She's a fighter...
 Chris Stamp's
white Standard Poodle Pitfour Pickles (aka Scrappy)
has been his most successful agility dog to date. She got to G6
just before Covid struck, made the final of the ABC and won the Adams Derby.
Most of the time, she came away from a show with a rosette. But life for Scrappy
has not been easy. It's been a long road of ups and downs. Chris thought it was
time for an update.
Scrappy was premature
and tiny but grew up to be an amazing girl/boy.
Yes, that's right.
When he/she was four
weeks old, the vet sexed her as a boy,
The breeder had called
her Scrappy Do because she was premature and had to be hand-fed in the
beginning. We didn't get her until she was 12 weeks old and, by that time, she
had aready come by her name. Yes, I know that Scrappy isn't a usual name for a
majestic white Standard Poodle, but it was too late to change it.
 Nine
months later he/she had a three day season. The breeder admitted that they weren't 100% sure that
she was a boy. After her season, our vet opened her up. He was concerned that
she may have had a half-developed womb, but there weren't, in fact, any
reproductive organs there at all, except for the tubes which were going nowhere.
Ear infection
She was about two years old when
she got an ear infection that just wouldn't go away. In the end, my vets sent us to
The Willows, a specialist-led skin and ear clinic to see a dermatologist called Jon Hardy who examined her and
put her
under anaesthetic (no. 2.) He scoped her ears and discovered a very bad
infection around the ear drum. He cleaned them and gave us medicine which
cleared it all up.
Four months later it
started up again. This time the infection was producing black wax. She had to go
back in again and have an anaesthetic (no. 3) They cleaned them
and a different treatment was given.
 This
went on for about for about four years with us going back for treatment every six months. She had to go
though it every time. Through all of this, she carried on training and competing and even qualified for
Crufts. As I said, she is a fighter.
In the end Jon talked
about closing her ear completely. We didn't feel very good about this. He said
there was one more treatment that we could try but every dose would have to be
made up by the vets. I had to give it to her over the period of a month.
The side effects would kill everything inside her ear. We decided to try this,
and it worked.
As I write this, touch wood she has been ear infection free.
A
sensitive soul
Just to make sure it
wasn't a food allergy, we tried feeding her a variety of different foods,
cutting out anything food-wise which could trigger an allergic reaction. All it
did was give her sensitive stomach.
Her health took a dramatic turn for the worse in 2023 with
her whole body sweating and
shaking very violently. Back we went to the
vets for more tests - all of which came back clear.
To be honest, Scrappy
had never been great with loud noises and, we surmised that, after all the
treatments she'd had on her ears, she had become super sensitive to
noise. We would have to work out how to keep her calm when this happened.
In the
end, the best way was to let her work though it herself. I know this sounds hard, but it
didn't matter. You could out your arms around her or just sit next to her, but
it would
only stop when she was back in control.
At the end of 2022, she
stopped training and I retired her from competition. It was a hard decision for
me but, in my heart, I knew it was best for her.
 Emergency
In November 2024, we thought we were going to lose her. Scrappy
stopped drinking and then eating. She went from 19.5kg to 18.2kg in a blink of
an eye. We rushed her to the vets along with a pee sample for them to analyse.
The vets admitted her there and then as she was very poorly and dehydrated. They
put her on a drip, and we left her there. Not surprisingly, after all those
times she had been in the vets and left, she now hates them. I felt so guilty.
They rang the next
morning to say that she'd had a good night but was still not eating. They wanted
to do
tests that night. Apart from dehydration, all the tests came back normal. As she was still on a drip,
the vets wanted to keep her in overnight. I went in
to see her and try to get her to eat, but she gave me the cold shoulder. She
always showed you when she wasn't happy with you.
That night she was
strong enough to do a scan. The next morning the vet rang me and said that
there was a shadow in the stomach and wanted to do an operation to see what was
going on. We give them the go ahead.
About 5pm that night I
had a call from the vet which we were dreading.
Happily, they said that they
didn't find anything internally out of the ordinary, and the shadow may have been
gas.
 As she
still wasn't eating, they fitted a feeding tube which they hoped would do. She had come out of the anaesthetic already
- remember she's a fighter - but
she still wasn't ready to go home until she could eat on her own. On Sunday, we
had a call to say that she was eating slowly and that she could come home. Happy
days.
Over the next week it
was a struggle to get her to eat, but we never had to use the tube. We took
her for a check up on the Friday after she had put on 0.7 kg, and they took out
the tube from her neck which was making her cough.
We slowly started to get
her back to normal and when she started to shake, we could give her half a paracetamol which seemed to calm her. Christmas was good but she slept a lot,
but we were able to keep her eating until New Years Eve. At midnight, it was like a war zone in Banbury. I hate fireworks, but this
was a different matter entirely.
The next morning, she
was back to square one and the next day we were back at the vets for more
tablets and injections. We were able to take her, but it took us over a week to get her back
to sort of eating. This is still where we are today, struggling to get her to
eat but we know the signs now of when she will eat and when she won't.
 One
day at a time
If you've ever lived with a retired agility dog, you know what a worry and
constant heartbreak it can be, especially when the dog gets older. There are
times when she looks so sad you could cry.
The good news for now is
that Scrappy still likes her walks and
she goes out to the agility field where she loves to be around the equipment.
Sometimes she
does some low height jumps and tunnels, running after a ball. She still goes to
shows and won't be left at home.
We have just got back
from holiday where she had the best time on the beach with the rest of the pack.
We are not out of the
woods - and we don't think we will ever be - but for today she is happy.
Scrappy fights on.
 About the author...
Chris Stamp
has had poodles all his life, originally because he was allergic to dog hair.
Before he got into dog agility, his other sport / hobby was pistol shooting. He
used to compete all over the country and got 1st in his group at the
British Open.
Chris (59 this year) has been doing agility for about 30 years. He started with
idea of just one poodle at a time but, as everyone knows, it never stays like
that.
He
was a sheet metal fabrication / welder for 36 years, but now is a warehouse
assistant manager, a big change.
He
and his wife have four Poodles -two Standards and two Mediums- as in the photo
left to right Dice G4, Scrappy G6, Rio G7 and Storm G4. Barnaby, Yogi Minstrel
and Rupert are all passed pets / agility dogs and are very missed every day.
First
published 3rd June 2025
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