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| Maggie
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Update July ‘09 ... It’s been 1½ years now that we have adopted Maggie and we have no regrets whatsoever. She is a great dog. Her high energy suits us: we love to take her for long walks every day. When we go to Bruce Pit, she likes to carry a tennis ball the whole time we are there; she follows well and always comes when she is called.
Maggie
is now a very good Frisbee catcher and is honing her skills in
Agility. She is also a good water retriever. Last winter,
we took her with us on a 7 week road trip all the way to California.
She was welcome everywhere and was a favourite with kids who all
thought she looked
In the
house, she is well-behaved, 100% clean and never destroys anything.
Best of all: in the backyard, we can have her loose and she won’t
chase the squirrels or the chipmunks. She is pretty amazing. Marielle
Update December '12 It will be 5 years on January 5th 2013 that we adopted Maggie: the best thing we ever did. She loves going places with us and for us, it's a delight to have her on long hikes.
We have taken her along difficult treks where she literally had to climb rock walls. She wears a special harness in case she needs assistance from us in difficult spots but we have had to help her only once so far: she is brave and bold like no other dog we have owned.
She has competed in a few agility trials and she has already earned her first title, has a few qualifying scores toward her advanced title and trains at the masters level.
Maggie loves rain, snow and mud and she is happiest in the water … as
you can see from the pictures attached. Her newest trick:
backing up on command.
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We thought that you
would like to hear a little about Maggie. It was 3 weeks ago
today that we decided to take a leap of faith and adopt her knowing
that she had ended at the SPCA because of house training issues.
Having trained several dogs in our life, we thought that we could
handle this. Well, the first week we were having second thoughts
as we discovered that she had absolutely NO concept about being clean
in the house: she was consistently urinating in her crate, even
after having just come back from a walk outside. Same with
defecating or urinating in the house. We were a little
frustrated and discouraged. But we reminded ourselves that she
was very bright and if we could figure out ways to help her understand
the rules of OUR household, eventually she would get it.
Aside from house
training challenges, she is an amazing dog and we feel so lucky to
have her. She is a pleasure to own. She is extremely
intelligent and her training is coming along quite nicely: she
is already doing some quite spectacular long recalls off leash.
She has ALL the qualities of a good agility dog and therefore the onus
is on us to show that we have the talent to train her to achieve her
full potential. We are waiting to hear from Dream Fields
regarding this year’s training schedule and looking forward to start
training there with Maggie sometime in February. She loves to
play ball and tug. She is an excellent retriever. She
is now quite good at catching a tennis ball in the air. She
makes us smile and laugh a lot. We enjoy going for long walks
with her where she can burn her boundless energy in a positive way,
and we are now reaping the benefits of spending more time outdoors.
Don’t they say that pet owners are healthier than the general
population? Hans and I have certainly been more active since we
got her!
