? No.

I called the dealership. They came and got her. They called me back a couple of hours later.

“The engine is misfiring,” they said. Okay, I understood that. Sort of. Then the service manager launched into an explanation and swear to God the only things that made even partial sense were “no compression in the chamber” and “spraying oil out of the fourth piston.” I am a lot of things but auto mechanic is not one of them. She could have lost all her deflector shields and had a rear stabilizer break loose, too, for all I know.

Depending on what they find when they tear the engine apart, they will either rebuild it or replace it. In the meantime, I’m driving a loaner Dodge Caravan. The dealership assured me they would give me a loaner and although I requested something I could “fit at least one crate into,” I was not sure their idea of a dog vehicle would be the same as mine. So it was a relief to get a van this morning.

C3P0 is the third in a line of vehicles I’ve named after Claire Beauchamp Fraser, the heroine of Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series. Yeah, it’s a big step from historical fiction to Star Wars but bear with me. When I got Jamie (named after the hero of the “Outlander” series), I was driving a Chevy Blazer. I loved that Blazer. It was almost physically painful to part with it but the dogs and I had outgrown it. When I got my first minivan, Tammy christened her “Claire,” in honor of Jamie, who was the reason I’d upgraded to a minivan in the first place. Claire was followed by Claire II, abbreviated C2, then by Claire III, abbreviated C3, which quickly morphed to C3P0, since I am a confirmed Star Wars addict.

There is an outside chance C3P0 will be resurrected by Friday, but I’m not holding my breath. Thank heaven the shows are local this weekend. This would be a considerably larger pain in the arse if I was planning to travel a distance, camp, take all three dogs, etc.

Rest in peace, 3P0.

Back in the day

August 24, 1991

Yep, we look pretty much the same 18 years later. Except I don't think either the Farmer or I have ever worn that much white again. And I'm sure there's sheltie fur on my dress somewhere if you look close enough.

The farmer takes a wife

Happy 18th anniversary, Hon!

August 24, 1991

I intended to post a picture from that day but time got away from me and I didn't get one scanned. Yeah, that was back in the day when they took pictures with film! But we both look exactly like we did 18 years ago . . . if you can overlook a few gray hairs, wrinkles, bald spots, tummy pudge, etc. We're not getting older, we're getting better!