La La Land Inspired Dog Names

If you have ever been to the Westminster Dog Show or watched it on television, then you know how seriously the owners, handler, judges, and even the dogs, take this sport. Well, most of the dawgs anyway. Then there was Mia the Beagle. Although most dogs start training at about six months old, Mia was older than most of the dogs in the sport because she did not even start training for the agility course until she was five years old, and she was typically pretty good at it. 

Mia was adopted by the Fisher family from a breeder in Pemberton when she was two months old, and although she was supposed to be a gift for her older brother Alex, young Natalie Fisher ended up with Mia because they shared such a close bond. Even though she did not originally think of competing in the agility competition with Mia, later on when Natalie got older, she noticed how Mia liked to do these kinds of activities, and she was really good at them, most of the time. 

Natalie admits that at first, Mia was not doing that well. In fact, as a Beagle, she is a hunter and loved to stop and sniff anything she came across. And after about 18 months, Natalie actually gave up and tried training a new pooch instead of Mia. However, Mia started crying every time Natalie left her at home when she left for class and so about a year later; she started training Mia again. This time, Mia seemed to be a completely different dog and was totally focused on the agility course. 

In fact, Mia did so good that Natalie took her to compete in the junior agility competition in Florida and she earned third place in the jumper’s category. But to get into the Westminster Agility competition, Mia had to get the master’s title in both the standard and the jumper’s classes by getting a perfect score ten times. And she did. However, when they went to Westminster, Natalie admits that Mia was jittery from the start, not used to such a large crowd and excessive noise. 

Mia did become famous for her performance, but not for the reason you may think. This silly pooch just decided she did not want to do things their way; she wanted to do the course her own way, in her own time. For instance, she decided to stop and groom herself once, cut out of the weaving poles to give her master acknowledgment, and then when she was supposed to be climbing the seesaw, she stopped and looked at the crowd, seeming to love the attention, and the crowd absolutely loved her too. Natalie was surprised that they made it to the final round and even though they did not win, she was very proud of her Mia.