The story of Patrick

Little Patrick Peanut was born on the 31st of March 2001. That day I had no idea that in 8 weeks I would be the owner of the most loveable terrorist teddybear in the whole world...

I had been dreaming of having my very own dog for years, but my sisters allergy made that impossible. But when I got my own place, I decided that it was now or never! I had read about the tollers on the internet and in different books, and I got the impression that this could be the right breed for me. After seeing several nice tollers at an international dog show in Narvik, I immideately fell in love. I just had to have a toller!

At that time, I spent very much of my spare time reading about tollers and contacting different breeders and toller owners to get their opinion, and I definately liked what I heard. On the internet I saw lots of nice tollers with the Sunlit prefix, but that kennel had no homepage of its own, and I couldn't find a phone number, either. Besides, I doubted that a kennel that had bred so many beautiful dogs would be interested in selling a puppy to me... I contacted the breeding council for advice, and they told me where I could find the Norwegian Retriever Club's puppy list. On that list there were several litters, and Unni Solberg at Sunlit Kennels had two litters born in March. It took me a while to dare to pick up the phone and make that call, but I gave Unni a call, and after hours talking with her, she told me that she had a male pup available for me. I was absolutely thrilled! I told Unni that I was planning on doing some obedience and agility with him, but I would not enter any dog shows, so it didn't matter how he looked. Well, lucky for me, Unni must have thought that I would probably change my mind about that. And for someone who never was going to attend a dog show, I have done quite a bit of running in circles to the left! ;-) And as we all know - the puppy that never was to enter a dog show in his entire life was Norwegian Champion at 2,5 years of age... :-)

The day when I got Patrick home was the happiest day of my life. He was a little ball of fur with blue eyes, a pink nose and the cutest little pink toes. Little did we know that the creature that appeared to be an adoring toller puppy really was a kangaroo/piranha mix...! Patrick was quite a handful as a puppy, and the word mischievous is the best word to describe his first couple of months in his new home. I don't think anyone in the family owned a piece of clothing that wasn't perforated by his sharp puppy teeth, and we almost popped the champagne the day the last puppy teeth fell out! :-) When you see what a calm, patient and kind dog Patrick is today, it can be hard to imagine that he caused so much frustration and despair as a puppy. But now I know that Patrick wasn't an extraordinary mischievous puppy - he was just the average toller puppy.

Patrick was my first own dog, and before that I had mostly walked and trained our neighbours dogs. I had no idea what the obedience programmes was about, but I wanted to try competing in obedience with Patrick. Patrick was (and is) an extremely quick learner, and he was a joy to train, so we trained a lot, and far too much for a puppy. So one day Patrick didn't think obedience was fun anymore, and we used many months to repair the damage I had done. But no matter how many mistakes I made, Patrick was always giving 110%, and the good results came early. We won our first obedience competition, and our first competition in the working dog programme, too. With a debut like that, it's no wonder that I was completely addicted to training and competing with dogs, and when he even started collecting CCs and BOBs at shows, I realized that this dog had only one drawback - and that was me!

Everything seems so easy with Patrick - obedience, tracking, search, field training, freestyle, agility, shows - as long as I'm having fun, he's having fun. Things doesn't always work out perfect and we definately have our ups and downs, but still Patrick is one of Norways most merited tollers. At the time that this is written (december 2005), Patrick has so far achieved approved results in class B tracking and class C searching, he has a 3rd prize in obedience class III, two legs in agility class I and competes in jump class II. He is Norwegian and Swedish Showchampion and has a bunch of Best of Breed and CACIBs, and is still only 4,5 years old, so hopefully he has many, many good years left. We aim for the stars, and hope to end up somewhere above the tree tops ... :-)