Catera is a very loving dog; her biggest fault would be that she is very soft, just like her mother.  She tends to take corrections very personally, although she rarely needs one.  She wants to please so very badly, it just crushes her when she does something wrong.

She is a strong dog on cattle but much less impressed with sheep, just like her mom and brother Bruce.  And she was also back on track and doing so very well in agility, when a big problem was discovered.  At about one year of age, when she had just started working the rough cattle at the feedlot, she got clobbered in a bad situation.  She didn't show any signs of being hurt much at the time, and by the time we got done, no signs of pain at all, so I let it go without taking her to the vet.  Not that it probably would have made a lot of difference at that point.  But a few months ago, an X-ray caught the damage and the resulting problem.  The kick had fractured a vertebrae in her spine, and now, two years later, that has turned into a pretty ugly arthritic vertebrae complete with bone spur.  I was crushed when the UC Davis vets took a look and said that to continue to work or trial her in either working or agility would probably permanently cripple her before she was 6 years of age.  So it looks like her promising performance career is over before it ever got the chance to start-and I've lost another working dog for the feedlot.

But she's still a wonderful girl around the home front.  She annoys her grandmother and Skeeter to no end, romps with her brother, hangs out at the stables, gives Gizmo her belly every time he demands it, and snuggles up to Dale in his chair, always with a "love offering" in the form of some raggedy toy.  Her first litter is an awesome bunch of pups, and that's why we repeated it..  We are totally pleased with her easy whelping and total dedication to her pups, continuing the line of maternal solidness we have going.  She produces small to moderate dogs and bitches with very typey heads, great top lines, good solid temperaments and wonderful personalities. The half-sib cross with her half-brother Chaps (VCH WTCH CH Gabrielino's Charlie Chaplin PATDs RS-O JS-O GS-O DNA-VP) produced great working ability and instinct as well as some strong, dominant dogs with intense drive.  She produced one undescended testicle and one dysplastic pup in those two crosses.  One pup is a finished Best in Show champion as well as High in Trial working and obedience in Canada and has his Canadian CD, a daughter has agility titles and her TD, and one son has working titles in 3 registries and is one leg shy of his WTCH as well as being ranked #9 in Started Cattle for the first half of 2003 while his brother on the east coast has a Most Promising Started award and is 3 legs from his WTCH.  Approximately 20% of the merles had some degree of copper trim; none of the solids have had any copper trim.  Reds are deep and rich, blacks are blue-black, and there is a small amount of dilution noted on some of the blue merles.  Trim is minimal for the most part.  Intelligence is as we suspected, super high, and working attitude is excellent.

Catera now lives with her adoring "foster" mom Kris, who also owns brother Merlin, in Poway.