My Story – Abby

I’m Abby and the picture you see here was taken a few months after my arrival.  I’ve been here a long time now and I’m the second most senior member of the household.

I was born in Michigan . Now I don’t remember a whole lot about the experience, but one day a couple of my siblings and I were put in a pile in a horse trailer and shipped out. Now this was kind of cool as it was warm and the smells were terrific, and best of all we just hung out in a puppy pile in the front of the trailer.

Well we rolled down the highway for a quite a while and then pulled into someplace called Joliet Illinois at something called a field trial. Now both my mom and dad were pretty familiar with these things, but they didn’t really brief me on them so I didn’t know what to expect. I saw dogs come and go from the trailer and all I can say is that it was cold when that door opened.

It didn’t take long to figure out that I wasn’t going to running in the field trail (after all I was only 8 weeks old for Pete’s sake), but this big hairy guy came and picked me up and took me away from my brothers and sisters. Worse yet, he had really cold hands. I guess he was going to be part of my new family.

After about ten stops to go potty and around eight hours of travel, we arrived at my new home in Minnesota.

There were three other older dogs here. There was Jessie, who was an almost thirteen year old liver and white female (although my humans called her brown dog). She was in charge and she took little time in letting me know this. Apparently she has dealt extensively with puppies and knew exactly how to keep me in line. A girl just can’t catch a break!

Charles was the oldest of the group at fourteen and a half and possibly the crabbiest. He’s usually quite nice to me, that is until I stick a paw in his eye or bite him on the rear-end, then he uses his teeth for evil and not good! He was also Jessie’s enforcer and he inserted himself when I was getting the better of Jessie. Those engagements ended very quickly and I would go back to playing with my toys.  He and I eventually came to an agreement; whatever Chuck said I listen to.

Sam was the youngest in the house when I arrived. She is a monster in size, but always loved to play bite-face with me. When I first arrived she was none to pleased to see me. Apparently she considered herself the “baby” of the family and I was going to get in the way of this. It took a couple of weeks for her to really warm up to me, but she then realized that we could play and play together and this was good. All in all she’s a pretty good egg.

My first trip to the farm came a few days after I arrived. I got to run with the big dogs for almost a half hour and then they took me over and put out a bird for me. I ran some more and caught my first whiff of that bird and I pointed!! It was something of a creepy feeling when my leg levitated into the air by itself, but my new people sure thought it was cool.

I’ve learned a lot in the years since my arrival.  When Jessie and Charles passed away I had to step up to being a leader in the house.  I’m pretty proud that I have trained Murphy to be a good household member and now I’m in charge of training Penny.

We still go to the farm a lot.  I love that place.  Running with the four wheeler, visiting the chickens (they are evil you know) and seeing all my hunting friends is awesome. 

Over the last couple of years I’ve started working on agility and obedience.  Now I have to say its really not that thrilling doing either of these, well not like hunting at least, but there is something in these events that there isn’t in the field.  Cheeseballs!  I love cheeseballs.  Training is way better with cheesballs.

Anyway, I got my CD with Mom and had a lot of fun doing it.  Now I’m starting to work on my CDX and they want me to retrieve.  We’ll see if I give in to that or now.  Stay tuned!

SeeYaBye!

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