Bidder was truly a special dog. He started his performance career with a TD at about 18 months old but we spent most of our performance time in the obedience ring. He started in Canada, earning his CD with a 197, 199 and 199+; the last was High-in-Trial. Over the course of his AKC career, he earned over 20 HIT's and 90 OTCH points. He was being campaigned (at age 8) when he was diagnosed with a nasal carcinoma. We lost him about nine months later.

The picture above was our "15 minutes of fame": Bidder won the 1991 Detroit-Winsor World Series Open Division. That same year he placed at Gaines and won the BSCA national specialty with a 199 from Open B. He also competed in the first AKC National Invitational Obedience Championship (1995).

The best times we had were traveling with Laurie Thal. In those days, Laurie was often campaigning Carol Murray's Dart (BIS CH Souvenir's Triple Play, CD). We all enjoyed the ups and downs of the dog show scene. Our most exciting day was probably in Traverse City when Laurie brought her home-bred Rerun (BIS CH Topline's One More Copy) to special. Bidder was HIT and Rerun was BIS!

I am finding this almost impossible to write -- nothing I say can convey how much Bidder meant to me and how much I miss him. He would have loved agility and he wanted to play with advanced tracking. "After the OTCH", I would tell him; it never came to pass.

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