Dogs Per Lifetime

Dogs per lifetime, you only get so many. The problem is, I really like border collies – and even now I have border collies I’d love to add, but we’re full up. So I’m beginning to think I may not get a chance to own other breeds, because I really like border collies and have a hard time imagining bringing in a non-bc at this point. And border collies get along so well together … and often not so much with other breeds (though not always!). I really like a lot of other breeds, but would I trade a border collie for them … that’s the question.

So maybe I’ll get that sighthound some day, I REALLY enjoy them … but do I want to live with them? Would I trade a border collie spot for a dog that might not be able to do all the things I enjoy doing with my border collies? What about a small dog? Thank god I got Bryn, she’s both a small dog AND a border collie, how perfect! But could I have a terrier that I would worry about running off on the unfenced property, or fighting with nutria or other dogs … what dog would I trade a border collie for at this point?

Maybe I’ll change my tune when I finally end up with a dog with issues, so many health issues in border collies, unfortunately. I was damned surprised when Asher didn’t end up with OCD, he was such a big, fast growing puppy with no regard for his body. And I’m always terrified to end up with a dog with epilepsy, which I just don’t think I could do. I just feel like I’m due some sort of health issue, and I get more and more nervous at every dog. And then I got Bryn, the dog I know NOTHING about – who knows what kind of health issues might run in her lines! Knock on wood, so far, no issues. We shall see …

Bryn is officially registered with AKC, so she’s ready for action! I mean, she is street legal in AKC agility in 4 months, which seems crazy. But with the masks and covid variants, who knows when we’ll get back to agility. She’ll be like Asher, basically waiting until he’s three. I had hoped to get him back out this Fall, but not going to run in a mask, it really didn’t work well, we use too many verbal cues he struggled with hearing with the mask in a busy environment. So we’ll see when it does seem safe to go back to trials … but hopefully we’ll get back to actually PRACTICING in the Fall at least.

I have designed some courses for my new arena recently, which is not exactly a constructive use of my time – but progress continues on that front, they are not screwing around. Electric and water is ready to go in, the excavation, road and gravel base is done and the posts are up – holy crap! The latest estimated date is BEFORE they said, so in November, which is awesome. I picked up some new tunnels from overseas somewhere, I ordered a new teeter. So many things to do, including figuring out the surface, but things are progressing. Excited to actually be able to WORK WITH MY DOGS – woot! And have some place to play with the weather is bad, it really is a dream come true this whole property, kind of unreal sometimes.

Trick classes have been really fun, but excited to get back to agility, and with Bryn getting close to a year old, she can start doing more too. We even progressed a little on the teeter the other day as the weather has been SO nice, and with trick classes I have so much more time. So she is now going from the table down a ‘flat’ teeter into position. She started off totally confident, we took a break and tried it again, and she needed it broken down a little, so maybe not as confident as she appeared. I don’t think that one will take long to finish. I played around with the dogwalk, just a bit to show the issues I was having with the target boards moving around, but once I took THOSE off, once again, beautiful confident running contacts. Huh. I still feel like it’s a bit of a fluke, but that will be fun to play around with again. So much to do!

In the meantime, more herding! We now have seven weeks until Idaho, which is just a fun ‘goal’ to try to not totally suck when we go out there. For Asher that means retraining his outruns, for Bryn that involves actually GETTING some. Bryn continues to have lovely natural feel for her sheep, but there is definitely a distance with her baby outruns where she loses confidence and just starts circling sheep instead. So I had been keeping it short, but we saw Ron the other weekend and he was like, “I don’t care, just let her circle until she figures it out.” Which I was like, that doesn’t seem super productive – but, go figure, he was right. After just letting her do that until she petered out and then brought the sheep to me, when I sent her after that she really didn’t think it was an effective use for her energy either – she just brought me the sheep. His thought was that they’re bred to bring sheep to people, she has a lot of natural instinct, she should be able to figure it out without us micromanaging her. Now, it’s not a NICE outrun, she basically does a ‘lollypop’ outrun – but that’s when the sheep are all the way across the field, it’s only once she gets close to them that pushes out. Anyway, baby dogs are interesting, and Bryn remains a mystery as she does work so differently than my other dogs. She’s doing fabulous and absolutely LOVES IT.

But, yeah, lying down and recalling off … we continue to work on it. I finally broke down and used a long line, which I think helped her understand the concept better. It also showed me I suck at catching dogs with long lines, I never have to do it! But for the most I didn’t have to use it, she just dragged it and I had it if I needed it. Little steps at a time, I appreciate her love the sheep, but, yeah, come when I call …

Bryn, all of the sudden, looks TALL. Well, taller than 18 inches. Can’t do anything about that, she may be my preferred baby – I still can’t even imagine her jumping 20. Maybe I’ll try putting her next to a jump and see what it looks like. But, yes, suddenly she’s all WISPY. What happened to my little lowrider? It doesn’t help that she’s such a girl when it comes to eating, we continue to struggle getting her to eat. Currently if I add something tasty and feed her right in front of the other dogs, she will eat. But that may change tomorrow, we shall see. She needs to gain weight though! Little wisp of a thing …

I’m hopeful Asher is making progress in the right direction with his outrun issue. We had an opportunity to take some sheep on the road the other day. So new field for both dog and sheep, which helped with sheep running willy-nilly. We started fairly close with a baby outrun and he didn’t start off nice at all, but I stopped him, walked out and pushed him out and after that he didn’t do any more of the running at the sheep shit. In fact, overall I was pretty pleased with him, we worked up to longer and longer outruns and he did pretty well. Mostly I let him lift on his own, didn’t tell him to slow down or lie down. He did better at lifting gently until the distance got farther – he definitely loses confidence at that point. He was doing a pretty good job of pacing himself on the fetch and holding them nicely. No particular issues with driving, at least at first.

We had two groups of sheep we brought, all katahdin sheep. The first group was your more typical antelope, run for no reason at all type. But the second group, at least in this new environment, was considerably more heavy and not wanting to move as well – and that definitely threw Asher. He gets points for lying himself down, but he struggled to move them and started getting into some of his weird displacement behaviors, like overflanking on his lifts and stalling on his drives. So, interesting, and not an issue he has working these same sheep at Maddy’s.

Still, overall very pleased with our outing, the goal is to eventually work up to some more ‘trial like’ set ups and see how he reacts. And we still need to work on all the other issues on his list, such as small flanks and not slicing his inside flanks at a distance – and actually driving STRAIGHT. One thing at a time …

I did give Navarre a brief go to work on some outruns, which he actually agreed to widen … then didn’t bring me sheep. He kept lifting the sheep and bringing them … somewhere else. Where he was going, I have no idea. He’s a tough cookie on sheep, that’s for sure. But those sheep that seemed hard for Asher to move were running all over the place with Navarre, he’s definitely good at spooking sheep. Been wanting to get him down to see Ian, but just haven’t found the time. It would make him very happy though …