Details:-
Name: Muffin.
Cross Type: Lurcher x Terrier.
Year Of Birth:1993.
Colour: Brindle and White.
Sex: Bitch.
Weight: 16.4kgs.
History:-
Muffin lives at a separate address to me, but I as I do all the walking, training and exercise, which means I see her every day, I have been granted an honorary half-share in her!!
Muffin is trained in obedience, and is exceptionally well-behaved; apart from the standard exercises, she waits for people to go through doors first (no matter how many people there are); if she's off the lead at night and sees any car headlights, she will sit down on the pavement until they have passed - and she even "wees" on command! If she comes into the house with muddy paws, Mum immediately produces a towel, and Muffin will obligingly lift each leg in turn to get her feet wiped. Not for nothing as she is the proud recipient of the Kennel Club Good Citizens Dog Scheme Bronze and Silver Awards!! (She hopes to pass the Gold test in July).
Muffin has also been competing at agility since she was 3. She loves it; even though she only stands 18" at the shoulder, she is now quite capable of easily clearing standard height (ie, 2'6") jumps and obstacles (although she gets a little tired if there are too many jumps!)
Her enthusiasm for bouncing over, through and along things is slowed down only by her handler, ie, me!!. Her greatest triumph to date is being awarded 16th (out of 285 entries!) in Starters Agility. She is included in the Kennel Club's Working Trials and Obedience Register under the name of "Pride of Nelger, Lady Muckworm", which suits her to a "T". The name originates from an amalgam of Mum's and my Christian names (Nellie and Geraldine), combined with what Mum shrieks at Muffin when the latter finds a puddle with nice oozy mud at the bottom, and slowly eases her undercarriage into it, ie, "Gettouta there, you muckworm!!!"
She has also won over 70 rosettes (to date) at dog shows - including many red ones!!! - and was a finalist in Scruffts (1998) and the Dog of the Year show (2000). She has also been judged Best In Show several times.
Muffin is very photogenic and has appeared in the pages of "Dogs Today" advertising low-calorie dog biscuits; several times in the "Readers Dogs" sections of the various dog magazines; in our local paper; and was short-listed for the Millenium Calendar put out by "Dogs Today".
She is also on the books of Animalations, run by animal trainer Anne Head, and Animal Ambassadors, run by Kay Weston. As a result of the latter association, she has starred in a 30-minute documentary to be shown on BBC, called "Animal Tales - The Dog's Tale", where she is the presenter, voiced-over by Alexei Sayle. Mum & I can't wait to see it broadcasted!!!
Muffin does a variety of tricks, carried out with great gusto, and often in the wrong order if the tidbit she is being offered is particularly interesting!! - these include giving a paw, rolling over, "high 5's" and "low 5's", saying her prayers, begging, speaking, singing, creeping across the floor on her stomach and I am teaching her to sneeze at the moment!!!! She can also open doors, which is a great help when one's hands are full - and loves giving me a kiss & cuddle, which is quite messy when her whiskers are full of mud (or worse)!!!
She adores going to the seaside (usually Bournemouth) and agitates until she can get on the beach, where she will dig a Muffin-sized hole in the sand (often perilously close to where Mum's chair is!), throw her ball into it and then settle down on top of that for a few minutes to cool herself down a bit, before digging her ball up again and asking us to throw it ad nauseam in the sea for her, followed a few hours later by a wet, sandy, snoring and very contented Muffin on the back seat of my car!!
Her idiosyncracies are numerous....from spending hours watching the occupants of my indoor aquarium; through pouncing gleefully on any spilt ice cubes and/or frozen peas which she proceeds to crunch very rapidly and very noisily; to sitting on people's laps facing them, and very slowly and deliberately bringing her icy-cold (must be all the frozen peas!!) shiny wet black nose to rest firmly but gently up against her victim's nose, before trying to outstare them (both parties are decidedly cross-eyed at this point!)
But her most amusing habit is as follows: Muffin is never without her ball (she is now on the 14th or 15th generation of her original one), and plagues the life out of everyone she meets by dropping it at their feet, hoping that they will throw it for her. The ball is her constant companion. However, when she does a poo, she marks the spot with the ball, and then comes back to us, grinning, as if to say "well, I've done it, now come and clear it up!" Obviously, in the summer months, we will have seen her in flagrante delecto, and will walk over to the offending item to bag it up, but before we can get there, Muffin always runs ahead to reclaim her ball. Even if we haven't marked the exact spot in our minds, obviously we can see where everything is, and there is no problem.
Unfortunately, this is not so in the winter! Often, the first we know of the dirty deed is that Muffin returns to us out of the gloom without her precious ball, and as soon as we head off in what we hope is the right direction, and she realises that we know she's done a poo, Muffin dashes off and retrieves her ball. We then have no way of telling where the poo is - especially if it's been raining when everything glistens!!! - and we often have to while away a large part of a winter's evening searching a large area of open ground with a torch. This doesn't phase Muffin in the slightest...she looks upon it as yet more opportunities for us to throw her ball for her!!!
It is a real priviledge to know Muffin, and I treasure the day she came into my life......
E-mail: Muffin's Owner.
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