Rosie

Rosie was an amazing dog. She was my best friend and my first puppy. She had a way of looking into the depths of me. Her and I started her agility career at the young age of 8 weeks, walking across pieces of wood on the ground. And spent nearly every minuet together driving countless hours to our next adventure.

Her and I started out training in dog agility, and it was a bit different than training with Harley because she was so much faster than he was. It was different because I had to learn how to send her out ahead of me to the next obstacle. It made me a better trainer and handler learning how to run the different dogs.

When Rosie was five or six years old, we started to take stock dog lessons from Barb Moe. That started us in a whole new direction of dog training. It required me to feel her movements rather than direct where she needed to go. It once again made me grow as a trainer to be able to work her on various types of stock and be successful. We had so much fun figuring out how to fetch the sheep, goats, and ducks. She didn’t like or have any interest in working cattle.

I really wished I had written down all the fun tricks and skills she had. There are so many of them, from playing dead to rolling over to jumping into my arms. She was my girl, and helped name my dog training business. She was always my shadow, and so Shadow Paws Training was created. It has been a year since she has passed, and it has been the hardest year of my life. Without her presence, I have never felt so lost. But with the encouragement of my family, I found my path to train dogs again. Because of my Rosie, she showed me a passion I never knew existed and the need to pass the knowledge to others.