Oh my. Miss Jane. Better known as ‘the little shit’. One of the sweetest and most frustrating dogs I’ve ever had to deal with.

Jane was out of Buffy’s 2nd litter. We hadn’t planned on keeping her, but through a fortunate/unfortunate turn of events, she stayed in our home – hence her full name, SoCo’s Twist of Fate. What happened was that she had a pretty bad reaction to her vaccines as a puppy, so we kept her around until she was healthy enough to place.

Of course, we all know how that ends.

She was a phenomenal little puppy. Great on her birds, great run, and really the cutest puppy we’ve ever seen. We pretty quickly were enamored with her. As was just about everyone else.

When it came to breaking her and getting her ready to be a gun dog … good lord, what a little pain in the ass she was. This is when she earned the moniker ‘little shit’. I had a hard time getting on the same page with her and we sacrificed many an entry fee while I was trying to figure it out. In the meantime, she was basically my 20% dog; she’d only get around clean 20% of the time – maybe – but when she DID, it was usually pretty darn good.

My Facebook page has years of regular posts about the results of my competition weekends with her. Most being a description of what new surprise she had for me that weekend. And always calling her a little shit. In fact, these posts are what generated the idea of this blog. Apparently others found my Tales of the Little Shit entertaining! Eventually, I’ll search through and compile a listing of them to share here.

Anyway – perseverence paid off, Jane did eventually come around to being a halfway broke gun dog, and finished her field championship in February of 2019, winning the same stake at the same trial that Buffy had won to finish 9 years earlier. It was a nice moment. Tears were shed. The little shit did me proud.

That was a great weekend, and Jane went on to finish that season out strong, ending it only 2 points shy of her Amateur championship as well.

It was after this season that it really hit home that the journey is the true reward. See, a couple seasons before, she had come really close to a win and came up short – a placement that I quite honestly didn’t agree with at all. Anyway, if she had gotten that win, she’d have gotten her championship a lot sooner. But then we would have missed a lot of time together. All those road trips, all those trials, all those runs both good and bad – they added up to an experience with that little girl that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Sadly, Jane is not with us anymore. She passed at 8 years of age in September of 2019 due to complications from a spay. We were obviously very distraught, and a good bit angry at losing her at such a young age. (not at the vet, for the record, just at the world in general). It took a while to process losing her. Hers was a huge personality in an adorable package.

As I’ve said before – take the picture. If your dog is looking cute, take the picture. If they slam into a nice point, take the picture. If it’s just a goofy moment, take the damn picture. The day will come when you will be glad you did.