Milly is a Lurcher, and we believe that she’s a Whippet/Border Collie cross. The Whippet part is easy to see and when meeting her for the first time, most people think she is a Whippet. But if you could compare her alongside a purebred Whippet, you would see that Milly is taller, and slightly broader in the body.
The Border Collie part of her becomes obvious when you watch her play. Milly is obsessed by toys, and just loves to chase a ball. She’s extremely acrobatic, and can leap, twist and turn in the air. She’s also pretty fast! She seems to have the BorderCollie brain too, in that she’s quite intelligent. That makes her easy to train – she just loves to work out new tricks.
Milly is a rescue dog, and was taken into kennels as a stray. She was then around six months old. We had very recently lost our beloved Dalmatian, Daisy,
and were looking for a companion for our remaining dog, Blue Roan Cocker Spaniel, Pepper. She was then twelve years old and I did worry that she might not like a manic young Lurcher taking over her nice peaceful home!
However, when we finally decided to adopt Milly, she and Pepper got on extremely well.
This is the first photo we saw of Milly, when she was still in the kennels.
She looked so sweet that we simply had to offer her a home – provided Pepper approved, of course! I contacted the local dog warden and she brought Milly to a nearby park, where the two dogs could meet on neutral terms. Milly was very energetic as she’d been in a kennel for some time, and I’m sure Pepper wondered what on earth we were thinking! Why would we want this golden tornado in our lives? Anyway, there was no aggression shown between the two of them, so we decided to have Milly over for the day, to see if she would settle into our lives.
She found the sofa very quickly, and made herself at home! We couldn’t resist her, and made her a permanent part of our lives.
When I first got Daisy and Pepper as puppies, I decided I would try dog agility training. I enrolled them in a local class and had lots of fun – and many frustrations! This story is told in more detail in my book For the Love of Daisy. Pepper was now too old to do agility but I thought Milly might be ideal. Not only was she very athletic, but she was also part Border Collie. I hoped her Collie brain would mean she would take to agility well. I began training her to weave, in our back garden.
Milly picked up weaving easily and was doing a full twelve weave poles within three weeks. This was very encouraging! Then we enrolled in a training class and Milly soon picked up what was expected of her. One she was old enough, I entered her into a few shows.
She did quite well, and won a few clear round rosettes. She also had two placings, a 4th and a 6th. I was very pleased with her. She wasn’t the easiest of dogs though, and got progressively more and more excited. She began doing the “Collie bark”, especially when I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with her. I still train her sometimes, and she still absolutely loves it, but I haven’t done any shows lately because they wind her up too much!
