Dogs of my High Pack: Buffy, Part One

Buffy left us in 2012 due to her heart.  She was 12 and a half, not old enough for me to be ready to say goodbye and certainly not as old as we thought she'd go. She was a superb physical athlete and up to her last days still looked amazing.

Buff came to us as a nine week old pup, flying from the Eastern State s of Australia  all on her little lonesome.  We already owned Tam, who was also a GWP, and we wanted another and no-one here was breeding them.

It was Easter, and I remember standing by the big windows in the airport totally frazzled up inside with waiting for this precious parcel, and hearing a grumpy old British couple behind us.  They were waiting for plane after a holiday here in WA. "What's with this Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday thing they have here?" one of them was saying. "Can't they come up with more interesting names for holidays than that?"

I still smile to think of them, because they were so jaded, and I was so very excited. That's airports for you, I guess.

Anyway, finally there was her crate, and as I bobbed down to ground level and tremulously opened the door, I called, "Buffy?" and out shot this little spotted bundle into my arms.  She was my darling from that moment forth.

 Hmm,  I note here that my dress sense hasn't improved in a decade.  :)

From her first day, Buffy was a snuggler. She slept against my chest under the blankets, and as she grew she slowly moved down the bed until she slept at my feet, still under the blankets.  She slept there her whole life, summer and winter. 

She didn't have a lot of furnishings for a GWP pup, in fact for a long time we joked that they'd sent us a German Shorthair instead of a Wirehair.  Her blaze was crooked and she had the world's longest nose, and only a mother could have loved her when she was growing up.  That mother was me.  :)

As she got older, her beautiful liver ticking came into its own, and those long ears were the softest, silkiest things you ever felt.

The teen months were no less awkward. 

Like all Pointer pups, she was a handful, but not a big chewer or digger, just full of life and mischief. At about four months she began to show signs of being a bit guardy, so we took advice from experienced positive dog trainers and worked hard to socialise her well.  This worked mostly, though we always had to watch her carefully when new people visited, and at vets it was Andyroo and I who always had to manage her while the vet worked.  With us and anyone in her extended family, she never even growled once in her life, but she saw herself as the protector of the household, no doubt about it.  I love this pic of her keeping an eye on the world while I draw down at the beach.  Don't ask me what was going on with my hair at this point in my life! 

Joie de vivre was what she was all about.  She loved to run.  Loved, loved to run, and she was so fast and graceful.

Toys were her other delight. 

And she did eventually grow a respectable Wirehair beard!

This got long, as I should have known it would, so I'll make it Part One and continue Buffy's story on another post another day. Part Two is here. 

If you read this far, thanks!  I love to read about other people's dogs in detail, so I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I would have!