Charlie was surrendered to the Animal Welfare League at eight weeks old, along with his nine brothers and sisters. They were an unwanted litter, and that's the only part of his pre-surrender history that I know about.
After having worked with Jack for about six months, just after my fourteenth birthday in 2007 I was in the car with my dad and best friend, driving to my friend's place to drop her off. Dad casually remarked that he'd been looking through the paper and come across an ad for a free staffy puppy: he'd jokingly told mum that they should get her for me. We dropped my friend off and on the way home I asked dad, without expecting the response I got, "Would you really let me get a puppy?"
I didn't want to get my hopes up because he was liable to just change his mind, or say the next day that he'd been joking, but I brought it up again a week later and got the same answer. While on holidays that September I asked my mum and she gave pretty much the same response as dad.
And that was all the confirmation I needed. I was getting a puppy, my very own dog, and I couldn't wait.
I decided that common sense dictated I wait until I finished school for the year, so I could have nearly two months off to focus on the pup before I started grade ten, so I prepped and waited and stalked the AWL website until December. I told dad that I was going to be looking for a kelpie cross ideally and he tried to put me off, saying I should get a more "mellow" breed. I didn't have my heart set on any particular breed, and I certainly wasn't going to knock back a dog just because it didn't have a smidgen of kelpie in it, but I was still quietly hopeful. My quiet hope exploded when, checking out the AWL site a few days before we were going to head down there, I noticed a new listing of kelpie cross border collie puppies. They'd been named after chocolates and only half the litter was left, despite only being in the shelter a few days. I was slightly disappointed, figuring that they'd be gone by the time we went down.Finally, on the twelfth of December 2007, my parents drove me down to the AWL.
We had a look around, found a run with an assortment of puppies and I was considering one of two very over-the-top mareema cross kelpies when mum found a far more sedate Rhodesian ridgeback cross staffy in another run. She was a bit older- about five months- and already a huge dog, but she had a wonderful nature and was very smoochy. I liked the look of her a lot more than the intense black, leaping lunatics we'd left behind in the puppy run, but I went back once more to have another look at them before asking an attendant to get the staffy cross girl out.The black puppies were really insane- one of them actually ended up at training a few months later with their new owner and they were six times as crazy, so I'm actually really glad I didn't end up going with them because that was far too much for me to handle then. But from behind them, tottering out after a nap from the covered kennel section, came a little chocolate ball of fluff with a white chest. He sat down quietly in the corner at the front of the run, crazy puppies leaping all over him, and just kind of looked at us.
I checked the chart on the run, realised he was one of the litter I'd seen listed and before we even had someone bring him out to get a closer look I'd decided: that was my new dog. He was called Crunchie and was just one of two left from the entire litter: his little brother, who looked far more border collie than kelpie, was adopted not five minutes after I'd picked my new pup out. Out in one of the meet-n-greet runs Jack met him and they seemed to get along fine. Jack was more interested in sniffing than anything else, and the little pup was more interested in fetching a tennis ball than anything else.
I didn't know what I was really looking for in a dog, other than my gut instinct saying, "Yeah, this one". I was optimistic about doing agility, but I didn't really know anything about it, or had any real goals other than to have a bit of fun at the club.
My gut said yep, so half an hour later I was walking out with my new furball under my arm.In the car on the way home my dad very vehemently told me that no way in hell was his name staying as Crunchie. I wasn't that fond of it either, but not being that good at choosing names I left it up to my parents to throw suggestions my way until dad eventually said, "What about Charlie- like my boss". I looked at the puppy as mum said, "Or Harry" and after a moment of tossing up between the two I decided that while he "looked" like both, he had more of a Charlie vibe.
So Charlie it was.
We didn't do much for the next few months. Training had broken up for the Christmas extended break so we didn't have any classes. I wasn't quite sure what to do with Charlie other than teach him a few things, so we did some of that and he settled in. I didn't have a crate for him, or even a proper bed for myself for a few weeks; my loft bunk made supervising a puppy through toilet training in the middle of the night near to impossible so I camped out in the lounge room, first on the couch and then a camping stretcher bed when my back decided it had had enough of the former. It was all a bit hit and miss, but we did okay.When classes started back we started puppy preschool: it was quite rushed. Dad would sit in the car with Charlie while I put Jack through his Commando class, then I run out and change dogs to do preschool with Charlie.
It quickly became clear that a) I didn't know what I was doing, and b) my wonderful, couldn't-put-a-foot-wrong puppy was an absolute shit.
He would bark. And bark. And bark. All through the class, and nothing I did would shut him up. He spent more time off being walked around by one of the assistant instructors while I was listening to instructions or advice just because no one could hear over his yapping. I also discovered that he was leash reactive and fear aggressive towards other dogs: on lead he would launch and get on the defensive if another dog so much as looked at him, but off lead he was this cowering puppy hiding behind my legs and not wanting to even acknowledge the other pups existed.
We got through preschool- barely- and started Obedience One.
I wanted to hand him back to the AWL. I couldn't work on anything we were doing in the class because I needed to spend three quarters of the class trying to get just focus, and the other quarter he was just off with the fairies and I couldn't get his attention back at all. At my wit's end and having tried as much I as I knew, I bought a check chain and stopped taking any of his crap.
It worked.
Once he realised I wasn't going to be flicked off, or ignored, or pushed about by him anymore he got his act together and we started to make some progress in the final couple of weeks of class. I kept the check chain on, just because it seemed to give him a different frame of mind, but only had to throw in a pop if he was starting to eyeball another dog or trying to pick a fight with someone twice his size.
I'd had enough of dealing with the crap he was throwing at me, and while yes, that was the attitude I certainly needed to handle him and get his respect and co-operation, I wish I was more experienced and didn't resort to the check chain because he really isn't the right sort of dog to use it on. He responds, but he is too handler responsive and insecure to deal with a physical correction. In Obedience Two I dropped the check chain and we started to click. We still had issue with other dogs, but I wasn't quite capable of handling them so we just kept out distance and worked on understanding each other. We completed Obedience Two Point One and started puppy agility before progressing to the new "rally obedience" classes and more advanced agility.
We were stuck in the beginner/intermediate class for agility, though, because of Charlie's new favourite- and seriously dangerous- habit: bolting at other dogs. It was scary, and stupid, and it wasn't something I wanted to mess around with; the recall wasn't the problem, I could get him back. But what was the point if he was going to chase any dog that ran in his line of sight? My instructor asked if I objected to a check chain, I told her I didn't care so long as it was going to work, and so we got long line, check chain, hooked Charlie up and let him self correct until he got the immediate picture. Only took a couple of tries, and then from there I had to go through the process of "weaning" him off the lead and collar until we were finally able to run a course without the little bugger taking off to get in another dog's face. I was still working on leash reactivity, being nice to other dogs and not picking fights and we were slowly but surely making progress. I started using a clicker with this especially and in addition to his growing maturity and training and our bond he began to deal with it. 
We got to move up to advanced agility, continued with our advancing obedience classes, and had our trialling debut at Gold Coast Triple Jumpers in July 2009. Out of five runs- three JD, two JDO- I think we DQ'ed every single one because Charlie's jump height is 600, he measure 555, and he took a like to running straight under the tyre jumps instead of leaping through them, every run. But he stuck with me and considering my very green handling and his young age, he did so well.
Shortly after that we did out first demonstration with our club and had an absolute blast; we've never looked back from that and look forward to the half dozen or so we do at various locations throughout the year.
Our partnership isn't without issues. I'm a pretty emotional person, and Charlie's an emotion leech which often causes us a few problems. He tends to be either flat as a pancake or off the wall crazy with no in between; he likes to pick fights with German shepherds; he shuts down at the drop of a hat; his leash manners are non-existent; he tends to stress and have mind explosions when I really need him to be centred and focused… In all honesty, he is the worst dog for me to get when I did get him, and I really stuffed him up in a lot of areas.
But he turned out not too shabby, all things considered, and while being completely wrong he's also completely right: I've learnt more in my few years with Charlie than I imagine I would have learnt in double the time with an "easy dog".He's fast, and crazy, and makes me laugh and cry and we've been through a lot together.
He's a very special dog, is my moose.
