I talked before about my relationship with Haze (my Welsh Border Collie) and her background. I would like to go into more details about her story. Three years ago today, me and my family decided that we were ready to introduce another member into the family at the end of the year since my parents were at work throughout the year so wouldn’t have time for them, and because I was at college, I couldn’t be there to look after a puppy. As such, we would have to wait till Christmas… Or so we thought.
One day (out of the blue), a close family friend (who rescues dogs as so they are not put down) said that she bought a young, 9 month old Welsh Border Collie from a farmer who had just gone through a harsh divorce which meant they sold the farm, including our little Haze. We were told that Haze was a very shy, nervous dog and that some bad things had happened to her, but my God, we did not expect what we saw.
We arranged a meet up at the next agility dog show so we could meet her for the first time. We waited by the tables awaiting her arrival. It was then we saw her. Haze has a beautiful tri-coloured coating, with two sparkling blue eyes that could make even toughest man’s heart melt. She was absolutely stunning, but we immediately realised something was wrong. The most notable thing was her tail. You know when dogs are scared they have their tails in-between their legs and their ears go backwards? Well Haze’s tail was nowhere to be seen because it lined the bottom of her stomach, and her ears didn’t move as her ears were so far down. She was terrified. It took her half an hour to move the 20 metres between the car and us, she constantly switched between a catatonic state, and erratic movement to try and get back to her car. It was clear to us then that ‘the bad things’ we heard about meant that she was actually hurt… hard. It was there and then I knew she needed our help, I mean… I fell in love with her immediately, I had the feeling that caring for her was something I needed to do because as much as she needed me, I needed her all the same.
After the meet up, we went home and talked about it for hours, whether we were even ready for a dog this early in the year when we all had work to do my mum, however, in the end the vote was unanimous, we were having her no matter what. Mum called up her friend and said we would love to have her and call her one of our own, and as such we rushed over and took her home. I sat in the boot of the car with Haze on the journey home, she was skittish at first and she constantly tried to get away, but after five minutes she stopped jittering, she placed her head on my lap and went to sleep. Suddenly I realised something, she wasn’t just scared of everything… She had no one to trust or love. In that moment, she gave me the last little thing that she had lost so much of before; hope.
When we finally got home, Haze was introduced to our dogs, our late dog Jigs, Gemma and lastly Jazz, who became Haze’s dog mentor and best friend. There were a few very obvious things that we learnt over the next few days. Firstly, She ate quick, VERY QUICK, she would clear a bowl of food in 5 seconds which any normal dog would take 30, she ate on her side, looking at everyone when she did. It became apparent that she had to fight for her food before it was taken away.
She hated big men, all barr me, this included my Dad. It took three weeks before Haze went to my Dad, and every time he raised his hand to stroke her, she would recoil and cower away. It was another indication that this beautiful dog had been beaten. We theorised that since the farmer went through a harsh break-up, he may have taken all of his anger out on Haze.
It was so clear that Haze had been hurt in some way, through neglect and physical abuse. She wasn’t house trained, and she always went in the same place in the house, this one small corner in our living room and it was so hard to break her of this habit but eventually she became house trained.
Now days, Haze is a completely different dog, she still is a wee bit hesitant of men, but she can not only go to public places, but because of our love; agility, we compete in hugely busy places like Crufts with minimal issues! I will never forget or regret the day we got Haze, I love her to pieces and she is such a big part of my world.
But yeah, That’s Haze’s backstory, I hope you enjoyed reading this, I’ll be posting more things about my dogs in later posts.
Thank you for your time!
