First let me say hello, and that two people will be using this account, myself Jordan, and my girlfriend Krystal. We live in the heart of Ottawa in a good sized one bedroom apartment.
For a awhile now I had been wanting a new puppy or a new dog. Krystal owns a 12 year old cat that has a major princess complex, we get along just fine, but she lacks the energy or maybe just the will of a fun playful pet. (don't say its the age, I have meet plenty of elderly cats that were playful) I guess when it comes down to it, I miss the out right activity that a dog brings into your life.
I have had two other puppies that became dogs in my life the first one was Hana a Keeshond we had for 3 years and when we moved to Florida my mother thought it would be to hot for her big coat, so we gave her to a family that had another Keeshond and she is loved very much by her new owners.
The second pup we got was Hunnybee a Golden Retriever. As much as I love her, she was a stupid puppy and to this day is the dumbest dog I know. My mother use to train dogs professionally, after 6 months of working with her she still was not house broken or trained in anyway. She just couldn't learn to associate her actions with any kind of reward (food or contact). We hired a behavioral specialist to help us train her. We found out that HunnyBee had a huge reserve of energy and even when she looked calm she really wanted to be out and running.
This was good to know but didn't really help with training her. In the mornings I would run with her for about and hour in our fenced in yard, and once that was over she seemed to be able to pay more attention to us and the rewards (contact) we gave her for good actions. It took us a good year and a half to train her to what was acceptable behavior. I love her to death and she is one of the most gentle dogs I have ever meet. However when I move back to Ottawa to go to university I had no room for a big golden retriever so she stayed with my parents and works as a therapy dog.
Because Honeybee was so much work and a great deal of my time went into helping to training her I miss those activities and the happiness and joy that comes with a new puppy learning, and to see the gears turn in there head that seem to say "Oh that's what you want me to do"!
So we decided to get a new puppy! It took some time and research to find a bread that we liked, (looks, intelligence, playfulness) that would be good in an apartment. Some one recommended I look into Shelties as a breed. We researched them, and we fell in love with them. We found a breeder who's dog had puppies. The breeder owns both the male and female. The breeder informed us that he was not looking to make money off of the puppies and wanted to allow the female to have a litter before she was spayed. Breeding was not his full time job but more of a side hobby.
We picked Hazel (and her papers) up from her breeder on Thursday it was a good hour drive there and back. The breed had four to pick from, Hazel was the most social and seemed to be the a good middle in energy level. One of the other pups (that I had picked out from the photos the breeder sent us) did not stop spinning or bouncing for the 45 minutes we were there. I figured that was a little to much energy for an apartment.
Here are some of photos of her.
http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t36/KayTabin/Animals/
For a awhile now I had been wanting a new puppy or a new dog. Krystal owns a 12 year old cat that has a major princess complex, we get along just fine, but she lacks the energy or maybe just the will of a fun playful pet. (don't say its the age, I have meet plenty of elderly cats that were playful) I guess when it comes down to it, I miss the out right activity that a dog brings into your life.
I have had two other puppies that became dogs in my life the first one was Hana a Keeshond we had for 3 years and when we moved to Florida my mother thought it would be to hot for her big coat, so we gave her to a family that had another Keeshond and she is loved very much by her new owners.
The second pup we got was Hunnybee a Golden Retriever. As much as I love her, she was a stupid puppy and to this day is the dumbest dog I know. My mother use to train dogs professionally, after 6 months of working with her she still was not house broken or trained in anyway. She just couldn't learn to associate her actions with any kind of reward (food or contact). We hired a behavioral specialist to help us train her. We found out that HunnyBee had a huge reserve of energy and even when she looked calm she really wanted to be out and running.
This was good to know but didn't really help with training her. In the mornings I would run with her for about and hour in our fenced in yard, and once that was over she seemed to be able to pay more attention to us and the rewards (contact) we gave her for good actions. It took us a good year and a half to train her to what was acceptable behavior. I love her to death and she is one of the most gentle dogs I have ever meet. However when I move back to Ottawa to go to university I had no room for a big golden retriever so she stayed with my parents and works as a therapy dog.
Because Honeybee was so much work and a great deal of my time went into helping to training her I miss those activities and the happiness and joy that comes with a new puppy learning, and to see the gears turn in there head that seem to say "Oh that's what you want me to do"!
So we decided to get a new puppy! It took some time and research to find a bread that we liked, (looks, intelligence, playfulness) that would be good in an apartment. Some one recommended I look into Shelties as a breed. We researched them, and we fell in love with them. We found a breeder who's dog had puppies. The breeder owns both the male and female. The breeder informed us that he was not looking to make money off of the puppies and wanted to allow the female to have a litter before she was spayed. Breeding was not his full time job but more of a side hobby.
We picked Hazel (and her papers) up from her breeder on Thursday it was a good hour drive there and back. The breed had four to pick from, Hazel was the most social and seemed to be the a good middle in energy level. One of the other pups (that I had picked out from the photos the breeder sent us) did not stop spinning or bouncing for the 45 minutes we were there. I figured that was a little to much energy for an apartment.
Here are some of photos of her.
http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t36/KayTabin/Animals/
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