Janell Copas and Brussels Griffon OTCH U-CDX Dixie D. Copas UDX, AX, AXJ

"Dixie"

Dixie joined our family in 1991 through the efforts of Brussels Griffon Rescue. She was an eight week old ball of fire who prefered to play with people over toys. As she grew and demonstrated her intelligence to me, I found myself wanting to teach her more and more. Dixie deserves all of the credit for my interest in obedience competition. Somehow this spunky little dog knew that she was meant to do obedience. Everything she did was telling me so.

After mentioning to a friend that I thought Dixie would do well in obedience competition, my friend put me in touch with an obedience school, the school where we've done all of our training, now called Dogwood. I learned to be a good trainer and Dixie excelled. She loves going to class and has always been easy to train. She's very quick at learning new things. I've been a good student, but a lot of the credit for our success goes to all of the great instuctors we've had.

Dixie is the first and only Brussels Griffon to have earned the title of Obedience Trial Champion. She has won six all-breed High In Trials, one specialty High In Trial, one Toy show High In Trial, six all-breed High Combined scores, several High Scoring Toy Dog awards, and a perfect 200 score. Dixie has competed twice in the AKC National Obedience Invitational winning a 2nd and a 4th place in the Toy Group. In 1997, she was ranked first in the Toy Group in both the Delaney and the First and Foremost rating systems.

Over the last year, Dixie has been competing in agility. She earned both the Agility Excellent and Agility Excellent Jumpers titles in just 7 months. She's now on her way to the Master Excellent title and doing a little tracking and playing with freestyle. Dixie is happiest when we are working together no matter what the sport is. She loves being out in public, meeting people, and competing as my partner. I've enjoyed the extra special bond we've devoloped through training and competing together as a team.