My Christmas Story~
On Christmas Eve 2008 I was in the horse barn cleaning stalls in a hurry to get back to the dogs and feed them and then to the house to wrap presents for Christmas morning.   While I was cleaning stalls, my friend, my companion, my loyal Sosha who is always by my side where ever I am at, took after a mouse that was trying to get back to its hole in the wall.  Well, she caught it, to my amazement and as she carried it by me I praised her for her accomplishment as I have never seen her catch one before.  That is usually left for my Rat Terriers who live in the barn.  She took the mouse and sat down with it in the middle of the alley way.  When she sat it down of course the mouse took off...LOL  I think she thought it would play with her~!   She chased it under a stall door and I opened the door so she could get it again.  By then the Rat Terriers caught on to the chase and went in and grabbed her playmate and took care of it.   All she wanted to do is play with it.  I praised her for her mission and proceeded on with the chores.

While I was outside feeding the outside horses I saw Sosha out in the horse pasture digging around under a huge pile of dead and fallen trees.  We usually stack all the fallen trees in a year there and every so often have a bomb fire and roast marshmallows and hot dogs~  It has been a couple years since we did that and our pile is quite large with fun holes and places rabbits, cats, and other small animals call home for the winter.  I figured Sosha thought since she had caught a mouse she would work her way up to a rabbit.  I could see she was having fun and I worked on finishing up feeding the horses outside.  When it came time to come in the house I noticed that Sosha had lost her beautiful Swiss collar with the brass cows on it.  I  said, "Oh Sosha you lost your collar~!  What happened to it?"  She looked naked without it.  Those collars are hand tooled in Switzerland in a small village.  They are not cheap, but they are so "Swiss" and so "Bernese Mountain Dog"   Then thinking back to Sosha playing around that pile of trees, I knew she probably lost it there and it would be a long shot if I would ever find it again in the snow and such.  It was dark and I was tired so thought I would search for it "maybe" the next day which was Christmas~

On Christmas morning I was up early and out feeding the dogs and then next to the horse barn to feed the horses.  To my amazement, my husband, who rarely goes to the barn, had already had 1/3 of the horses all fed~!  I was ever so grateful for the extra help on this day~ We finished up in the horse barn and I told my husband that he could go up to the house and I would feed the 4 horses outside.  I remembered I probably should go look for that collar before another snow fall or something and maybe just maybe I could or would find it??  Ya think?  I don't know??  I fed the 2 horses in that pasture with the pile of trees, set my buckets down and wondered slowly over to the pile while looking on the ground the entire time because thought maybe it would be there.   I was about 50 feet from the pile when I looked up and from underneath the huge pile, coming out of a den like cave that had been created by the trees, came Sosha as if in slow motion right out of a Disney movie with the Swiss collar in her mouth~!  OMG~!   My mouth was wide open as she trotted over to me with the collar.  I bent down to take it out of her mouth and she gave me the double Berner nudge and wiggled her head into the collar~!   I have never in all my life seen any animal accomplish something so amazing in my life~!   I hadn't even told her or talked to her about it when I was walking up there, nor did I even see she was in the pile.   Sosha has only been taught to sit and shake and has been my loyal companion and always by my side.  To me, this was one of the most amazing moments in my life to actually have a dog of this intelligence do something like this with not ever being taught fetch or search for things. My dogs wear their collars like royalty wearing crowns.  They are very proud of them~  She just had to go find hers so she could be the "Queen" again~!   It simply was a Disney moment that I wish I could have caught on tape~!   This made my day and I had the biggest grin on my face all day and I told the Story to anyone that would listen of my amazing Sosha~!  

God Bless Bernese Mountain Dogs and All of you~!

Carri Jones of "Holiday Bernese Mountain Dogs"