Jessie
is an American Staffordshire Terrier aged 23 months
old.
We came to know about Jessie in February
2010 where she was advertised on a forum looking for
someone to give her a home. My friend Donna phoned me
and we looked at the picture and story and realised
that it was a dog that she had bred. We also found out
that she had been advertised in January 2010 “free
to good home” in the previous owners local paper
(they had not even contacted the breeder about re-homing
her). Donna and myself found out that Jessie had been
re-homed to someone on the forum and spent a couple
of days tracking her down.
My husband Darren and I discussed the
situation and phoned Donna to let her know that we would
temporarily take Jessie in while she was assessed and
hopefully re-home her with a person who we thought would
be a good carer for Jessie. The home fell through and
we still held on to Jessie re-assessing her.
She
had a few bad habits like not walking on a lead due
to what we found out later was because she was walked
with a harness which led to her pulling. She did not
know any manners and was not even house-trained even
though the previous owners said she lived inside. As
time went on we eventually decided to keep Jessie ourselves
and our other dog Dezzy just loves her to bits. We have
only had Jessie for four months and I think she has
learnt so much in that short time. We have had Dezzy
for twelve months and he is our very first dog ever.
We have started at obedience with Jessie where she
still has some issues like pulling and dropping and
understanding the difference between sit and stand.
I believe she will get the hang of things and will be
a good little dog for agility or even maybe flyball
as she is so quick. At the moment Jessie is learning
with my daughter Tamika in the children’s class,
whilst my son Jordan just loves to tear around the backyard
with Jessie and play tug-o-war.
At
the moment I am in Group 3 with Dezzy and will hopefully
one day get to a stage where I can trial with him. Both
of our dogs love the kids to bits. Dezzy sleeps on my
son’s bed at night and even detects when my son
is having fits in his sleep and Jessie gets to sleep
on my daughter’s bed. I think they are spoilt
rotten. We love obedience and love when Sunday morning
rolls around so we get to spend some quality time with
our dogs and learn so much.
We love our dogs and want to say a big thank you to
the Ballarat Dog Obedience Club for making us so welcome
and helping us with any issues we may have, it is great
to know that you have people who will help you no matter
what the problem is.
- Lisa
oooOOOooo
