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| Bibbi, a couple of days after she moved in with me. |
Bibbi (her "real" name is Candy Mädchens Quill) has been my dog since May 1999. Her previous owners had intended to use her for breeding, but since her elbows are not as good as they should be, she shouldn't be used for breeding. They bought another rottie bitch, this one with good elbows, and suddenly started to feel that they did not give Bibbi the attention she needed. By common friends they were told that I wanted a dog and after we met a couple of times it was decided that Bibbi should move in with me and Akilles (my GSD).
I haven't done much work with Bibbi, she has mostly lived as a nice companion. I have tried tracking, but this she found very difficult, she has had som training in searching before, but not tracking. Maybe she is just not interested in tracking. Since her elbows are not quite okay I will keep on trying to get her to be interested since it would be a good exercise without straining her legs too much. Obedience is NOT her thing, unless you feed her all the time... then she will do whatever you ask!
I have started to learn her to fetch things, and we have been... well... what should I say, moderately successfull. Some times she will bring me the object and hand it over to me nice and easy, other times she brings it almost all the way, but a couple of meters in front of me she drops it. Trading objet against treats works very well, since eating is one of her favourite things in life. Another way of rewarding here for good work is to have a tugging contest, she just loves it when she pulls one end of a rope and I the other. Rotties can have too much fighting spirit for this kind of fun, but in her case there is no problem at all, you just tell her to stop and she will stop immediately. Otherwise I wouldn't have used this form of play as a reward.
In the summer of 2001 Bibbi moved to live with my friend Anneli in Helsingborg. Anneli took care of Bibbi for a couple of weeks when Isse was sick, and it was clear that they really belong together. Bibbi was quite a different dog when she was with Anneli and her dogs. So when Anneli asked if she could adopt Bibbi, we had to think it over for a while, but then we said OK, since we believe that the most important thing was that Bibbi was happy. We liked her, but we didn't connect like Anneli and Bibbi did, so there wasn't much to say about that.
May 27, 2002. Today we got a sad message. Bibbi is not alive anymore. She was suffering from lung cancer, a dermal condition and her elbows were giving her problems. The vet also believed she had rheumatism. So there wasn't really much to do. Sad though; she wasn't even 7 years old.
More pictures can be found here in the Gallery.
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