How do I describe Otterpop? She's sort of "special". Someone out on Larkin Valley road captured her one day, she was chasing cars on the road for a couple days with a border collie. This that and the other, someone thought it was my dog and I ended up taking her out to work with me. She looked like a weird, runty version of Ruby. Ruby is elegant, Otterpop is sort of bizarre and not dog like. She is put together from chihuahua and cattle dog parts, we call her a Watsonville street chihauhua. She was probably about 6 months old when I found her.

She loves the frisbee. She loves the ball. She loves to chase and then posess these things. She wants to be the center of the universe. She used to want to chase cars more than anything, that is pretty much gone but I wouldn't let her off her leash near the freeway. Trucks still make her crazy. She herds things. She likes to help at the ranch.

She has a violent freak out streak about stuff that gets up her craw. Men in hats at trials used to make her insane, forget it if the judge was a man. She now eyes them in a paranoid way but no longer has a barking Napoleon fit at them. We know she doesn't like people speaking spanish-she probably had some kind of past history or else is just plain old racist. I didn't try hard to find an owner when I found her because of this. She wasn't in good shape. She used to have a hair trigger, now we can keep the freakout meltdowns pretty under control.

She is actually faster than Ruby because she has so much drive, but trials still make her nervous-she is a nervous nellie. When she gets it together, she is going to be incredibly speedy in her little short strided way. She is ringwise, she knows the frisbee isn't coming out til the end of the course and can just lope around out there til we finish and go get the frisbee.

Otterpop has to be near me all the time. She howls and makes insane noises when she's not with me or the other dogs. Thank god I have other dogs. She either loves things or hates them-there is no in between with Otterpop. She runs the roost-she is a worse control freak than me. Otterpop learned to walk on a leash holding a frisbee in her mouth, and caused quite a site for years walking around like that. As long as she is fetching, she is a good dog. Don't tell the other dogs, but this one is crazy smart, as long as I can keep channeling that smartnedss for the powers of good not evil, we are ok.