Bigi

 

Fin CH. Swe CH. Durante Bigotto AD JD AAD 

(22.10.2006 - 1.03.2014; 7 years + 4 months)

  

People often write in their blogs that their "heart dog" was that fabulous dog that was easy to live with and train, and did everything perfectly. Nobody seems to mention what happens when such a dog is somewhere on the far side of perfect. Perhaps someone reading this will understand that this was the sort of heart dog I had in Bigi, and I am very grateful that we crossed paths. Bigi was for me a life-changing dog, even if in the end things did not quite go as we would have liked. Bigi - loyal friend, challenging dog, successful confirmation show dog, agility trier (slow but reliable!), class 4 biter, sufferer of fairly severe separation anxiety and eventual victim of a never clearly diagnosed degenerative illness.

 

I first became involved in dog sports in the early 1990s. I took my parent's rescue Rottie to the local club for some training. Then I got a GDS and we completed an obedience Companion Dog title, before I decided that the training methods in use back then were not conducive with fun for the dog, or even with things remotely pleasant. I had become quite interested in training, but clearly there had to be a better way. It would be some time before I found that way.

 

Time passed and finally in 2006 I decided that I had had enough of life without a dog. I was living in a 48 m2 apartment at the time, so I decided to research what mini dog-shaped dog I could get. Fate led to deciding that a Schipperke was a good idea, and so I awaited THE puppy. Finally one presented itself:

It was rapidly apparent that this was not exactly a normal dog. Partly this was the Schipperke factor, but partly it was something else - a hyper dog that really did not much care for touch or toys. I very rapidly learnt that this is the "bird-flippin" breed of the dog world, and the training methods I knew were not going to work. Bigi in 2007, age 5 months:

I persevered for about a year, during which 'my precious" calmed down, but also started to show some fairly severe resource guarding behaviour. Job 1: learn how to deal with this, and we did, not that it ever disappeared completely but manners were learnt. Fortunately about this time I finally crossed paths with "clicker training" and VOILA!, life reformed forever.

A few of Bigi's favourite things:

THIS was what we needed, and we became hooked. Our first efforts were in trick training, and finally dog and woman developed the sort of bond we had been searching for. Bigi was transformed from a resister to an eager dog. He never really became a confident dog, but he became confident with certain things. Bigi and I in 2009:

 

 

Our first venture into the dog sport world was showing. After nervous start, Bigi excelled! He was after all a handsome man. This was a fun hobby and we got to travel around the countryside, and see and do things we might not have without this excuse.

Schipperke Club of Finland Specialty Show 2009

 

 

About the same time we discovered agility - now we were really hooked (well, I was at least)! The odds were, however very much against us. Our training regime was: travel 154 km round trip twice a week, once for agility and once for obedience class, and then later travel 215 km round trip once a week to train in an indoor agility hall. Easier training options people have had. I really had no choice if I wanted to do this. Bigi was a dog that needed A LOT of work to be even half-ready. It took two years just to get him to do anything else but sniff the ground. Patience - I had always known he was not normal.

 

I still remember this day - back to back wins with clean runs. It was only a practice competition but man had a lot of work gone by before we got to this stage:

 

Through dealing with this dog this I learnt volumes about dogs and their mental states - stress, motivation. I had to do about 4 years work in these areas, and then we could think about equipment once we had the team together. In the end, we got there. Bigi was never destined to become a fast dog, but he did become very very reliable, running clear in more than 70% of his runs, unfortunately more often than not with time penalties (keep in mind that this was Europe where the minimum pass speed is 3.5 m/s and usually much higher).

Not long after we finally got our stuff together, Bigi suffered a bad dog attack. He was shaken by the back and injured. The mental injury turned out to be far worse than the physical. He withdrew from people who he had loved prior, and slowly but surely morphed into an aggressive dog. I was his prime resource to guard.

 

About this time we moved to Australia. Bigi competed for a short time only (a few months) but still managed to achieve all his basic Aussie agility titles. He was then diagnosed (eventually and after some very large bills) with a severe immuno-arthritic reaction to an Anaplasma sp. infection, a tick-borne disease that most dogs never even know they have.

 

This was the beginning of a downward spiral. It seemed that nobody could really help us. He was put on prednisolone medication which caused him severe bloat. Things were never good after that, but there were good and bad days. Then in late 2013 he experienced a mysterious rear-end paralysis. He had every test under the sun but no cause was found. He recovered the use of his rear legs, but seemed to no longer cope with anything (hot days, stress, routine changes).

 

It was not nice to watch your friend suffer, which he did for over a year. I tried my best to help him but it led to nothing. In the end things got to be too much and it was time to say goodbye.

THANK YOU, LITTLE FRIEND, FOR EVERYTHING