Article for British Carriage Dog Society Newsletter 2012

Introducing Lusi, First Canadian BCDS Member!

My name is Lusi, short for Onsengeltje Lusaka: I am eight months old now. I was born in New Brunswick at Dutch Kennels, (my mother is Dutch as is my breeder), and I am now living in Ontario, Canada with my new family, Elizabeth, John, and the three chihuahuas; Remy, (my best friend) and Loki, (who is friendly to me sometimes) and Cola (who is old and grumpy!) There is also Victoria who is sometimes home and who loves to play silly games with me and then there is Dande, the Morgan horse, who I go to visit at the barn.

My mistress tells me that I am very beautiful, she loves my liver spottedness and my soft eyes, the silky feel of my coat, my friendliness and exuberance. She tells me that I remind her of Zuli, a very special German Shorthaired Pointer that she had many years ago in England when she was first married. This was before she moved first to Germany, where she learned to ride, and then to Canada, where after more than fifteen years of not having a horse she succumbed to the draw of driving and bought a two year old Morgan pony.

“Quite ridiculous!” was what everyone said! So why on earth had she bought a completely green pony? Anyone with any sense at all knows that a green horse and a green rider is a bad idea; even more so when it comes to driving. Well, this is her story and in a way it is also my story too.

My mistress had made a very short trip back to the UK to visit family. It was a shorter trip than usual, only seven days long in May 2008. The days flew passed so quickly but a remarkable thing happened during those few days. She was taken out by her sister in a Bennington cart put to Honey, a pony that had recently been acquired as a riding pony, but which she was assured also drove. Well, sitting up there on the bench seat with her sister driving, was the most thrilling thing that my mistress had felt for years. She loved the clip clopping sound as they made their way through the old village of Brixworth in Northamptonshire. It seemed as though every part of her heritage had suddenly culminated in those few moments to give this most profound experience, this perfect moment.

In a flash, the visit was over and my mistress had returned to Nova Scotia where she was living at that time. Within two weeks she had discovered a driving clinic and was heading out with a small photograph printed out from her computer in her pocket. The photograph, showing a two year old bay Morgan, with a somewhat Arab look on the dish-faced youngster, stayed in her pocket until the last night of the clinic. Amidst the clinking of glasses and the story telling, she showed the photo to her new friends telling them that she had just bought a driving pony. Well, they just about fell off their chairs!

The Morgan breeder, as it turned out, had a contact in Ontario who had agreed to break Dande to harness; and oh my, what a contact it turned out to be, Kirsten Brunner. After the first ten weeks of training, Dande faced the long ordeal in mid September 2009 of being shipped from Ontario to Nova Scotia. For two years my mistress made the 3 hour trip to the Morgan barn where Dande continued his training and where she was learning to drive. They competed in their first year of Morgan breed driving shows in 2010!

In another curious change my mistress and family then moved back to Ontario, and Dande went back to Kirsten Brunner's barn at Beaverwood Farm where my mistress and Dande worked even harder and started competing in Pleasure shows and CDEs.

My mistress cannot tell me exactly when it was that she knew she must have a Dalmatian in her life. She thinks that the idea came to her at the driving shows. Then, apparently she decided that it must be a liver girl Dal! The search began and then the wait. They waited eight months for me to arrive and when I did they were so very delighted. I was bigger than they thought I would be when they arrived to collect me at eight weeks old and I grew like a weed.

The long trip back from Dutch Kennels in New Brunswick where I had been born to our new home in Ontario was about 22 hours long. It meant from henceforth that I would always be happy to be in the truck with my mistress close beside me and I regularly made the trip with her to the barn to see Dande. Wherever my mistress went, I went.

She told me right from the start that I was going to be a carriage dog and that I had to learn how to behave around the horses and how I must get used to all the different smells and sounds at the farm. Dande, she said, was used to dogs but not all the other horses were quite so accepting. There was a long list of barn rules; do not eat poop, do not chase the cats.....it was hard to remember all those rules.

My best memories of our first summer were of being taken to the big fields after the harvest. My mistress would walk Dande on a lead-line to graze and I would play under the apple tree with the apples, tossing them in the air and running after them. Sometimes I saw a low flying bird and I would scamper after it across the field and then if I had gone too far I would race back at a speed of lightning, my gaze fixed firmly on my mistress. I learned to stretch out, elongate my stride and float effortlessly across the terrain.

First ride on a marathon carriage
at Kentucky Horse Park.

I went with my mistress to some of the shows too. There were lots of people there. Best of all were the CDEs, because I got long walks along the cross country course and then there would be a shout and we would duck into the side tightly as the marathon vehicles rattled passed us at high speed. Of course I got lots of petting too which was nice. Then in October, when I was four months old, we went for a long trip to Kentucky to the National Drive. My mistress thought that she had died and gone to heaven. If ever there was paradise on earth then surely it was the Kentucky Horse Park. Sometimes I had to sit quietly outside the doors of Dande's stall, sometimes I got long walks and sometimes I got to ride on the back of the marathon vehicle with Kilby sitting close to me holding treats and talking to me as my mistress drove. 

Just short of a Dal!

I got a lovely rosette for doing this too, although my mistress had put some funny orange clothes on me which I wasn't so keen on! I also met three other Dals there and watched them as they went about their business of working at axle.

When we came back from Kentucky, I heard my mistress telling my master, that we had done the basics but that she didn't really understand how to train me to be a real carriage dog. She did not know of anyone else nearby who had a Dal and drove. She did meet some people at one of the local CDEs who said I looked just like their lovely Dal but that had been many years ago.

Everybody in the family starting searching for information about how to train me to axle! My mistress was worried about making a bad job of the training because she did not know enough. She said that she found bits about training me and we worked on my basic obedience and I got to run alongside a bicycle for a little bit towards the end of the summer, just to get me used to the idea of a wheel. One day, my mistress found some videos about Road Trials on the Dalmatian Club of America website and then my mistress' relatives sent a link from the UK from the Horse and Hound Forum talking about working Dals. That was how she learned about the British Carriage Dog Society and also of John Wilmot. She started emailing John and talked to him on the phone about me. Then a bit later she got a package in the post and showed me a little silver broach that she had got from the British Carriage Dog Society. She was very pleased with this and I watched her reading the first newsletter when it arrived just before Christmas. She said it was her best Christmas present.

Recently, my mistress has been emailing Celia Gilbert and I think they are exchanging “naughty” stories. She says that I am naughty when I chew things that do not belong to me and that I cannot be trusted in the new truck on my own, right now. It seems that her GSP dug a hole in the car seat many years ago and she thinks I might just do the same. She says we must get a crate for the truck for me, at least until I have stopped teething and chewing. I am not so keen on the idea but I do miss going down to the barn, even in the snow and ice, and the minus eighteen degree temperatures! The mail arrives bringing the new show schedules for this year and I am hearing more about Dande looking well and his being ready to hitch again, very soon. I have to admit that I have been a bit bored since the New Year and the very cold weather has curtailed our long walks and the barn trips but all this looks as though it will change for the better very soon! My mistress has been blogging my puppy training since the New Year on http://educatinglusi.blogspot.com/ and hopes to have lots of our carriage driving training on it soon! She thinks it is wonderful for us both to have new friends across the pond!