I first met Heather when she was a week old.  Still blind and deaf, she nonetheless tried to rule the litter, squeaking imperiously when another pup nosed at "her" place at Mom Miss Molly Sartin's dinner table.  She was the biggest puppy in the litter, too!  I thought she was elegant even as a baby.  She was destined to be Deb's best friend, though, so I just admired her in passing.

I next met Heather just before her first show haircut.  She was nearly 6 months old, and had been entered in some shows a week or so hence.  Deb, who ran a very successful grooming salon, had been swamped with work and hadn't got around to setting her pattern.  I (the visiting groomer) volunteered to set her pattern.  So Heather and I got acquainted as I whacked off bushels of dense, inky black puppy coat.  She seemed to like me -- I sure liked her!  She wiggled and bounced, bopped me with her paws, and finally, with a deep sigh, just stood there as I uncovered this shaggy young bitch's absolutely stunning body.  Even at six months, she had a perfectly level topline and a lovely front and rear.  She combined good spring of rib with wide forechest.  We were so taken with the picture she presented that we had to take a break from work to gait her in the back yard.

What a picture!  She flew along with head and tail held high, commanding the ground she floated over.  Her stride was so big that Deb soon ran out of breath trying to keep up with her.  She gasped out that this standard poodle could outrun many German Shepherds!  It was right about then, however, that we noticed her one failing.  From the front and above, her face was very pretty.  Eyes could be better, but overall it looked good.  From the side, however, it was apparent that Nature had not blessed this wonderful girl with the best looks in the world.  To say she was lacking in chin was an understatement!  I remarked to Deb then, though, that if she ever wanted to give Heather up, I wanted first dibs on her.  Her combination of brains and attitude and sound, beautiful movement had long since won me over!  Deb just laughed at me, because she and Heather were already best buddies.

We decided to give the shows our best shot anyway.  Deb chose her judges, preferring those who understood that even a poodle runs on its feet, not on its head.  She was consistently in the ribbons.

When Heather's first birthday came around, I was again in town.  She and I played in the park next to the dog show that morning before Deb informed me that she was pulling her from the day's show because she should now be shown in adult trim; Heather was a year old.   So I put her in her first adult trim -- three hours before a show!  Hair flew like rain as I frantically scissored a Continental into what had become a very full puppy trim, while Deb ran back and forth showing other dogs in her retinue.  Fifteen minutes before showtime, I took her off the table and let her run.  With only minutes to spare, Deb gaited her and I saw that she had square hip poms!

There was no time to fix them, so in she went with funny-looking poms.  At ringside, we worried over her, because she had her tail down.  Actually, she acted like she had been recently beaten, which we of course knew was not true.  It was so bad that we debated pulling her, but decided to take her in.  As soon as she entered the ring, she looked at Deb, put her head and tail up, and strutted around the ring.  Amazingly, she took her class, and then Breed!

Our joy was short-lived, though, because she acted the same way at every subsequent show.  It was painfully obvious that she did not like dog shows!  She knew how to show, but only did it because Deb asked it of her.  We talked long-distance about it for a couple of months, but eventually, with nine points accumulated, Deb made the difficult decision to retire her.

Around this time, Deb was also enduring some challenges in her life.  One evening, she called me.  She asked me if I would be willing to take Heather.  I was floored, but understood her reasoning.  She still had Heather's mother, Molly, who was very close to her.  In some ways, the younger bitch, though fond of her, just reminded her too much of how the first Heather had died.  And taking care of a family, a business and numerous coated dogs was just too much for Deb at this time.  I told her right up front that I was thrilled to have her, that I respected the difficult decision she had come to, and would try not to gloat too much over my good fortune!  Good thing we are such good friends or she might have taken it the wrong way . . .

I drove to meet them at a show convinced that I was hallucinating, that I would get there and it would have been a joke, or some other horrible thing would prevent me from arriving.  When I got there, Deb and I talked it over some more before I actually took Heather's lead for the first time as her owner.  Deb's eyes were suspiciously pink, but she insisted that Heather was the dog for me.  I invited Heather into my van.  When she jumped in, she looked around, then stretched out in the back seat and yawned at us as if to tell us that this was her new place, and she thoroughly approved.

I kept Deb up to date on the settling-in process.  In a matter of weeks, Heather accepted me as the central figure in her new life.  I showed her once or twice, but soon decided that a showdog's life was not was Heather was all about.  With Deb's permission, I cut her down.  As the clippers moved over her body, she stood quite still.  When I was done, and set her on the ground, she stood for a moment, actually looking back along her own ribs.  She shook herself violently.  A look of wonder widened her eyes, then she leapt from a standing start over five feet straight up.  She came down wiggling and squealing and tore off the length of the house, racing back and forth like a crazy dog.  Did she know her haircut meant no more showing?

We never have had a "master/dog" relationship; Heather is my partner, my buddy.  She guarded me and my children from real and imagined harm even though she never cared for small children or puppies.  Once, she even roared into action when a friend of mine was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant with no care for her own safety.  She is fearless, pragmatic -- and very, very happy.  She was bred once, but was a lousy mother (she really doesn't like puppies!), so was spayed.  She rules the other dogs with calm competence and a minimum of fuss.  She has never to my knowledge fought with any of the dogs -- a look has always been sufficient to command obedience.

Late in her life, we began hiking the La Bajada or Caja Del Rio Plateau near Santa Fe.  My friend Marilynn and I take our dogs up there to stretch their legs over miles of rolling terrain that reminds us of the plains of Africa in the dry time.  Heather and Marilynn's black shepherd mix, Lucky, learned to team up and hunt rabbits and other game.  Because neither one of them has a sniffer to speak of, they have only caught one rabbit, which went down Lucky's throat nearly whole.  But they enjoy the hunt and the fresh air.  It's quite a sight to see those two racing full out over the gramma grass in pursuit of some animal they will never catch.  Heather and Lucky are both beginning to show their age, but they still give it their best run!

Recently, we added Pilar, a cream Standard Poodle, to the pack.  She is small and refined, but has a certain familiar attitude about her.  Heather, well-known for her aversion to puppies, actually encourages this upstart to play with her.  She allows Pilar to sleep next to her, and even to eat from her bowl.  It looks from here as if she is training the next Boss Bitch to follow in her footsteps -- but not too close!

UPDATE:
Heather,  Grand Old Lady of my 90's pack, died of natural causes in June 2000.  She ceased eating five days before her death, and ceased drinking two days before.  I looked into her eyes and saw she was done here, but was stuck in this creaky old body which no longer served her purposes.  She asked me to set her free to roam the Rainbow Bridge with Barbi, Dusty and all my beloved dogs who had gone before her.  I did.
 

1995   Dusty
"Accent's Queen of Hearts"  ~ gone to the Rainbow Bridge, 1995.

After an uneventful pregnancy, Heather gave reluctant birth to 5 pups.  One was stillborn, one was very weak and one was deformed.  I have never had to put a pup down before; it was a hard thing to do, but what could one do with a standard poodle with a huge flat paddle with toes scattered along its periphery?

The three survivors prospered in spite of Heather's marked disinterest in them.  She may be a terrific dog, but she was a lousy mother!  I had to give her down-stays for her to nurse the pups for the first week, till her puny maternal interest kicked in.  We took turns holding the babies between feedings, just laying them inside our shirts to soak up body heat and the smell of humans.  My partner in particular kept picking the same pup to cuddle -- a very pretty little black girl.  When the pups were three weeks old, the little dog relieved herself all over her shirt; instead of being angry, she just cleaned herself and the pup, remarking that now she was "marked for life."   Indeed . . .

"Dusty," as this little girl came to be known, never wavered in her devotion to my partner.  Her first unsteady baby steps were directed to her; her first blue-eyed glassy stare studied her; and her first infant yips were to attract her to the whelping pen.  The other two pups were terrified when first confronted with things like linoleum floors and vacuum cleaners, but not Dusty: she just scrabbled over to her Mom -- after first attacking the vacuum!  My partner had not had a dog since she had been a lonely child in the mountains of northern New Mexico.  She grew to love this dog as fiercely as Dusty loved her.

Dusty was an easy dog to housebreak at first, but she kept having urinary "accidents" every so often.  They were always by the door, so we knew she was trying to get out; we redoubled our efforts to watch when she needed to go out.  When she was six months old, all legs and show trim, she deckled the edges of the car's seatbelts with her new teeth.  My partner was torn between exasperation that her dog wasn't perfect from the moment of birth and fond admiration of her decorating abilities.  *I* was amazed at my normally strict partner's loss of decorum!

One day, the two of them went over to the local corner store to pick up some sodas and ice.  When they returned, my partner had a story she will never forget.  It seems that there was some drunken man in front of the store, soliciting passersby to buy some watches he had.  On the way in, my partner ignored him, but when she returned to the car burdened with her purchases she couldn't get in fast enough to avoid him.  As she sat down, he leaned over the door, exhaling beery fumes and belligerence in her face.  "I told you to buy a watch!" he yelled at her.  Suddenly, an inky blot shoved past my partner as she fought to close the door -- a snarling, inky blot with glaring eyes and a full set of shiny white teeth.  My partner said she thought she heard Dusty, who was accustomed to having people admire her in the car, stop thumping her tail against the seat, and thought she heard a puzzled little "Grrrr?"  The next thing she knew, Dusty was telling the drunk in no uncertain terms that he needed to back off!  The man almost fell over in his haste to get away from the car; he kept mumbling, "Oh, sorry ma'am!  Didn't mean to bother you, ma'am!  No harm intended, ma'am!" as she shut the door and drove away.  She says she didn't start shaking till she was almost home, but Dusty sat in the passenger seat with a new stern look on her face as she carefully scrutinized all pedestrians on the road.

Dusty loved kids and adored getting attention from tourists on the Santa Fe Plaza, but she always protected her Mom.  She never showed the wild exuberance of a typical Standard Poodle puppy, preferring to stay with my partner over bouncing all over the mesa with the rest of our dogs.  She had a steady calm look to her that we took at first to be the mark of a remarkably mature young dog, devoted to an owner who showered her with affection.

We began noticing she was not putting on weight at about 15 months.  At first, knowing the lines she came from, we just thought it was a prolonged adolescence.  But her appetite gradually waned too.  We took her in for a check up, but the vet initially thought she was just thin and healthy, and would eventually put on the desired weight.  By the time she was nearly two, we decided not to breed her, so scheduled her to be spayed.  Her blood work showed a few slightly high normals, but nothing that would interfere with her surgery, which went smoothly.

However, the surgery was the stressor that kicked her illness into full swing.  Concerned at the continued lack of appetite and the bloodwork, the vet took a little extra time to check her kidneys manually during the surgery.  She alerted us to her concern that Dusty's kidneys seemed to be a little small for a dog her age.  Dusty took a nearly two weeks to recover from the spay, losing weight in spite of an increasing thirst.  A month later, we returned to the vet for more bloodwork.  This time there was no doubt: she had juvenile renal disease.

At first, we thought we could manage it with diet and medication, but our hopes were dashed in a matter of weeks when she began again losing weight.  Her thirst was prodigious; by now we had installed a doggie door, so she could go out anytime to relieve herself.  She, who had always been thin began to waste away to a skeleton.  We tried handfeeding her, but she couldn't hold much food at one time.  Her eyes continued clear and steady, her love for her owner shining from her heart.

Eventually, we realized we were losing her.  She weakened to the point that getting out the dog door was almost too much for her.  One time, she didn't make it out in time and urinated next to the door, hanging her head in embarrassment at her inadequacy.  Her weight dropped steadily to only 28 lbs and she staggered when she walked.  Our vet told us the end was near, but that she was in no pain.  One bright August day, we knew the time had come.  She looked at her mistress with eyes newly dulled and asked to be set free.  She wanted to stay with her, but there was no more she could do, and she was very weak and tired.  With many tears and heavy hearts, we did the last thing we could for her.
 
 

Barbary Lady   ~ gone to the Rainbow Bridge, 1990. 1983

Barb was my first standard poodle.  She was born in October 1977, in Georgia, to a very nice dog owned by a very nice lady who had no idea how to breed dogs.  She assured me that the sire was a champion when he was not.  She said her dog came from good lines, but they all turned out to be pet lines for some generations back.  But what did I know?  I was the proud owner of several mixed breeds, but I wanted to get a purebred dog.  I had dogs that shed like crazy, so was attracted to the idea of a dog that didn't shed.  I figured we would just cut her hair off every so often and not mess around with that stupid "poodle cut."  My then-husband insisted that we get a good hunting dog, but I wanted something different.  I researched breeds the only way I knew to then: by reading the AKC Kennel Club book in the library.  It said that poodles used to be used to retrieve, so that got by my husband, who knew even less than I did.  I suspected she might not be a very good retriever because poodles were in Non-Sporting, but I didn't mention it to him!  I fell in love with the cute fat little puppies and picked the biggest female because she seemed to have such an attitude about everything.

That attitude didn't get her too far once the romance wore off.  She was impossible to housetrain:  if we corrected her for soiling the carpet, she would try the couch, then the chair, then the bed, then the linoleum.  At the time, I didn't see anything funny about it at all!  Finally, we tied her outside during the day to keep her from messing in the house, but the neighbors complained that she barked all the time.  In desperation, we asked our vet, who suggested a crate.  I thought it was cruel, but needed to try something that would work.  Lo and behold, it did.  She didn't mind the crate at all, and magically, it seemed to us, she finally housebroke.

Another thing that became immediately obvious was that cutting her hair off every so often was not going to work.  One thing her sire gave her was the gene for hair growth!  I checked around for groomers, but was horrified at how often  she would have to go and how much it would cost.  I decided to invest in some nice Sears pet grooming clippers and learn how to do it myself.  How hard could shaving her hair off every month or two be?

Very hard!  My first attempts with those awful clippers narrowly missed outright butchery.  I nicked her constantly and she looked ugly!  Asking around, I found out that most groomers used Oster clippers.  They were hideously expensive for my budget, but only a couple of months of groomer trims would pay for them, so I bought an Oster with a #10,  a brand new 7F blade in addition to a slicker, a pair of dog grooming scissors and a good comb.  I also bought a Resco nail clipper, some QuikStop, and some ear powder to pull the burgeoning hair from her ears, as the vet assured me that she would have horrible ear infections if I didn't do this.  By the time Barb was a year old, I could turn out a neat, if not showy, short trim with a little cap of a topknot and a small tail pom.  Some people may have thought her legs were sort of "highwater" and maybe the edges weren't very straight, but she looked good enough for a hunting dog.

Fortunately, my husband's idea of hunting with dogs was more theoretical than actual.  He mostly hunted deer, which couldn't be hunted with dogs in Georgia then.  The few times Barb went out in the woods for rabbit, it was obvious she had no nose, but she was certainly willing to be out there if we were there too.  I told him she needed to go to a trainer if he wanted her to hunt, just like the Labs did.  We didn't have the money to send her out, so he never hunted with a poodle.  By this time, though we were used to her, and he didn't fuss too much over having a non-hunting dog in the house.

She also redeemed herself by becoming the guardian and protector of our two young daughters.  I was frightened when I first found my eldest sleeping in the crate with Barb, but the dog just looked at me as if to say, "Hey, I know what I'm doing -- she's just fine here," as she rested her muzzle across the sleeping child.  I made sure the crate stayed very clean after that!  Neighborhood boys who might have teased my daughters never bothered with them after being met by Barb standing between the girls and the bullies.
 

The Pharaoh Hatshepsut
Wild Woman of Texas!

Story and pic to be posted when I get around to it!
 

Accent's Leather and Lace
The only real canine Royalty I've ever had the fortune to be associated with . . .

Story and pic to be posted when I get around to it!