15 years ago we made the decision to breed one of our girls. She was an amazing sleddog and we knew we wanted to carry on her line. We had a couple of dogs in our kennel we thought were a good match but chose a dog in another kennel. They tried. They really did. But it wasn’t happening, so we brought Chisel home and decided we would give it one more try with one of our males.
Dakota and Chisel had run together, played together, but on that evening she took one look at him and said “ah, no, I don’t think so.”
So we pulled in Chinook, the other male we thought was a good match. Chisel didn’t seem all that interested and we figured we had missed the opportunity. Chisel and Chinook ran around for a while and we decided to end the event. But Chinook had different ideas, he was on her in a flash. Wham, bam, thank you mam.
As we sat there waiting for the event to be over, it hit us… OMG, what were we thinking? What have we done? We had just paired the puppy from hell, with the dog that never stands still. And 64 days later Thelma and Louise were born.
As puppies Thelma and Louise couldn’t have been more different. Louise looked like her mom and had all of her parents less than best personality traits, which means she had out of control energy and she was stubborn. Thelma on the other hand, was built like her father and picked up all the best personality qualities, she was calm and sweet and easy to handle. And they were inseparable.
Both Thelma and Louise ran on my team and retired when we retired out of the sport. And as they aged they became more alike. Louise got sweeter and Thelma became more high energy. A couple months ago, at 14.5 years old we said goodbye to Louise. At the time we were worried about how Thelma would handle this as they had always been together. As for being bothered by it, no, she is now running her younger brother over.
Thelma has become much like her mother in that she is always on the move. When we let her in the house she is busy checking everything out and never stops… no, seriously, she never stops. The only way she is calm in the house is in her crate, which she loves. Kind of strange for a dog who seemed to have claustrophobia when she was younger, but she gets her late in life love of a crate from her father. And did I mention, she is still incredibly strong?
Thelma does have a weird quirk. She likes the sound of her voice bouncing back at her. Yeah, it’s weird. She will go into her dog house and face the back corner and bark. She has also dug a hole under the cement which she sticks her head in and barks and barks and barks. This would just be funny except that the hole is now so big that she can fit her whole body into it and even her tail isn’t visible.
Last night I had to go out and call into the hole to get her to back out of the it. Yeah, guess what’s on my agenda today. Filling and blocking the hole. Goofy old lady.