Cingaro's Nothern Light

*Nordi*

Born: 04-01-2001

Imp. Norway

 ‘That which comes from far is better’. For a while  I let myself believe this and that’s the reason I had  a number of [very expensive] Shelties from other countries sent over. Number one from South Africa, of course some from England [3], one from Germany and I had three sent over from Norway. I can honestly say that all those expensive imports ended up as failures. The problems varied from eye defects via HD to dental problems, and if this was all okay, then we had Nordi who grew up to be oversized. Nordi was brought to me by a fellow breeder and when I first saw him I got the shock of my life! What an ugly pup!! [centre photo at the top of the page] But oh well, he couldn’t go back right away so there you have it…I’ll wait and see what will become of him. Nordi didn’t stay with me, but went to Henk van de Vooren with whom I imported a number of Shelties.

Soon it became clear that Nordi was not up to standard as we had hoped and so he became a friendly pet for Henk. In 2002 I did take him to the World Winner show in Amsterdam where he received, to my surprise, the 4^th excellent in his class, but the judging turned out to be a farce because every dog received an excellent result.  

And thus Nordy spent his first years with Henk and his pack of shelties. Nordi was the youngest.

But Henk grew older and Nordi remained as the only Sheltie of the pack and in the end Henk couldn’t care for him any more so Nordi came to live with me in April 2007.

Since then Nordi has changed completely. First of all he has lost a lot of weight. By changing his diet he is now rid of his skin problems, and his teeth are cleaner because of chewing on bones. Also he is now much happier. In the beginning it was difficult to win his trust, but now he enjoys all the attention he gets and likes being one of the pack. He disliked grooming but now he loves to be taken care of. The only thing he still won’t allow is the cleaning of his teeth. 

Unfortunately Nordi still has his lesser points. He doesn’t like strangers and is afraid of children [especially when they noisily run or walk.] He barks a lot and when in a place unknown to him he’ll pee all over the place. He also does this when other dogs come for a visit or when they are temporarily adopted. But oh well, in that case it just needs more cleaning up because the other dogs will join him. In that case I have a little train of ‘pissers’ here.

During the last 2 years I have taken Nordi a couple of times to a fun-show; Henk would then handle him. Last year Nordi joined the veterans and so we saw  ‘two old men’ stumbling through the showring…. LOLOL

Nordi is now 9 years old and it looks like he will not really reach a very high age. It turns out he has a serious form of Arthrose in his elbows. His cartilage is diminishing and so there is a bone-on-bone situation which is very painful. By giving Nordi pain killing medicine I hope he will continue having fun a little while longer, but I must be careful that he doesn’t burden himself.

I don’t have many photos of Nordi, but on the left you can see him  April 2007 to November 2009