October 14, 2008 Brittany or Lassie?

When you have children, everything changes. When my son was two, and I was pregnant with my second son, I found myself looking for a kid friendly dog. I had gotten in touch with a sheltie rescue that had come to the house to interview us, but at that time, they didn’t have a dog that fit our particular needs. I was a busy mom who ran a grooming salon and had one small child and another one on the way. I didn’t need a puppy. I preferred a dog with more “experience”. I remembered a collie breeder Estella Thomas from Spice Rack Collies near my old hometown and decided to give her a call. I told Estella my situation and asked her if collies would be a good match for small children. “I think I have just the girl for you,” she said, “if you don’t mind an older female”.
“That’s EXACTLY what I had in mind!” I said and off we went to meet her. Brittany was a beautiful 6 year old, tri-factored sable collie that was calm and laid back and oh so loving. She took to us instantly and she immediately became part of our family. My son would walk around with the cereal box and learned sharing, one for me, one for you. She was our constant companion.
One day while I was out in my salon grooming and Drew was napping, I saw Brittany jumping up in the windows outside the salon on my property. She was frantically barking, but I could barely hear her due to the noise of the blow dryers and clippers. I shut off the dryers and noise so I could check on her, and then I hear the baby monitor. I heard Drew crying, he was awake and she was coming to tell me!
She took her babysitting duties very seriously. When we were moving from the farm to a house in town, we were selling all of our horses and equipment and a friend stopped by to check out what was for sale. She left her sleeping infant in her van with the car running. Nobody could hear him, but Brittany did. She began barking and pawing at the van door. I hurried to get her away from the van before she scratched the paint, and sure enough, the baby was crying!
After the move and birth of my son, Lane, Brittany stood watch over the little guy as he lay sleeping on the floor. She literally stood over him, straddling his body, and as babies will do, he reached up and pulled on her long flowing collie hair, on her sensitive stomach! Before I could get to him, I saw her wince yet she still stood there as if to say, “It’s ok, he’s just a baby, I can take it”. She wouldn’t dream of biting a child, no matter what the torture! I kept her hair shorter after that so it wouldn’t be so tempting to grab.
She lay on the floor beside the kids while they napped, once, Lane managed to toddle to the dog door and fall backwards out of it! Lucky for him Brittany had just gone outside, and she was there licking his head while he cried. She knew how to make it all better.
She would stand between the kids and a strange dog if she had bad vibes about them. She stood between dogs that I had to groom that had aggressive tendencies and me too. She didn’t have an aggressive bone in her body, yet she stood there as if to say, “You’re going to have to go through me first”. She always made her point in the most well-mannered and subtle way.
We adopted Katy a standard poodle who was about Brittany’s age all the way from Texas. We rolled in the driveway about 2am and being a groomer and excited from the trip I decided to give Katy a haircut and bath right away. I trimmed up her hair before I decided to bathe her, and while bathing her I saw Brittany walk over the pile of black curls on the floor and pee all over it! I was shocked! Brittany NEVER did that! She never showed any type of dominance to the hundreds of dogs that had strolled through my door before. Other than the time of day, how did she know this dog was going to stay and she was telling her in dog speak, I was here first this place is mine, and now you are mine too.
I cleaned up the mess while the two dogs got to know each other. There were never any lifted lips, growls or any differences of opinion between them. They would each patiently wait for the other one to eat, and then they would eat. They shared everything.
One day it was storming and the tornado sirens went off. My husband is a firefighter and his radio was confirming sightings of a tornado coming our way. He had to run and help the fire department during the storm so I put the kids into the basement and grabbed the dogs; I had to force them to walk down the stairs because they had never seen stairs before, so I pulled the two 60lb.dogs down with me. The dogs paced and Brittany kept going up to the staircase and taking a step or two then she backed down. We stayed in the basement until the storm passed and after we all came up, I looked down and there was Katy at the bottom of the stairs, pacing and worried because she didn’t know how to come back up. “Oh Tim, for Pete’s sake go down and get Katy, she can’t come back up” I said to my husband. Just then, Brittany looked down at her friend, went down by herself, nudged Katy gently on the side, and walked up beside her. True friendship! Brittany was “Lassie” in so many ways over the years. I truly don’t know how I would have managed to raise two small children without her.