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DOB: 4/20/01 Mica is a wonderful, fun, intense dog. She completed her Canadian championship in 7 shows with 7 BOB's and two group placements before age 2. She finished her US championship in 4 weekends with 4 majors. Mica was the #13 Belgian Shepherd Dog in Canada for 2003 (7 shows). In 2005, she received an invitation to the Eukanuba National Championship for being in the AKC Top 25. Mica is an incredible dog. She was originally sold as a top conformation, obedience and agility prospect. Her owners raved about her stable temperament, lack of noise sensitivity, beauty, trainability, etc. etc. They started doing schutzhund with her. Watching tapes of the training sessions, it was pretty clear that Mica didn't understand this was a game. After attending an Ivan Balabanov seminar, the light bulb went off and she realized it was game and she didn't have to go into defense mode. Mica's owners changed direction and decided to focus on schutzhund instead of the activities she was intended to do. Mica was not going to be a world class schutzhund dog. At this point I started getting messages that she was afraid of thunder, fear of plastic bags, not affectionate, unfriendly to strangers, etc. etc. I happily took Mica back. Mica was a happy dog when she came, but obviously bewildered and heartbroken about not being with her family. She is a dog that will do anything you ask of her as a partner. She thrives on a working relationship. Mica has never met a person she didn't love since being with me and is extremely affectionate. She is definitely not a cuddler. We easily overcame the plastic bag phobia by not allowing her any access to plastic bags. She had been forced to eat her dinner in a plastic bag at her previous home to desensitize her. We simply made plastic bags the most coveted thing in the house and wouldn't allow Mica to sniff or play with them. The other dogs would go nuts at the chance to look in the bag or play tug with a twisted one, pretty soon Mica was demanding to get in on the game.
We worked through the thunderstorm and fireworks fear. She had been caught outside in a thunderstorm. Hanging out with my other dogs that showed no reactions seemed to work with Mica once she had settled in to the household routine. It took several years to get Mica to willingly have her belly rubbed. I am assuming she was alpha rolled (or forced to submit to training) in her previous life. Here, all of the dogs realize that belly rubs do not correspond to shows of dominance. They correspond to pleasure. Mica is a once in a lifetime dog. My son and I have so much fun asking Mica to do something completely new and watch her reason out what we have asked her. She will eliminate all of the things she knows and start working through the variables. I hope to have time this winter to work on her TDX and VST. Mica's 460 yard TD track was RAN in 5 minutes on 2/26/06. This included a water stop for her (mostly for me to catch my breath). |
One of my most memorable
moments with Mica was asking her to track a lost elderly Tervuren in
late 2006. We drove around the last known sighting and
several neighborhoods past that. Around 11:00 a woman called and had
sighted the dog the previous evening. I had brought Mica with me in case
we had a fresh sighting. The dog's owner wanted to know if Mica
could possibly track from that location on a track that old. She has
only tracked once on asphalt for a short distance (other than tracking
to our set-up locations at dog shows from the van). Mica was spayed in April 2008 due to cystic ovaries and an atypical pyometra. We are now starting private lessons and possibly an obedience career. |
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