N Uch Hólmfríður frá Kolsholti

6th November 1988 - 28th October 2003

Mother: Skonsa frá Kolsholti

Father: Baldur frá Ólafsvöllum

I remember when I went to see the litter that Hófi was in I had never seen cuter puppies. They were so colourful and all had their little ears up and their tails curled just like miniatures of their mother and grandmother (who also lived on the farm). I loved the fact that the black was a rare colour in the breed at the time and I was very excited to breed to keep the colour in the breed. Of course I wasn´t too pleased that for years the only question I got when I was anywhere with Hófi was; "is she a Border Collie mix?" I knew the colour was not new in the breed, her grandfather Garða-Tinni was the same colour (she was almost the spitting image of him) and he was a Champion. So I had my job cut out for me, I needed to bring the awareness of the public and judges to the fact that not all Iceland dogs were red or yellow. More often than not she was the only black dog at shows so it wasn´t strange that the judges weren´t used to the colour. She very often placed with champion quality ribbon but never did place 1st. So she never got her Icelandic Championship, lucky for me by the time we lived in Norway the colour was much better known and she did become a Norwegian Champion.

I planned to breed from her in future but while she was growing up she was just so intelligent and fun to work with, a fantastic working dog so we did our best to disprove the rumours that an Icelandic sheepdog can not learn obedience. At the age of 11 months she competed in the first and only (until just a few years ago) obedience trial in Iceland. She competed as the youngest competitor against many different breeds but mostly Labradors, Poodles and German Shepherds, some even 6-7 years old. She took 3rd place and my smile was ear to ear when I received the prize medal around my neck. Of course I told everyone that this was the easiest dog to train that I had ever met. I had had a German Shepherd and thought he was trainable but Hófi was too quick to learn!

Hófi was a dog that it´s hard to describe, that once in a lifetime dog that you can never duplicate. She taught me alot through the years and unfortunately she was often the gineau pig for my training efforts. I used classical conditioning, choke collars and long lines back then because that´s all that was available here at the time. I so wish I would have known about operant conditioning and clicker taining when I had Hófi because she was such a wonderful character but I broke her spirit a bit her first few years. Of course I took advice from trainers and my dogs paid the price. She was like a robot in her younger years and it wasn´t until later in her life that I realised how much I had "controlled" her every move and how sad I became that I hadn´t gotten to know this super character earlier in her life. We could have had so much more fun! I didn´t know that a dog could wag his tail while competing in obedience, I´d never seen that. I competed with her in obedience, agility and shows and I would say that she excelled in agility but was a super obedience dog as well although we don´t have titles in Iceland or competitions I am sure that if I would have lived in a different country with her she could have become an Obedience and Agility Champion.

Her temperament was such that she loved all animals, my sister owned a pet store and bred all kinds of animals like hamsters, gineau pigs, rabbits, birds etc. Hófi loved to lick them all on their little heads and watch them, she would sometimes try to get them to play but mostly she just liked to see what they were doing. I even bred budgies myself for awhile and it was fun to watch them interact. She loved kids too but didn´t appreciate them pulling or kicking at her, if they did she would lick them silly and then stand up and walk away, never any ill feelings and I could always trust her. However she was known in my group of friends as "Hófi the cop" because she did have a tendancy to tell off or remind other dogs especially other females that they were supposed to be well behaved. She hated when there was too much noise or dogs play fighting, she always went in and stopped any fights. If she heard a dog scream or cry she would run in to "rescue" it and the culprit that caused it needed to watch out.

I did have to keep an eye on her with other females as she got older but she was mostly a judge of character and I could tell what type of dog it was by how Hófi would react to them. The first time it happened was at a training class, she did everything asked of her but was a little on edge during class which was not like her. After the class was finished all the dogs were let to play amongst themselves while the humans had coffee. This time she darted staight at one of the other dogs and started a scuffle. She always stopped as soon as I told her to which was of course good. We tried to figure out what had started it and then it dawned on us after the same thing happened a couple more times during the following weeks but with different dogs each time. The truth was the dogs that misbehaved during class were her "targets", if no one misbehaved then there was no need to tell them off. The reason she knew they were misbehaving was that the owners and the trainer would yell at them (good old days, I think not). It was actually quite funny to watch her, she never hurt the other dogs but she got her point across. As she got older and more experienced and had litters she learned that all she needed was a certain look in her eye or a special bark and any dog would stop what it was doing and behave. The fun thing about Hófi was that she was so sensitive to body language that I trained her to listen to my facial expression for commands. I would use my eyes alot with her in agility she could take commands from anywhere in the ring, I could stand in the middle and point out the objects and she never made mistakes. I have missed her so much during the years. She was what I would call naturally obedient, picked up things right away without much repetition and seemed to read my mind and you could swear she knew human language! She was very stable in her temperament, never scared of anything (she would go with us to the fireworks shows on new years) but yet soft enough to obey the slightest command even when whispered, a harsh word was one of the worst things she knew. If you raised your voice it was as if you´d shot her, like I say I really wish I would have been clicker training when I owned her. 

Hófi´s motherly skills were outstanding, I could watch her for hours with her puppies. She raised them so well that I never even knew I had puppies in the house, they were so well behaved and quiet that she made my job so much easier. I will never forget one incident that happened with her first litter, it was one of those WOW moments that I discovered how intelligent Hófi really was. We got it on video actually and I often watched it over and over. She was as usual trying to get the puppies to play to teach them life lessons, one of the puppies decided it wanted to play with a squeaky toy. Now that stupid squeaky toy sounded like a crying puppy and besides it was ruining the concentration of the other puppies, they weren´t willing to play with Hófi if they heard the toy...it was much more fun. So after a few minutes of the toy being the center of the universe guess what Hófi did. She ran over took the toy in her mouth, threw it out of the way (and I do mean THREW it) and ran back to play with the pups. It was so funny, I never knew a dog could think that clearly.

Most of Hófi´s puppies were either never used or died before they were of age, luckily she has two daughters that have had litters. One is Stjarna from her first litter and the other is Frigg who I have myself. I´m hoping that Hófi´s brains and working ability have come through in her offspring and their offspring and from what I have seen I definitely see a bit of Hófi still with us. Stjarna has had some wonderful puppies that have also been used in breeding here in Iceland and I have already gone back to Hófi´s line through a couple of them, like Hektor and Skolli.

Hófí's litters:  August 19th 1991 - June 3rd 1994 - February 11th 1995 - February 21st 1997