Our Beloved Louie Jul 26, '05 6:27 AM
by Catherine for everyone
Louie was one of our favourites. She was so like her father Sabre and a brown/liver nosed Rhodesian Ridgeback like him as well. Let me tell you something, yes the black nose (most common) and the brown/liver nose are different, not only in looks but also in temperament. When it is said of the brown nose, they are people dogs, believe it.
Louie was born at my house on the 5 th November to our dog and ****, Sabre and Sheebah along with 11 other puppies, nine of which survived. She was perfect to us and was a pleasant young lass never doing anything wrong. One of her great qualities was she tolerated loud noises. This was due the fact that at that time my husband was using noisy power tolls and she would sleep by his side as he worked away grinding metal and making a lot of racket.
When she was growing I noticed she was an unusually well behave young lass, (butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, well maybe a little). What I never realised was she had access to a 15 feet marijuana tree and had eaten the plant to the height she could reach. Yep, a drug detector dog was our Louie, the neighbours weren’t happy…….lol
One of the most outstanding features was the way she heeled. I taught her to stand for the show ring, not a hard job for Louie, she was a star from the start. When she heeled without a lead or even being formally taught, her head was glued to my knee and she turned when I turned.
She only ever had one litter and popped out 14 puppies but only four made it to adulthood. One called Zulu was sold to a West Aust TV personality and that had a few problems I’ll discuss at another time. Zulu appeared on our TV’s briefly for Earth Watch commercials but later his owner fighting with greenies over a golf course project saw the TV personality leave that cause and pull those ads…hehe,
When our house was burned by sick arsonists, Louie at the early age of 8 was horribly burned to death. She lay in the path of the fire and quite frankly we grieve still and want justice. It is a pity we will never get it. Still the arsonist saw jail over other incidences and we can console ourselves about that.
Here are some pictures of our puppies close up. These picture represent the difference in appearance between the brown/liver nose and black nosed Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
1st Left is Sabre, a kindly obedient gentleman who fathered all my litters and the second pup in the photo.
Middle, Louie, a brown/liver nosed **** pup, sweet and wonderful like her father. She was killed in the arson attack on our house when she was about 8 yrs old.
Far right, a heavily pregnant Sheebah, grumble bum extradonaire, the reason for the grumbling was I made them pose with a piece of bread in front of them. Naturally the two lefties were well behaved but Sheebah on the right was greedily awaiting the go ahead to eat....lol...mum, that's me, was taking too long to give them the OK.