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POLLY
Breed: Border Collie through and through (rough coat, black, floppy ears, semi-burly)
Age: 16, deceased February 2007
Nicknames: Pogs, Pollyanna, foot-whacker (because if you aren’t paying enough attention you get the paw in the face), Pol (often confused with Paul), Polly-wog, Wog-a-dog.
Favourite game: flyball of course!
Favourite toy: tennis ball
Favourite Food: any and all
Other sports (other than flyball): agility, sheep herding and obedience
Loved to play with her mom and, even when she was retired from flyball she still loved to come and watch and say hello to all her human friends at practices.
Polly loved food of any kind including the human food that wasn't good for her (unfortunately she was very good at getting to it; opening jars, fridges, cupboards—you name it she knew how to get to it).
If you threw her a ball or a toy or a scrap of litter that she found for you you would have had a friend for life. If that didn't work you would have gotten her for free anyway.
Polly was a regular Pollyanna type personality with only one side to see: the positive side. Even when she was getting old and deaf and blind she found the good side to it and continuously tried to ignore us when she was called inside. When she did finally 'hear' us, she always came in willingly with a happy 'I-did-the-best-thing-in-the-world-by-coming-when-I-was-called-didn't-I' smile.
Polly was the second dog to play flyball in the family and was one of the older members on the team. She retired after earning her onyx. She never switched teams.
Stories:
Polly loved human food and that got her into a lot of trouble when she was left home alone (not so much later when she couldn't open the fridge anymore and it got harder for her to get onto the counters with her arthritis, but she tried).
One night our family went out for dinner. Sure that we had locked all edibles and near-edibles out of the 'Polly zone' we headed out to the Chinese restaurant. An hour later we walked in to a very happy, glazed eyed black dog who, when she wagged her tail, threatened to topple over. It was then that we realized that Polly's mom left the brandy filled chocolates sitting on the living room table unguarded.
Luckily, we knew from previous experiences that Polly had no trouble with chocolate (this is the same dog that ate part of a can of Fry's cocoa powder and all she did was belch out cocoa puffs and get us all worried) but we were worried about the brandy.
Mom made the call to Carol, our friend and extraordinary vet (not to mention practically an adopted family member) to ask what to do about Polly.
In the end Polly got a dose of H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide). But in the meantime, we still had a drunk Border Collie on our hands and flyball practice for that same night! Mom called up the team and had to explain the situation; Polly couldn't make it onto the window seat without missing never mind going over the hurdles at Flyball.
Another favourite story in our house is how Polly came to live with us. Way back nearly 14 years ago, mom got a call from the breeder of her last dog, Piper (the dog that is, not the breeder--his name was Jim Clarke). Piper had gone missing for three months and mom had given up on his coming back.
On the same day that she found out that Piper had been shot and killed just down the block she called Jim Clarke to let him know. She needed a new puppy; the hole in her heart left after Piper, was too great to bear alone. He told her about the litter of pups he would soon have up for good homes. Most of them were taken but at the last moment he had decided not to keep one of the ones for himself; there was one male pup available if mom wanted him. That afternoon mom drove the three and a half hours to Jim’s home to look the pups over. The pups had been looked over earlier that day and the remaining pups showed little interest in mom. The male pup barely looked up from the bone he was chewing when mom called him. One little black puppy kept putting her head on mom’s shoe every time she stopped but mom wasn’t looking for a female. Jim had one other puppy there and mom kept saying: “I’ll take that one.” But that one belonged to Jim.
Finally, mom looked down at the puppy that was using her shoe as a chin rest. The puppy looked up at her without moving. “That pup is looking for a home too,” Jim said; the people who had wanted the black puppy decided that she didn’t have enough colour for them and left her behind.
When mom got home it was past midnight and we were all in bed. The whole trip home in the car told mom that the puppy that she picked wanted to be with her; the puppy wouldn’t cry while mom had her hand beside it, but as soon as it moved, …well...that was different. All the way home, mom called the puppy Annie but the next morning, after everyone was up, I started to call her Polly and it stuck.
Ball der Dashers 2001