Sisters

Mimi and Gracie are physical end members of the smooth fox terrier body spectrum.

Gracie is large and muscular. She is almost as tall as Harry but outweighs my little old man now. Her chest opened up when she was about 2 years old. (This refers to the following from the breed standard: "The foreribs should be moderately arched, the back ribs deep and well sprung, and the dog should be well ribbed up." Their ribs actually open up a little bit, usually accompanied by development of muscle in the shoulders.) Her coat is very tight and smooth. She is in fact oversized for a bitch but she has lovely conformation, gait, and proportions. She is a near carbon-copy of her mother Jen (CH Tamedale Glory).

Mimi is very slim, almost scrawny. She too is muscular but she is ripped without the bulk. As I've mentioned before, her coat is some bizarre genetic throwback to a very old style of smooth fox terrier coat with ripples and waves. It isn't a broken coat and by no means a wire coat. It's just not perfectly smooth. Her chest has never opened up and it probably never will. It gives her a leggy look. Her gait is very nice but when she stops, she throws her left hip out just a bit. It would never work in the show ring.

Emotionally, they are also different. They respond to all kinds of stimuli in opposite ways. Gracie tries to take toys from the other dogs, Mimi doesn't try, she just takes the toys. Mimi is worried about firecrackers and thunder. Gracie doesn't seem to notice either. Mimi barks when left alone in the house. Gracie does not.

Sisters with so much in common yet they are such very different little creatures.

I've mused on the role that genetics versus upbringing might have on their respective agility training and careers. Now that both are in class (Gracie on Monday nights and Mimi on Tuesday mornings), I get a chance to see them in action back to back.

Their respective classes are going great. Mimi totally smoked several nasty sequences this week. She was brilliant. And I'm trying new things with Gracie, using almost no verbals and just driving ahead to the next obstacle (the "do the obstacle that is in front of you" method).

But as I was playing with (that is, training) them all tonight, it struck me that Mimi and Gracie do one thing exactly alike.

I use the command "get ready" plus a small hand motion to move the girls into a seated heel position next to me, facing the same direction I am facing. They have to sit and they have to sit very close to me. I use the same verbal command regardless of the side and let my hand provide the context of left or right. This is how I start every training exercise, every sequence, every run in a trial. I use this command all the time.

Well, when I say "get ready" and twist my hand, both girls spring forward into the air (they will get a running start if they need to but they can do this from a stand directly in front of me), lightly tap my stomach with their front paws and sometimes their nose, then as they drop, turn and land into the heel position by my side. It's a lot of drama for a relatively simple behavior but both of them do this.

I think it is amusing that they both interpret this command in the exact same way, that both express their excitement and anticipation of what is to come with the sproing and the tap on my stomach before settling into that ever so short moment of stillness and held breath. Sure, I'm the common denominator but in this case, I think there's some shared wiring in common behind it.