Tess was born on 2nd May 1997 (she has the same birthday as David Beckham:-)) at the Mobella kennels in Southampton. Her mother is Mobella Just a Dream and her father is Mobella Tuckers Luck, who has sired many good puppies in agility, obedience and the showring. She stands at 18ins at the shoulder and is quite petite. She is black and white classically marked and very pretty.
I don't really think I knew what I was letting myself in for when I brought my very cute, little puppy home. I had wanted a border collie so that I could train it for dog sports but I hadn't anticipated how far one little dog would push me! She's naturally very herdy and also quite dominant and with me being only 10 when I got her and not very dominant it caused some problems. She would nip me all the time particularly during training sessions and when she got excited, she herded, chased shadows and snapped at cars and bridges but mainly me! She thought my dad was god so if he was around she wouldn't take any notice of what I told her to do. The training class I went to were not at all helpful and mainly just sneered at the fact a 10yr old had been allowed a collie puppy, I went every week but things didn't get better. I rarely left happy and quite often in tears! So I decided to leave, I had done my research before getting her and I realised I was making more progress with her at home rather than putting her in such a stressful situation every week. I'm making her sound awful and when I look back she probably wasn't that bad but at the time it was quite stressful! Well to cut a long story short, I put alot of work in and trained her myself. We went back to the christmas party at training and won a couple of classes beating some dogs in the top class so I think I proved them wrong!
Since then she has learnt loads of tricks and is very obedient, I can take her anywhere, put her in any situation and she is now very sweet and loving. At 18months we started flyball training, she picked it up incredibly quickly even though she wasn't very fast. As we started competing she got more confident and excited by the atmosphere so gradually got faster. She peaked at around the 4.8secs mark, nothing to set the world on fire but then I could probably count the number of times she's ran out on one hand (in nearly 10yrs) so atleast she's realiable and she loves it! She's now 11 and still runs in our bottom team, she can only manage low jumps now but her box is still really good and she's always sound the day after racing so I still think she's fit enough to be running even if it's not every race of the day. This however will be her last season as I want her to have a long happy retirement so I'm going to enjoy any racing we still have left together. She has her Flyball dog GOLD award for 15,000points and currently has about 18,700 points but sadly I don't think she'll reach the next award.
When she was younger I also taught her agility in my back garden with equipment I made my dad make, she picked up everything really well and probably would have been an excellent agility dog. We took part in a couple of cleverdogs competitions which we had a lot of fun in but weren't quite quick enough to win. When I got Asher I took her back to obedience classes (different club) as she hated being left at home, she fitted straight back in to it and really enjoys it. Her heelwork is gradually getting better as she used to work quite forward, she has a lovely recall and retrieve and her stays are completely solid. I thought about entering obedience competitions with her but outside she gets her madam head on and will NOT work!! All she wants to do when you're on grass is herd!
Overall she is a little madam who is too clever for her own good but she is also my best friend who's always been there with me whilst I've been growing up. She's taught me alot and introduced me to the wonderful world of flyball, she's my princess and I love her more than words can tell.
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