Here are some true tales. The names have been retained to reveal the guilty! I had promised myself that I would keep this site light and entertaining, but as the holidays roll around and I am cast into retrospective mood, I remember some of my favorite Shelties, and cannot forget some of their more horrific deeds! Come, gentle reader. Harden your soul and journey with me into Clan Duncan's Great Sheltie Disasters! Be brave, now. These could happen to you!

Ohmygosh. This takes me 'way back to the days when Clan Duncan was just getting started. One of my foundation bitches was Bonny, a solid, voracious, and sweet High Born daughter, born from Banger's first litter for Banchory. Now, I am a biologist. Biologists often like to hike in remote areas, and on this lovely spring Saturday, we had planned to get up before the crack of dawn and hike down Sycamore Canyon, from southernmost Arizona into northern Sonora. We elected to take three Shelties with us. Bonny was newly out of season, so she had to stay home. Now, Bonny was "ironclad" housebroken, so we often left her loose in the house, as we did on this occasion. We planned to be gone about 8 hours. We ended up hiking way, WAY down into the canyon, and it was fourteen hours before we got home, since we had forgotten to take into consideration that it would take us longer to hike out of Sycamore than to hike in. Well, Bonny became bored and frustrated during those fourteen hours, so she set out to entertain herself. First, she was hungry. (Bonny was always hungry.) During the fourteen hours, Bonny discovered that our kitchen cabinets were closed magnetically, not with latches, so she could easily open them. This is how she found the rice and the pasta.

Unfortunately for us, we had quite a lot of rice and pasta that day, squirreled safely away (or so we thought) in the kitchen cabinets below the countertops. Bonny ate some. She ate macaroni, spaghetti, egg noodles, and rice. However, there was more pasta than Bonny could possibly consume, so she began to play with her food. Alas! She ran with the plastic bags full of pasta all round the living room, strewing it liberally on the carpet. She did the same with two bags of rice. Then she set out to reduce all the pasta to fragments. She chewed the noodles, macaroni, and spaghetti into microbits. This must have been fun, because no pieces were spared. She chewed on the hard rice, too. Now, as you may have guessed, when pasta and rice are chewed, they become gummy. They become sticky.

When we arrived home, exhausted and sleepy, there was Bonny, desperate to go out, smiling in the doorway. She bolted past us to do her duty outside. Stunned, I stared at the living room and kitchen. Pasta bits and rice were everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE! "Oh, well," I thought a few minutes later as I fell into bed. "Poor Bonny. That was much too long to leave her." The next morning I got up, took the dogs for their walk, and then pulled out the vacuum. "I will make short work of all these bits," I thought. I vacuumed vigorously. Odd. The bits were still in place. I turned the vacuum to its maximum setting. Odder. The bits had not budged. I then noticed that there were pasta bits on the sides of the couches and chairs. There were even pasta bits on the walls! Suspicious, I got on hands and knees and pulled at a few of them. Oh, NO! All the pasta bits, all the rice grains, were stuck! It took me several DAYS on hands and knees to pull all these bits from the walls, floor, and furniture, one by one. I got blisters on my fingers. However, never let me say that Bonny did not help with the cleanup. She kept me company and ate some of the bits!

There is an old Sheltie International article all about Wartville, one of the few lighthearted articles I wrote back in the "old" days. Wartville was by Banchory Black Gold ex my dear Ch. Banchory Blue Ballad, CD, making her a double High Born granddaughter. Wartville was a bit extreme in type for the show ring, but she stayed at Clan Duncan for her whole life because she was my "cheerleader" during my darkest days. Her favorite saying seemed to be a great, big, silent, "Oh, boy!" She had enough enthusiasm to make lemonade out of life's sourest lemons. Wartville accomplished many things during her illustrious career. She ate all the steaks just before a dinner party by craftily opening the back door, sneaking out, and snatching them off the grill. I saved half of the last steak only because it was hot, burned her mouth, and she yiped while wolfing it down, alerting me to the situation. How could a fifteen-inch Sheltie eat 3.5 big T-bones all at once? Wartville's appetite was as bottomless as her enthusiasm. On another dinner party occasion, she ate a jumbo package of potato chips, a jumbo package of tortilla chips, and a very large bowl of guacamole, all by herself, having opened a door while I was outside. Did this give her indigestion? Not even a burp. Once while being bred, Wartville pulled a stud dog ten feet to where a forgotten Milk-Bone lay on a kitchen chair, so she could scarf it. She was extremely bright. When we were living in Jackson, Mississippi, we had houses on both sides of our property, quite close, and Wartville learned that I didn't want her to make much noise. During the time we lived in that house, if I ever threatened her after one of her escapades, Wartville would scream and scream until I left off my attempt to correct her. (Wartville had a very human-sounding scream.) When we moved out to Brandon, where we were isolated, she never screamed again, but took her occasional jerks and thumps of correction in stolid silence. She so loved food that I am convinced to this day that Wartville had x-ray vision and could pass through doors like a ghost. I don't think that there are any Shelties down from Wartville today (though I would be most pleased to be proved wrong) but she kept me alert and on the edge of hysteria for more than twelve years. Te saluto, Wartville, my sunshine!

Above is Red, a gentle sable fellow who helped me through my divorce and left us only six years ago for the rainbow bridge, the last-born son of Ch. Piper's Strolling Minstrel (Reflection) and Clan Duncan Once In Love (Thunder Blue). Red was unlucky enough to have been a young fellow during my divorce time, so was never shown, but he was a sweetie, always ready for a walk or a cuddle. He was absolutely non-destructive in the house . . . except for one memorable occasion. Now, I love caramel apples, but have never made them. One lovely October day just before Halloween, I decided to make some to hand out to children as treats. I bought a bag of red delicious apples, and two large bags of Kraft caramel pieces, determined at last to learn how to make caramel apples. Confident, I unwrapped all the caramel pieces and melted them down into a pool of wonderful brownish candy. However, I had unexpected company that night, which left no time to dip the apples. The next morning was a work morning, so I went off, forgetting that I had left the large pot of cold caramel on the stove. Unluckily, I had also left a chair near the stove. Dear little Red must have hopped up on that chair and then up onto the stove as soon as I left for work, the only time in his life he ever did such a thing. The only explanation that I have for what greeted me at the end of the day, was that Red was unusually attracted to the scent of the melted caramel. When I returned home after work, the entire house smelled of caramel, and as soon as I got to the kitchen, I saw that something was terribly wrong with Red! He had been lying down on the kitchen floor, and could not get up. "Oh, no!" I thought, watching him struggle. "What's wrong with him? Has he had a stroke?" Then I saw what he had done. My calm, good little Red had pulled the caramel pot off the stove, and had rolled in the caramel! He had then proceeded to try to wipe the caramel off his fur by rubbing his body along the bottoms of the kitchen cabinets, walls, refrigerator, stove, table, and chairs! (I thanked my stars that he had elected to stay in the kitchen.) As Red at last pulled himself to his feet (leaving tufts of fur on floor and stove), I realized what was wrong with him. He had fallen asleep against the stove bottom, and while he lay there, the caramel hardened, so his fur was stuck to the stove and to the kitchen floor! I might add here that Red was a descendant of Bonny.

This is without doubt the worst disaster in the annals of Clan Duncan. I shudder to even THINK of this event. However, in retrospect it is amusing, though I thought I would just DIE at the time. My husband's relatives were coming for a visit on New Year's Day. The day before was cold, cold, cold, with snow falling off and on all day, so I thought I would make up a large batch of chili for them. The day came, the day went, and no relatives. The next day came and went, and no relatives. By this time, I had eaten as much chili as I could possibly stomach, and since it was very mild and meaty chili, had the bright idea of mixing it into the dog food! At this time I had about 15 adults and perhaps ten puppies. I mixed up the kettle of food at about six in the evening and fed everyone. The next morning when I got up to go to work, a powerful odor reached me. Arrrrgggh! Have you ever had 25 Shelties with severe cases of the runs? It was a disaster of epic proportions. The dogs looked fine. They were not in distress, but they, well --- they squirted! I called my boss and told him I would be in late. Verrrry late. Now if you have never dealt with Shelties in the winter in a cold climate, this will not seem as great a disaster to you as it was to me. Think of it: January, no operational garden hoses, all the outside water frozen. Triple aaarrrggh. I will spare you the details, but our hot-water bill that month was nearly $100.00 higher than it had ever been, and I do believe the final total was three bottles of Pine Sol and 42 rolls of paper towels!

The End

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