beaucerons

In memoriam

Shadow,

When you were seven weeks old, I chose you
And after long thought,
I gave you a name “Shadow”.
Because you were hardly in the door
Before you were following me closer than my own.

Almost fifteen year later,
We did a lot of things together,
Dog shows, obedience competitions, sheep work,
Horse-Ball matches, holidays in the south of France,
And the Beauceron Club activities
And in doing al of the above we made a lot of friends.

During all those years you were there
A loyal friend by my side.
You shared my ups and downs,
Gave me compassion when I needed it,
And defended me when you thought I was in danger.
One thing I was sure of was that I did not need to turn to check,
Because I knew that my “Shadow” was there,
And that you were keeping a close eye on me.

Unfortunately your life was shorter than mine,
And I have to continue on without you.
With nothing but the memories of our time together,
And what memories they are.
By writing this I wanted you to know
That when it comes to you
Out of sight is not out of mind,
Because your memories will always fill,
A huge part of my heart.

Cathy

Shadow, is the oldest of the pack. He started his life doing what a Border Collie was destined for working sheep under the critical eye of Jo De Meyst. A friend John who lived near Wavre who had 100+ sheep allowed us to work Shadow on them. There he had to find and reunite the flock in fields of 5 hectares with a wood in the middle, pen them, put them through the footbath, help with the vaccination of the sheep, separate out one or the other for treatment and work with the ewes and their lambs. With Jo and his Borders Shadow participated in demonstrations both with sheep and ducks at different places like the wool weekend at Han sur Laisse, the World Dog Show at Brussels and at the Belgian Championships for Working Horses. At his pre retirement in 2001 in order to keep his brain working he also started following obedience classes and presented and passed his obedience brevet not once but twice. Since then he has participated in obedience demonstrations and has also been present on the field for the obedience trainers practical exams, his last appearance at this was in February 2007.

Shadow is a loyal, gentle and obedient dog. But one should not forget that he is first and foremost a working sheepdog and like all good sheepdogs he defends his flock, he even came to the defence of his owner twice
in Brussels.

He is a dog with a fantastic will to live and he has proved this to us as within the last year he has had three strokes and has each time made a spectacular recovery and the only sign that something has happened is he is slightly unstable in his hind legs. He still hops into the van to go for a ride and climbs the stairs each night to sleep at the foot of our bed.