nicocosmos1

This dog was found in Monticello, Utah today. They are saying it's a cattle dog but it looks like a border collie to me.

Nico JUST started lifting the leg and he is going on 2. Don't know if there's a direct relation, but it seemed to start up when he had to stand on uneven snow and one leg was already higher than the other. Yesterday we were coming in the house and he started sniffing like crazy. I thought he was smelling a rabbit or cat so i called him and he totally ignored me. This is the first time in I don't know how long that he ignored the recall. I thought he must smell something really good, so I grabbed his leash before he could take off. He led me to some pee in the snow, smelled it a lot, and lifted his leg like it was no big thing. He has never been interested in pee before. In fact right before this incident we were at the dog park and he was down on the ground, locked on the ball, waiting for me to throw it. Another dog came up and tried to sniff him and Nico completely ignored the dog's presence. After a second the dog peed right on his back end/leg area, and he still didn't turn around.

Hello, I posted a similar question in September, which I thought generated useful guidelines for my situation with a 12-18mo old dog. I too was struggling to make sense of all the conflicting info about how much exercise is best for a young dog. Anyway as a result of those responses, we took a Control Unleashed type class with Nico where we learned settle commands, and we the humans learned to identify over-excitement and to make decisions about when he has had enough. Today was a good example; it's below 10F here, and we had already been out long enough in the snow for his toes to get full of ice when he found a frozen tennis ball and was very adamant that it be thrown for him. In the past I might have thought, "OMG this dog is full of energy. He must really need to chase the ball. If I don't throw this ball he'll be crazy when we get home," but I have learned that this is not the case, and as expected he's totally conked out now. Not only were the responses and the class extremely helpful in that they gave us structured and mentally challenging activities to replace some of the primarily physical ones, but it also seemed to make Nico even more attentive and responsive to us and our expectations (or, I suppose we are also better at communicating them to him). Here's the link to that thread: http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.p...=25642&st=0 and thanks again to those who responded to it with advice back in September.

I don't have fingernails so the "tick key" (about $3.50) works best for me.

thanks Ruth, I love the walking backwards idea. We are having a great time. What you said about the walk being frustrating definitely applies to me because i would much rather be exploring in the woods with him than walking on the sidewalk.

Nico likes bison liver and it has not produced any ill-effects so far. If I'm eating a bison burger he has a little of it raw and ground, but I haven't given him any on the bone yet.

We took naming advice from the "Monks of New Skete" : a two-syllable, crisp, humanoid name. After a few days with the dog (named Bogart by the rescue peeps) we had the names down to Nico, Banjo, Bowie (as in David Bowie, not bough-y), and Cosmo. Banjo eventually seemed too "cute" and not human, and I also practiced using the names with different tones and based on that went with Nico over Bowie (not as crisp), and kept Cosmo as middle name. That said I have friends with single syllable named dogs and it doesn't seem to matter at all. There's a dog I see sometimes here named "Crime Fighter" and its very strange to hear it being called/reprimanded.

This is very helpful, thank you everyone. As we are heading into winter here in the upper midwest, it is great to get some new ideas. I will work on a settle command, and I was also thinking of seeing how he does with flyball for a winter activity. He can get a few objects by name, but that is something I would enjoy doing more. I'll report back on these things. I have a Q about this comment:

Hello, So I've read so many conflicting things about how much exercise border collies need. "Two hours of free running per day" seems to be the oft-repeated but poorly-cited web mantra on the topic. All summer my presumed bc cross, Nico, was either swimming, chasing balls, or running on sand chasing waves intermittently for 1-2 hours per day. With that amount of exercise he was perfectly behaved in the house so I had settled into that routine. Based on the vet's guess when we adopted him, he's now between 15 and 18 months old, and I was already feeding this 40 pound dog the Canidae feeding recommendations for a 50 pound dog. After my vet was vague on Nico's weight--said he should not lose any and could stand to put some on but not to worry about it--I started to wonder if he was getting too much action, if I was basically running him to exhaustion to get good behavior when he would be better off with less running and more mental exercise. Although feeling incredulous about that possibility that he could possibly get too much exercise based on things I had read like a working dog can run 60km or more per day, I googled "too much exercise" and "border collie" and saw that in fact there is a great deal of inconsistency to be found. I read that when dogs perceive that they are working they do not know when to stop, and that unchecked exercise can lead to "OCD" behavior in herding dogs. Also I am switching him to a raw diet so the issue of the right amount to feed is again under consideration. I did a "test" week with 1 hour walking on a leash (which takes a lot of concentration on his part to walk by my side) and more games and tricks but after three days of this he was bringing me shoes and pillows and pulling things of the counters and repeatedly wedging his bone under the bookshelf in my office. A happy medium must be in there somewhere, but I'm still interested in the hypothetical possibilities of overexercise. I understand the danger of exercising the dog when it is hot, or when the heat plus humidity is over 150 (?), so I'm really wondering about limits when heat is not a factor. Like 65 and cloudy, low to zero humidity. If Nico is by water he will swim or chase waves--and by "chase" I mean run in the surf 50 or so yards in one direction top speed, turn and come past me another 50 in the other direction, jumping over large rocks, evading other dogs, occasionally throwing a shoulder into a wave or biting it, turn, repeat, ad infinitum. When we are at the park with the river, if there are no waves from boats' wake and I do not throw anything into the water for him, he will go after twigs, leaves, bubbles, other dogs' toys, other dogs, etc., that happen to be floating past. Often I need to throw rocks into the water to distract him from swimming too far into the middle of the river after something or other. But at a certain part is he just compelled to do these things, regardless of a true need for exercise? Is this the kind of situation where I am the one who needs to impose limits? By comparison, when we are at the small, boring dog park he will just lie under a tree or maybe accept play from another dog if I do not throw a ball for him, but then he is restless later at home. He has mysteriously sliced open both "elbow" pads on his front legs when he was at the park, and we only noticed later b/c he was licking them before bed. After a 7 day camping trip on which he seemed perfectly happy, he had a slight limp for 2 days once we got home--actually, he started limping right away once we got off the water and into a hotel room. This weekend he was at Lake Superior where the waves are nonstop, and I planned to just let him chase them until he seemed a little tired. After 20 minutes (I timed it) of constant running as described above, there was little perceptible change in his speed or enthusiasm and had the crazy look in his eyes like "Can't you see the waves are getting away!? Stop distracting me with your boring treats and silly commands!" His tongue was not even that long, but I made him take a 5 minute break anyway, after which he was more than happy to go right back to streaking up and down the beach. Since the humans were trying to hike 4 miles along the water, I really felt like I did not know how to monitor his running, or even if I needed to. On the way back we ended up going inland so he couldn't see or hear the water. After a day like this, he will ask to go into the tent and sleep when we get back to camp but he will not slow down "in the moment." I read that when dogs are not interested in food or affection, they are over-tired. Food, OK, but we are constantly showering this dog with affection--should he REALLY get excited all the time? While my friends were very tolerant of my concern, I do feel silly worrying about it when he appears to be "playing" but the fact is that I have never had a dog with much athletic ability so the potential for overexercise never came up. I know that above all this is one of those situations in which I need to learn from my own observations of my dog but any insight you have from your experiences or guidelines you've developed with your dog are much appreciated! (And are cold temps a factor? He has played in sub zero conditions and was not shivering. But I guess it comes back to the question of if you can trust their body language if they are intent on doing something? And if the answer is "maybe", how is this a proposition that can be safely tested?) Thanks for reading!