The Spaniel Annals

Tonight I found out about the passing of a great obedience dog in the Gordon Setter world.  I never got to see her work, but heard much about her and her owner, Diane Bartlett, and watched their progress and successes over the years.  Tory earned an AKC UDX, a Canadian OTCH, and won several all-breed and specialty High in Trials.  I know how much her owner loved her and was so proud of her achievements.  The pain of losing a dog that you’ve worked so closely with and lived with for many years is absolutely excruciating.  My heart goes out to Diane tonight.   It was only just last week that, for many reasons, I was grieving over losing my Gordon girl, Vita, who passed in 2009.  In the middle of my grief, I was so grateful to look up and see the lively face of my current Gordon, Gael, happily chewing on a bone and so full of life.

I’m reminded by a friend that I never updated this blog about Reardon’s first track. I’ll go into more detail (maybe) on another night, but Reardon didn’t pass.  Lots of things came into play: he’d had a relapse of his auto-immune condition a few weeks before and we were having to adjust his prednizone; in the draw he got one of the swampy tracks, a tracking condition that he’s still struggling with; maybe it just wasn’t our day.  There’s an approximately 60% pass rate for the TD, and we landed in that 40%.  He did try very hard, and we actually got to the last corner before he just couldn’t figure out which way to go.  We’ll be trying again soon.  The end of the school quarter means an end to the mountain of papers for a few weeks, so we’ll have more time to practice….