Jitterbug |

Ch Ourgang I Want It Now – 2009 > 2018
– Litter 13 –

Jitt was my special baby, she was the littley of her litter but she was so beautiful in the head department that she just had to stay. Highly intelligent and extremely conniving and stubborn, she challenged my will and my training ability from the day she was born until the day she left us. She had likes and dislikes of people and would work out ways to get rid of / upset the people she didnt like. My friend Shaz, she would wait until she had her hands full then nip her on the back of the knees, all because Shaz thought she would join in on a game of rough and tumble I was having with Jitt when she was a young puppy and Jitt did not approve – this lead her to have a lifetime grudge against Sharon, she never forgot.

She was a “special” dog, neurotic – yes, strange – yes, highly intelligent – definitely, loving – devoted to me, cuddly – yes, caring – yes, she was not the easiest dog in the world to live with but she was my special baby and her smiles and joy in things would always lift my spirits and cheer me up no matter how bad things got, she would just crawl into my lap and let me ball my eyes out like none of the others do which I still miss to this day, she genuinely cared about my wellbeing, not just what she would get out of it though she did like to be treated like a princess and believed she was better than everyone else.

Jitt was mine through and through and would follow me everywhere, she showed though she did not particularly like it, she enjoyed the outing and being with me but did not like the stress of the ring. She liked to be shop dog though we couldn’t have her out often as she would like to patrol the shop and make sure nobody took anything – especially treats, if you took treats you got your foot nudged and stared at until you paid for them. She is the only dog I knew that would actually bat her eyelashes, she would jump up on the treats look at them – look at the person standing near – bat her eyes as if to say – they are here – I am here – you CAN give me one … she knew she was not allowed to take them though she could easily reach them and also knew that I would not object if people gave her one.

At a year old Jitt had an accident out in a country field, I had let the dogs out for a run in a field of longish grass to give them a run around. They were all playing chasings and I didn’t realise there was a ditch in the field – all of them jumped this ditch except Jitt who was watching the others and did not realise it was there until too late and she hit that bank head on at full speed – she split her lip down her chin open badly, what I didn’t know was that she had actually compacted the first three vertebrae in her neck – the vets when they discovered this said she was lucky not to have died, a less muscular breed probably would have snapped their neck. This lead to a lifetime of pain and intermittent limping for her as the nerves pinched in her neck. I spent her entire life going to the chiro then the massage people, this certainly helped but her flyball career which was just about to start was finished before it started.

At home she didn’t particularly like being part of a pack and loved it when she got devoted attention (nights when I would only have one dog it would be Jitt), weekends when I went away it would just be her and Fred with Glenn which she loved the attention he gave her. She did not travel well so often got left at home and loved making me jealous when I got home (hugging the person she had been left at home with and looking at me as if to say – see I love them more than you as you left me!) It was extremely funny (to me) if this was Belinda whom she had sort of a love / hate relationship with as she would ignore Belinda all weekend except at breakfast & dinner time until the moment I came home and then Bel would get hugged to death, and Jitt’s hugs were not gentle, much to Belinda’s disgust.

As she was too smart for her own good, her thing used to be getting where she wasnt meant to be, you would try and lock the dogs out, sidle through the door, shut it – turn around and she would be there, she had an amazing ability to move with you and take advantage of your blind spots. This did not work for her on one occasion when I was away with Dad and I was distracted as I was talking with him when putting the dogs back in the car, unbeknownst to me she had jumped back out again as I slid the van door shut as I was looking at Dad. Now in this car it was a VW van with a camping setup and there was a channel under the bed she used to sit in to travel so you could not see her. It wasn’t until three and a half hours later when we stopped again that I realised that she wasn’t there. Needless to say it only took two hours to get back. We called and called and couldn’t find her, plenty of people had seen her but couldn’t get near her (lucky in one case), I had called and called and getting Angel to bark so she would recognise her and had given up (it was pitch black at this stage) and was sitting on the ground crying when she came and crawled into my lap. That feeling is one I cant describe of utter despair turned to relief. She never jumped out of that car again and was always first in line to get in.

She had two litters for me with only one surviving puppy, Charlie. As she got older it became more and more obvious that she had a scar from her nose to her mouth – whether this was a closed hairlip we will never know and that might be why she was so strong for throwing puppies with this deformity.

Jitt is one of the ones who suffered from DPN and is hopefully my last one to suffer from it due to all the outcrossing I have done to try and eliminate it, she progressed a lot slower than the others had as I spent a lot of time doing rear end awareness exercises with her so it made her think about where she was placing her feet even though she could not feel them. Her diagnosis gave us the answer as to what this “wobbly” thing was that they got when they were older so I will be forever grateful to Andrew & Jane for this and Jane’s help setting me up with Wagga Uni for the study.

Jitt’s stress in the car came from one trip with her grandma Murtle. Murtle had narrow ear canals and it used to hurt her going over the mountains when we went to Bathurst so she used to stress badly in the car on any trip. Jitt was at the impressionable age of 9 months and went in the car with Murt for one trip, sat back and watched Murt and watched the attention she was getting from us trying to sooth Murt and went “right” this is what you do in the car to get attention. From that day forward she would stress and shake and turn herself inside out every time she went in the car. Don’t get me wrong – she loved going and was very very put out when she was left behind, but she just could not cope with it at all. We literally used to have to put weight on her if we knew we were taking her on a big trip as it would take so much out of her.

Cars, and her love of being with me is what led to her demise. It was summer, I had gone and done my post run for work, had come back and thought I would go and do some christmas shopping, I turned the car around and left it running to keep the aircon cool while I went and had a shower and got changed. Jitt saw me have a shower and she knew when I did this that I go out so she went and waited by the car so she wouldn’t miss out. Our guess was that it was hot so she had gone under the car for shade and laid down there. I came out later rushing to the car so I could get to the shops in decent time before they shut, I did my usual quick scan around, I did not see her, jumped in the car and drove off. As the car was already running she did not have time to react and get out of the way. I will never forget that thump and the realisation that I had run over her. There was only a small graze on her head, no fractures, a slight amount of blood from her ear, mouth and eye. I knew I had run over her head, I knew she couldn’t breathe, we rushed her to the Vets and they were excellent and did everything they could but the brain damage and swelling was too much. She suffered what is very similar to a “king hit” in people and the brain injury was enormous. I don’t know if I will ever forgive myself for killing my baby, I am paranoid about where the dogs are now and paranoid if I run over anything now. I look twice now, I look underneath now before I drive off but it’s too late for her, something I will never forgive myself for.