Blue Collar Dogs

By Chris Robinson

There are some dogs that are simply born to work who also take their jobs very seriously and nothing will deter them from doing that work. If you have been lucky enough to have owned one of these dogs, you know that they are the type that, if human, would get up every day, put on their jeans and a work shirt or their cover- alls, pack their lunch pail and go to work, giving their bosses an honest day’s work for a day’s pay. These blue collar dogs get every job done that you ever ask of them and it doesn’t matter to them whether the job is something they’ d normally do, something totally oddball or something so hair-raising as to scare the livin’ bejesus out of Alfred Hitchcock. They follow our frequently ob- sessive and occasionally foolish pursuits without the slightest hesitation.

They come in all sizes, all colors and all breeds. While some of these working stiff dogs aren’t much to look at with a lineage to match, others are outstanding breed specimens with bloodlines at least as royal as any- one who ever occupied the throne in Buckingham Palace. For those scoffing at theidea of a toy breed being a blue collar dog, be careful how you scoff. I have a friend who owns an elegant Maltese that works her little tail off at being a wonderful companion dog. There isn’t a thing my friend has asked this little dog to do where she didn’t get the task done – from agility to obedience to rally to therapy work to serious lapsitting. If she doesn’t have some job to do each and every day, she gets extremely upset.

I’ve had the great fortune to own two of these blue collar dogs and my young dog is showing signs of being the third having already run through one barbed wire fence in pursuit of a crippled pheasant and never breaking stride despite losing a consider- able hunk of skin from his left front leg. The two “certified” blue collar dogs I’ve owned have worked in snowstorms, combinations of freezing rain and iceballs, hurricane force winds, blazing heat and wind-blown dust. They have swam through water just a degree or two north of freezing, run through skin-tearing briars, broken leg-bruising skim ice and, in one case, fought off a coyote in their desire to complete a retrieve even though both were also successful show dogs having several group wins to their credit.

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Posted by Alex on Jun 16 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.