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Finnish Spitz/Border Collie

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Home:Semora, NC

Age: 18 Years Sex: Female

Dogster stats for Irena Maggie


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Leave a bone for Irena Maggie

Nicknames:
Maggie-Bag, Magster, Her Majesty, Red Dog, Wee Broon Dug

Birthday:
December 2nd 1993

Arrival Story:
Maggie is my very first dog ever. My husband was working three jobs and I was alone each day after coming home from my teaching job. I wanted a collie-type dog but when I saw the little fur balls in a box at the flea market (yup), I couldn't resist. I was REALLY lucky. Maggie was and is very healthy and has a terrific temperament.

Bio:
As that furball grew, her smarts took my breath away! My numerous puppy books all seemed to think it would take several weeks for her to learn the basics. She learned everything in the book in one afternoon! She was also the puppy that people say BCs are - I'm not sure she's part BC but her early life makes me suspect it very strongly. She was a terrible nipper. She ate things, chewed them up, destroyed woodwork and carpets and couches and table legs and even ate a hole in the floor - literally, we had a hole through the subfloor. I got up to get a drink in the kitchen one evening while watching TV and came back to find that she had taken the opportunity to EAT the arm of the couch where she'd been laying. Maggie taught me several things. If you have patience with a hell-raiser puppy, such puppies typically are the best dogs, especially if you put time and training into them. Maggie is now a Timmy-fell-in-the-well type of dog. She's protected the kids a couple of times from real danger that no one else noticed (once it was a child snatcher who was hanging out near our yard). She's a seizure and cancer alert dog. She can sense bad/dangerous weather coming and will let us know. Maggie introduced me to the world of dog sports. Fun! Together we learned obedience, disc dog, agility, and flyball. She is too much of a princess to actually compete, but she gladly learned those games and then stepped aside to let the crazy purebred BCs do their thing. From Maggie I learned to be flexible in my approach - that if my method wasn't working, it wasn't the fault of the dog or even the method, but just that I hadn't found the right way to communicate what I needed. Clicker training was almost unknown when she was young, but I stumbled on a class whose instructor had studied with the same dolphin people that Karen Pryor studied with. Way cool! We didn't use clickers, we used marker words but I learned M/R training 13 years ago when the rest of the world was still pretty much jerking and hanging. What a blessing. Maggie has yet to be ill, ever. I'm sure it's coming - she's fifteen now. But it's incredible how healthy she is. She's sound as a bell, still has perfect hearing, and only has a little trouble seeing out of one eye. She's a little slower getting around, but it's the difference between a dog that ran full out all the time, and now a dog that seems sort of normal. She rarely moves at a slower pace than a trot when she's outside.

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I've Been On Dogster Since:

November 21st 2008