Ellie and the first leather collar for a pit bull

Anyone with a dog at home also has a little big friend. In our house it’s Ellie, and from the very beginning I’ve been thinking how to bring her to life on this website. And not just because of what the rest of the article will deal with, but also because she was behind our first product – a leather collar for a pit bull, for her.

Without Elli, Dogmount would definitely not exist today. In truth, it’s not as if Ellie wrote Santa for a leather collar for a pit bull, but we wanted our lovely Ellie to have a beautiful, custom-made, hand-stitched leather and original collar. For this reason and others, I would like to devote the first post in this blog to Ellie.

Ellie is an American pit bull terrier (APBT) from Lenka Svobodova’s Dynamic Life breeding station; her mother’s name was Black Rose, her father’s Buddy. Ellie’s registered name was Jetta, and I’ll never forget the day I first saw her.

After moving to a new town, I started thinking about getting a dog. I already had experience with the APBT breed, not much, but some. After browsing several websites, I came to the website of Dynamic Life. It was Friday evening, and they happened to have a litter of puppies just then.  Coincidence? I sent an email to Mrs. Svobodová, explaining that I was thinking about a puppy but was unsure, and I asked if I could come just to have a look. Within an hour she wrote back that I could come, but that they only had three puppies left. I had a lot of worries at the moment, and although her response was rather unsettling for me, I went for a visit the next day.

Upon arriving, I spotted three beautiful puppies in a fenced enclosure. Two of them immediately came running, jumping and smiling at me. The third, lying a little ways away, paid me no attention. That was her – Jetta – black with a white chest, overall a bit brownish. She wasn’t interested in me – I was just air for her. When I went to pet her, she responded a little, albeit without the same enthusiasm with which the other two had greeted me. And it struck me that she had an interesting personality. I left undecided, but still in the car on my way home, I called Mrs. Svobodová and told her I liked Jetta but that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to provide her the necessary amount of time, create a proper living space for her, etc. She talked me out of my concerns, and I never once regretted it afterwards.

As a puppy, Ellie was very stubborn; at the beginning it seemed like she was a bit afraid of me, and maybe she missed her mother. She didn’t communicate, living a closed life in her own puppy world; she didn’t respond to inducements and basically stayed wherever I put her. She didn’t want to play. That was supposed to change in time, and it did; we began to communicate through sticks.

She didn’t like moving, balls had no effect, and she wasn’t interested in toys. I took her for walks in town, even envying other people with puppies and the close bond they already had with them. When I took Ellie off her leash to see if she’d follow me or at least go somewhere, she just sat there. Until one day we were in the forest and she was acting in her typical apathetic way, without interest in anything. I showed her a stick, but she didn’t respond, not until I broke one. The stick cracked, and at that moment it was if her entire world woke from hibernation. She beamed like the sun, jumped on the stick, and after that she gradually started to change: she began to communicate, play, became cheerful and, by the way, turned into an avid lumberjack.

Puberty wasn’t much of a problem; Ellie was just a little more stubborn than usual sometimes. All I wanted her to obey were a couple of commands, and she would respond to these, though sometimes it would take her a little longer. But gradually she began to mature from a youngster into a young woman. She was very communicative and sometimes I could see that she was trying so hard to understand what I was saying that she was perhaps shaking her head. It was at that time that I met my future wife, and so we both had a fantastic partner at home – one who was always in a good mood, fun, sometimes a bit of a clown, at others a little kid. And I realised how lucky we were. Her huge heart became apparent along with her love for people – almost to the point where I wondered if she’d be much of a guard dog if that situation ever arose.

Ellie is now a mature lady, though still with the nature of a puppy. And because we’re in retirement age, various problems are starting to appear. For nearly 8 years we really didn’t need a veterinarian. Perhaps just once when we didn’t know how to handle a false pregnancy, but even then the vet wasn’t much help. When she was 8 in the spring of 2017, Ellie got diarrhoea that we couldn’t stop even after two months. With that, things changed a lot. Now, in February 2018, we know that Ellie suffered some non-specific allergy to some enzymes, which meant anti-biotics, a diet and skin problems for the rest of her life. We even gave her corticoids for a while, though never anything more. Arthrosis appeared in both front paws, Ellie limps and thanks to vet visits we found tumours on her stomach. She underwent an operation, was spayed, had biopsies taken on her organs to determine the cause of the diarrhoea, etc. Ellie always was and still is a fighter, but she’s had a lot of dark days of the past year, to the point where I seriously thought around Christmas last year that the end was near. Her mental condition was poor. But things have turned around with the new treatment, and it is finally looking like she might have a lot of sunny days ahead. Even though she is shedding (her back legs, tail and ears are almost bald) and grey, when we run into people and Ellie gets all excited, sometimes we hear again ‘what a nice puppy’ we have, and that’s great.  Hopefully things will stay this way for a while.