In the Beginning...

It is now spring of 1996. Penny has been with us for a year now. Though she is a happy puppy we decided that maybe Penny would be happier with a playmate in the house. Thus began the search for our second puppy. We read through all the literature we had about getting a second dog and decided that we should get a male as there would likely be less conflict between a male and female in one household. Our other concern was that Penny turned out to be one big puppy, even at just one year of age. We questioned whether we could house and train two big doggies. So the search was narrowed down to a medium sized doggie. Would we be able to find another cute little puppy at the SPCA? Would it be like our first experience?

As it turned out, one of my co-workers was into training and breeding Shetland Sheepdogs. She had been working very closely with a local established breeder and I knew I could trust her in that these dogs would not be mistreated or come from puppy mills. So we're all set I thought to myself. Not quite. She did not have any puppies ready. By this time, I was sold on having for Penny a little Sheltie playmate. So the waiting game begain....

We finally got the news that my co-worker was expecting a litter. On July 15 seven precious little Shelties entered the world. I couldn't wait to go pick out our new puppy. I saw pictures of the tiniest little things I ever saw in my life! They fit in the palm of her hands. But we still had to wait two months before we could adopt our new puppy.

When the puppies got older, we were invited to go over to see them. Mom was resting behind a sofa while seven little puppies were running around in circles, chasing one another. I don't think I ever saw so many cute little fur balls in my life! They were all adorable. My co-worker had determined that 3 were show quality, 3 were pet and there was 1 female runt that she would be keeping. That narrowed our choice down to three as we were not interested in a show dog. As it turned out, they were all males, exactly what we were looking for.

The big day soon came upon us. My co-worker told me that she would be advertising the puppies, but that I could have first pick. We went back to view the puppies. This time, she isolated the three for us. We spent some time playing with them and checking out their personalities. One was bigger than the others and quite rambunctious, barrelling around the room. One was a bit timid. Then there was the middle of the road one (hence his official CKC registration name of 'Middle of the Road Little One'). We were a little concerned about getting the bigger one full of energy. He looked like he would be a handful. The timid one we worried would be too timid for Penny. But the last one was perfect! He seemed to have just the right combination of energy we were looking for. We bundled up our little joy and let his momma sniff him one last time before we took him home with us.

Unlike our little puppy girl, our new little puppy boy was always quick to voice his displeasure with being left alone. We had decided to keep our little fur ball in the kitchen at night to make sure he didn't leave us any "little presents" in the rest of the house. Well, that idea soon went out the door. By this time, our little puppy girl was sleeping upstairs with us in our bedroom which meant that our new little one would be all by his lonesome in the kitchen. He howled and howled and howled until we got the message that we would have to let him upstairs with us at night. But our little boy was at least well behaved when he was with us and didn't leave any messes in the house. He was the quickest house-trained puppy I had ever seen.

Shelties are usually known for having the tips of their ears drooping. Rusty's ears had that classic ear-tipped look when he was a pup but they slowly started to perk up as he grew older. Apparently, it happens to a lot of Shelties and owners have been known to "tip" the ears by either gluing them down or attaching some weight to the tips of the ears to help train the ears to bend at the top. We have to admit that we did try to tip Rusty's ears when he was younger by weighing it down with a little bandage attached to the tip of his ears. Sometimes people would notice something on his ears and they would ask "what's that on his ear?" and we would have to admit that we were trying to keep the tips of his ears bent... How embarassing for Rusty to have such silly parents. We soon realized that Rusty was perfect just the way he was and stopped trying to tip his ears.

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Puppy Mishaps and Mischiefs

Rusty has always been a bit wary of new things. I remember the first time we brought him home and took him outside. He would not walk on the grass. He just walked on the patio. So I picked him up and plopped him onto the grass and he didn't move. I don't think he knew what to think of the green turfy material under his little paws. I tried to coax him to move around, but he just sat there, not moving. He eventually got used to the grass.

Another thing Rusty didn't do were stairs. He would just look down the stairs, but wouldn't go down them. I would go down and try and get him to come to me, but he just stood there. So I picked him up and brought him down the stairs. I then went back up the stairs, hoping he would follow. But he would just look up the stairs at me. To be fair, I think the stairs may have been too tall for his little puppy legs.

Being our second doggy, we figured that we would teach Rusty to bark on command. Shelties are herding dogs, so Rusty barked a lot, but we wanted to teach him to 'speak' and to be 'quiet'. We couldn't figure out how to get him to speak, and realized that he usually barked when someone rang the doorbell. So we trained him by ringing the doorbell. Bad idea. This just caused him to bark more whenever anyone was at the door. We never really did get him to learn the command 'quiet' though he knows 'speak' very well, and we don't even have to give him the command!

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Puppy Walks and Adventures

Rusty had a strange quirk about not doing his business on a leash. We've always let him out in our back yard and I guess he just got used to doing it while running around. Well, it took years before he finally decided to do it while on a leash. I remember calling his daddy at work from my cell to tell him the good news!

On one fateful walk with Rusty that I remember, we came across a Korean lady who appeared to be lost (as many people get lost in our neighbourhood) but was unable to tell us where she came from or where she was going to. This was a few years before the advent of smartphones (this would have been a lot easier if we had gps, google translator, etc...) so we relied on some older tech... I called up a co-worker of mine on my cell phone who spoke Korean and she was able to translate for us. Apparently, the lady had parked her car somewhere but she was lost and could not find her way back. We decided to try and help her by walking with her and helping her to look for her car. We took a bit of a short cut through the park and led her to where we thought she might have left her car given the descriptions that my co-worker was able to interpret. Not finding the car immediately, we (Rusty in tow) walked all the way up Tyne until we reached Safeway... this was much farther than we normally walked Rusty (and you have to remember that when we started this search, we were already at the end of our initial walk with Rusty) but he was such a trooper and didn't complain one bit. Rusty always loved a good long walk and would follow us wherever we went. Anyhoo, not finding the woman's car, we walked her back to where we started from. Only this time, instead of cutting through the park, we took the long way around. Sure enough, that's exactly where we found her car. If we hadn't taken the first short cut, we would have found her car rather quickly. This happened just after Penny had left for the Rainbow Bridge and we think she was giving us these adventures with Rusty to keep us busy so we wouldn't miss her too much.

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Pictures

Rusty has always been very photogenic ever since he was a pup. Unlike some pups (cough)Sophie(cough) who would always have their eyes closed or facing the wrong direction, Rusty was always ready to take a picture. Even when his mommy and daddy tried to take those xmas pictures of him dressed up like a reindeer or an elf, Rusty never complained. Over the years, his parents took advantage of his good nature and may have taken a few pictures that some puppies might find embarrassing but Rusty was always eager to please.

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Food and Toys

Rusty's favourite thing in the whole world was food. This kind of worked out fine because Penny always loved to play with toys. Whenever either of them got presents, Penny would go looking for toys first and Rusty would go looking for food. It didn't matter if the toys were meant for Rusty or if the treats were for Penny...

Rusty had a lot of favourite foods: french fries, bananas, and pizza crusts to name but a few - and his little nose knew when you had some. You could see his nose start twitching and he would start sniffing the air to find out where you were hiding these yummy treats.

Of course, that doesn't mean that Rusty never played with toys... Rusty and Penny both used to play with the frisbee and tennis ball in our backyard. They had a fun time chasing after the ball or frisbee and then chasing after each other. Rusty was really good at catching the frisbee and could play all day long. Quite often, Penny would chase Rusty around our backyard while he was carrying the frisbee. After awhile, Penny would get wise and stop chasing her quick-footed brother and just wait for him to circle the trees so she could catch him. They were never mean to each other about it though - sometimes we would see them both holding onto the frisbee at the same time with their mouths... it was a little funny because Penny was taller than Rusty and you could see how he was trying to hold on tightly as they walked around our backyard like that.

One of the benefits of Rusty's love of food is that we could use treats to help teach him new tricks. One trick that Rusty was always good at was rolling over. It took a little bit of effort to teach it to him at first - but with a little bit of practice (and a lot of treats), we soon had Rusty rolling over with a simple command. Of course, we might have went overboard with the training at one point because whenever he saw us with a treat, he would start doing tricks (without us even giving a command). He would start by sitting, then going down, then sitting again... if we didn't give him a treat yet, he would sometimes go down and roll over. I think once, he rolled over twice because he thought I had something in my hand or that I was gesturing for him to roll over.

One year, we decided to try to grow strawberries in a planter in our backyard. We waited and waited and waited for the strawberries to be ready to be harvested but for some reason, we could never find any. Occasionally, we would see the small little buds start to form but they never became full-fledged strawberries. Then, one day we noticed that the pups were gathered around our little strawberry planter and we realized what had happened... we had created a little strawberry buffet for Penny and Rusty. Every day when we had let them out, they were foraging for strawberries and eating them before we could harvest them. Even after we had moved the planter out of their reach, they would still go to the same area looking for the planter so they could feast. Although we had given up on the strawberry planter for the following years, every now and again, Rusty would take a sniff around the planter to see if any new strawberries showed up.

As a young pup, Rusty ate his food like he was famished. There were times when we put his food bowl down for him and he would inhale the food so quickly that he would be almost done before Penny even started eating her food. I'm not even sure if Rusty even chewed his food. Occasionally, Rusty would be bold enough to try and sneak some food from his big sister - which usually resulted in a bit of a fight but they both got over it really quickly.

We used to keep the dog food bag sitting on the kitchen floor for quite a long time with no problems. Penny would always know not to help herself to the food and when we got Rusty, he pretty much followed suit. Until one day when we came home and found that Rusty had gnawed a little hole in the bottom of the dog food bag and had engorged himself on a feast of doggy food while we were away. From that day on, we knew that we'd have to keep the doggy food locked up.

One day, we brought home a special doggy toy - it was designed to dispense doggy food when the doggy pressed down on a lever. Penny, being the bright puppy that she was, quickly figured out that all she had to do was keep her paw on the lever and lift her paw ever so slightly to keep the food continuously flowing out of the dispenser. Rusty, on the other hand, kept trying to stick his nose up the dispenser to try to get to the food. Since that didn't work out too well for him, he figured the best thing to do would be to let his big sister use her big paw to dispense the food and he would quickly try to gobble up any food that came flying out. Even back then, they were always working as a team!

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Collie?

A lot of people mistook Rusty for a collie due to his size - he was a bit supersized for a Sheltie but wasn't fat or overweight. I guess that's why we often overheard children saying "Look, it's Lassie!" to their parents when we took him for walks.

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Rusty and Sophie

Penny and Rusty were the best of buds and after Penny had to leave, Rusty was pretty much on his own for a couple of years. We thought that he might be a bit lonely by himself so we had decided to get a new pup. We also figured that Rusty could help teach our new puppy the ropes like Penny taught Rusty when we first brought him into our home. We had high hopes that Rusty would get along with our new addition because we remembered how quickly he took to Penny when we brought him home. And, in the beginning, when we first brought Sophie home with us, he was a little bit interested in her. Unfortunately, that interest soon turned as Sophie turned out to be more than a handful. Rusty was already an old man at this point and wasn't about to let some young whippersnapper come into his life and just push him around. It only took a few quick nips and he put Sophie in her place (I wish we had that power).

We were quite worried for a while because we never wanted to make Rusty's life trouble but Sophie was always a little munster and had her own thoughts on the subject. Despite everything, Sophie always wanted to stick close to her older brother and tried to sleep near him whenever possible. While Rusty wasn't too keen on this at first, I think they did warm up to each other over time and we have a bunch of pictures where the two of them were sleeping right next to each other.

Over the years, Sophie continued her munsterness with Rusty - only now, she was bigger than him. That didn't mean anything though because Rusty was always the alpha dog and knew how to put her in her place. Sometimes, all he needed to do was give her a look and she would know she was in trouble. But Rusty really loved his new sister (don't think he would admit it though). Every now and again we would see him walk up to Sophie and give her a lick on her nose... Sophie would be scared sh*tless from it... but we knew... he loved his sister.

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Bathtime

As I mentioned before, Rusty has always been a stoic little boy. Neither Penny nor Rusty really enjoyed bathtime but Penny was definitely worse - she would throw herself on the floor and become an immovable object. Rusty, on the other hand, let us pick him up and carry him to the bathtub. You could see the displeasure in his eyes as his once fluffy fur would get drenched in soap and water but he pretty much stayed put and let us bathe him without much problems. He did get back at us though - once he got out of the bathtub, he made sure to shake off all of the water and splatter the whole bathroom (us included) so we were just as wet as he was.

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