In Loving Memory Of
Her Royal Highness, Queen Patchs the First

Her Royal Highness Queen Patchs

“Loyal Companion, Best Friend, Compassionate Teacher”

Patchs came into my life completely by accident one afternoon. I was out walking with Neka and passed a lady up the street who was working in her yard. After exchanging pleasantries, we found out that she was going to be taking care of her son’s dog who also had the same name as my dog, only it was spelled Neika.

To make a long story short, I ended up adopting Neika a few months later when she was unable to care for Neika for various reasons. After bringing her home, I needed to change her name to avoid confusion. She became know from then on as Patchs!

Neka and Patchs quickly became best friends. They did everything together. As they played together, I noticed something pretty amazing. Before Patchs had come to live with us Neka had never had any interest in toys. For over two years she never even touched them. But after Patchs came into the picture she actually taught Neka what they were and how to play with them. As time went on Patchs also showed Neka how to meet new people and new dogs.

At this point in time, I was still working my 9-5 job. I was also doing a bit of dog training on the weekends. When I was training, Patchs became my partner when I needed to work with dogs that were lacking in social skills. She was quite a social butterfly and got along with everyone. Dogs and humans alike.

In early April of 2011 Neka suddenly got very sick and passed away in just a few hours. Patchs searched for her for days. I was devastated too. We needed each other. We kept each other’s minds off of our loss.

Long Live the Queen

As time went by her social skills continued to improve. As my training business grew, she was able to help me more and more. She had the natural ability to use her body language to calm excited and nervous dogs. I seldom even needed to tell her what to do. She just did it.

During the winter of 2020-2021, I finally had to come to grips with the fact that Queen Patchs was getting older. I knew that her days of working with dogs, (especially younger dogs), was coming to an end. She 14 years old now. So, I began looking for a young dog that could fill her shoes. I still had a little bit of time, but I knew that needed to start looking. I knew that a young dog would need training and couldn’t just hit the ground running and begin where she was leaving off.

June 4th, 2021 Enter Starsky.

The morning I met Starsky, I immediately saw a lot of the same skills in him as I had in Patchs. He was a natural. He was a very energetic, 18-month-old Husky mix and he needed training. But mostly he needed to learn to be calm around other dogs. 

Starsky and Patchs got along great right from the start. She had to show him who was boss a few times. After all, he was young and very “full of himself”.  As I worked with Starsky I could tell that sometimes she felt left out. So, I always took some “special time” every day to hang out with her and do things with just her.

The winter months were hard for her. She really slowed down in 2022. She always loved her walks and she still wanted to go every morning. But as they say, “The Mind Is Willing, but the Body is Weak”.