Noonbarra Scamper doing Agility

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Jan 2003

Stephen and Mary, Sorry it's been so long since we've written--we keep saying that we need to contact the Bilson's with an update on Scamper, and her 2nd birthday kicked us in the rear!

Scamper has turned out to be a wonderful dog.  She is super friendly, and pretty much loves all people and other dogs.  Whenever there was a "shy" dog in our obedience classes, Scamper would always be chosen as the safe, friendly dog to help socialize the timid ones.  Speaking of obedience, she has passed the advanced level, and earned her Canine Good Citizen award.  We plan to return to another advanced class soon for a refresher.

Darla has been doing Agility with Scamper and they are coming along nicely.  She plans on competing with her this year.  Unfortunately we have had to miss quite a few practice sessions, so she isn't quite as far as we would have liked, but overall she is much more ready now, and if the last two sessions are any indication she should do great!

She's a good dog in the house--sleeps in our room in her crate at night (see photo).  She's gotten to where she "puts herself to bed" now when she's tired, which is really cute!  Her favorite thing in life is to "help" us with the animals each morning and evening.  And she loves her toys!  She does quite a few tricks that we show off to our friends.

She is a very beautiful dog--we get comments on that everywhere we go.  People are always interested to hear what kind of dog she is since Kelpies are unusual around here.  I think Scamper has a lot of Dusty's traits from what I saw in the video.  She is pretty solid and very atheletic.  She weighs about 41 lbs. at fighting weight.  Most folks think she is a male because of her muscular build.

I'm attaching a bunch of pictures for your enjoyment, and to show off if you wish!  If they take to long to load let me know and I will send them in smaller chunks.  We'll do better about staying in touch in the future.  Hope all is well with you and yours.

All the Best,

Dana and Darla Duplan and Scamper

Thought you might enjoy the pic of Scamper showing off her ribbons for last weekends agility competition.  She and Darla are coming along nicely.  They earned three 1st place, one 2nd place, and one 3rd place ribbons in various events, along with three qualifying runs (no faults and under max time limit).  Not bad for one weekend eh?

"just wanted to send you pictures of Scamper on her 3rd birthday. We were up at Dana's parents house for Christmas & it snowed that night. Scamper loved playing in the snow and chasing birds out of the bushes."

"We started competing in agility during 2003 and Scamper already has her Novice title in the NADAC organization. We're going to start in the Open category this year."

"She's such a wonderful dog - still loves to go "help" with the horses and play ball. Hope all is well with you."

Noonbarra Scamper with some of her 'Agility' ribbons

2003

We just joined the Kelpie discussion group and posted Scamper's introduction.

Re training: we have done several obedience sessions and are currently repeating the advanced class, both as a refresher and to get Scamper around more dogs.  We like the classes as they are in a large Petsmart store, so there are a lot of distractions, etc. 

We previoulsy took a "Click a Trick" class, which teaches behaviors via a clicker.  Some tricks Scamp picks up after a couple of demos, others she can't quite get the hang of (or doesn't want to do).  Let's see, she can spin both directions, roll over, crawl, back, etc.  She is real good at "leave it", which is really more obedience than a trick.  We worked on teaching her to bow, but she didn't quite get that one. 

We got second place in a little competition where we had to introduce an original trick to the group--we had Scamper pushing (herding) around a black stuffed sheep (shows up good against her light fur), with her nose.  It was cute, but we haven't really followed up on that one lately."
 
 

From the Working Kelpie Club Discussion Group on the internet.

March 2002

"We had great dealings with the Bilsons as well, who Helen so graciously introduced us to.  We corresponded via email, were selected to be the proud owners of Noonbarra Scamper (a lot of folks were after her), and made the payment over the internet via credit card.  The Bilsons handled all of the rest!  It was actually easier for us than buying a pup in the States.  They prepared Scamper for the trip by taking her on extended car rides, etc. and actually since she was doing so well, came home a bit earlier than they would normally send a pup.  When we picked her up at LAX, she popped out of her crate like it was no big deal, and we've never looked back! " - Dana
 

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Feb 2006

"Just wanted to let you know that Scamper is still doing great. I'm sending you a picture taken on her 5th birthday with her present. It's hard to believe she's been with us almost five years.

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