I’m Anette Ståhlberg, 25-year-old vet student from Turku, Finland. Nowadays both me and Edi live
in Estonia,
where I study veterinary medicine. The first three years are now succesfully behind,
and Edi has gotten used to being my “guinea pig”. The downside of being a veterinary student's pet: he had to learn to lie still patiently long enough for me to study all the bones and muscles on him;)
Why Australian Shepherd?
I have
wanted a dog ever since I can remember. However during my childhood my family had only
cats, but I did manage to get some experience of dogs as took sometimes care of my friends’ dogs, and in addition while I stayed in New Zealand
my host family had two wonderful Shetland sheepdog males.
In autumn 2006, when I had settled down to Tartu
and I knew I would stay put for a longer period of time, it
came a perfect timing to get myself a
dog at last. The following months I read many dog books and
browsed the net, when I tried to find the perfect breed for me. My friends shot down almost
every breed suggestion I got interested in, but I still kept on looking. Shetland sheepdogs were
very close to my heart; however I wished my dog to be a lot braver and bigger. Then I found the
perfect breed: Australian Shepherd. It had all the qualities I had been looking
for: eager to learn, active, qualified for many different activities,
middle-sized, fur doesn’t require grooming, healthy, and doesn’t have hunting
instincts.
Choosing a puppy
After
deciding on the breed, I contacted many different breeders in Finland ,
asking them whether my view of the breed and their experiences about Aussie match. All
of them agreed that I had made a right choice on the base of my reasoning why
I believe Aussie was the right dog for me. Luckily surprising many breeders had
puppies coming in autumn. So did Kennel
Team Chenas as well, so I called the breeder Tiina Wuorio. And after some phone calls we
decided that if there were enough puppies, one of the bitches would be mine. On
the 29th October I got exciting news, nine puppies were born to Hazelmoor Humble Heart. However only one of them happened to be a bitch, so after a lot of thinking and one more phone call with the breeder, I decided that my first dog will be a male. 6 weeks later I went to see the puppies and after seeing them, I instantly fell in
love with this little teddy bear with only a little, short tail. After the character test, Tiina recommend the same puppy to me. So in the day before Christmas we drove to pick my little Dhaulagiri up!
