Into the Past

The other day I stumbled onto some pictures I had forgotten about. In turn that brought other 'collie' memories to my mind. Once upon a time I had two lovely collie girls--Jody and Ariel. Jody passed on two years ago. She had just turned ten, and am still unsure what happened to her. The tests simply came up kidney failure, but the cause unknown. It was sudden and numbing. I got Jody when she was almost a year old. She toured some shows with her breeder after I got her, and she never forgot that she was a show dog. She loved to be fussed over, and loved to preen and pose. She was an extremely sweet dog, who loved all animals. The cats in particular adored her. She loved the sheepies, and would hang out with them, until I got the Shetlands, who did not love dogs. After that, to protect the dogs from Shetland abuse, I could only let them go and visit the Dorset lambs (whose mommas loved the Collies), when the Shetlands were penned up. It became a yearly trek, a few days after the first lambs were born and mommas were settled in, I would take Jody and Ariel up to visit the lambs. They always got pretty excited about it, but were very mannerly and would never spook anyone. They just wanted to sniff and check these new babes out. The only time Jody got tired of baby lambs was the year Rocky the bottle lamb was born, and he got to come into the house too! That was pushing it a little, as far as Jody was concerned!
Later, when Boone came along, Jody accepted him readily into her fold and was very tolerant of his goofiness. (In this picture Boone is still in the recovery phase of the demodectic mange, he weighed around 70lbs). It took Ariel much longer before she accepted Boone, since Boone accidentally mowed her down once when playing. She was terrified of him after that. She knew her old bones couldn't take much of that. She still is wary and goes and gets in her 'bedroom' when Boone revs up and starts running, but now they are 'a pack', such as it is.

Here is beautiful Jody about six months before she passed on. What a lovely girl.

We still miss you, glamor girl with the heart of gold.