Lawgirl

Mats happen! Wise words from your mom!

I have never hesitated to cut a mat out of my dog's coat when needed.  I have two dogs who have very wiry bloomers on their hindquarters which mat in the blink of an eye and which are horrible to  brush.  I use an undercoat rake, lots of verbal reassurance, another person to hold when necessary, treats and scissors when all else fails.

At one point, I brushed with two brushes, one for the dog to chomp on and one for me to use!

Maja, that is brilliant! I laughed so hard, because I can just picture it.

Liz P - thank you for breaking down the history and complexity of this issue.  I have not been around dogs for the whole time, and was shaky on the history.  It almost feels like the harder people try to do the right thing for our dogs, the easier it is to muck up!

I suspect, if your puppy is putting on weight, that it is a combination of the stress of the change in her circumstances and the change in water that may be giving her diarrhoea.  One of my boys has a sensitive stomach after green potato poisoning as a puppy, and will get diarrhoea during any lengthy trip (including in the car if we do not stop for a poop run every hour or so - ask me how I know!).  And that includes on the drive to wherever we are going, so the stress can take effect quickly.  I was told by a few people when I started trialling in agility to take my own water from home for my dog as the stress of changing water could make a sensitive gut worse. 

It sounds like she may be starting to adjust, if her poops are starting to form up.  So long as she is eating and drinking well, and still putting on weight, I would not worry too much, so long as the diarrhoea is coming to an end.  There is a huge variation in size of BCs.  Keep an eye on her body condition, and how quickly she is finishing her food, as her demands will change as she goes through growth spurts.

I would also try to transition off of Pedigree once she is over the current issues.  I am not going to recommend a particular food - you know your own situation best in terms of cost/access/time etc.   Do your research, apply cautious judgement about the sources of the information you are reading and whatever biases they may have and make the best decision you can given the information available. It is all any of us can do.  Our dogs will not love us any less.

So, so true!

In my house, we call that pose "doing a border collie"!  It seems to be a favourite of my boys.

She is absolutely gorgeous, welcome to both of you!

I love the photo where she is sticking out her tongue.

Saydrin44, your pup is definitely going to be a red tri merle.  Her nose leather is brown, with the pink non-pigmented section, so she cannot be a blue merle.  Her base coat colour is brown.

If she was a lilac merle, she would have silver and lilac patches, but no dark brown/chocolate coloured patches, because the lilac dilution gene would dilute all the brown colour from her coat.  She is tri-colour because of the tan patches, especially the tan eyebrows.

Here is a picture of Bailey's nose, which is similar to your puppy's nose.

I don't really have much to add to this but I just wanted to say thank you Ned'sMum for rescuing your dog, thank you for doing so responsibly and thank you for being so open to the advice you have been given.  Others may not have reacted so maturely to what we have said here, even though it has been said with the best interests of your children and Ned at heart.

So thank you again.

And boo to that rescue organisation.  (I could use much stronger language to be honest)

This is what my boy Bailey looked like as a puppy.

This is what he looks like now.

He has really gotten a lot darker as he grew up.  He was also in his vaccination paperwork as a puppy as a lilac merle but is a red merle.

I would say you have a red tri merle there.  Enjoy your gorgeous new puppy!

I would not question her as a full BC.  She may or may not meet the "breed standard" for a barbie collie, but true BCs can have great variation.

She may be a mix, but she looks like a BC to me (not that I am an expert!)

There are a few of us Aussies, but not too many.  This is an American forum after all.

I lived in Gawler all through my high school years, and my brother and sister went to high school in Tanunda, so I know the north of Adelaide fairly well, or at least I did lo these many years ago...

GentleLake, I am very sorry to hear about your father.  My dad passed from complications of biliary duct cancer over ten years ago, and it still hurts, although it is slowly getting less.

My deepest condolences.

21 hours ago, Aisha_Zarla said:

Thank you! She’s amazing, she’s my first BC and is very different to my blue heeler. Definitely has a strong personality which I love 

Welcome to the Boards, and to your new addiction!

I see you are from South Australia.  I am not sure, but we may be the only South Aussies on here! Whereabouts are you in SA?  I live in Mount Gambier, so am in the south east corner of the state.

Your girl is gorgeous, and looks like a very happy pup!

3 hours ago, Aisha_Zarla said:

This is all so confusing haha

You have somewhat innocently provided an outlet for one of the more complicated topics on this forum - the conflict between working border collies and their owners, and the Kennel Club/Fashion Show breeders, aka those who breed BCs for working ability and those who breed for looks.  This forum is solidly on the side of the working ability of this wonderful breed.

We ended up stealing your thread. Sorry!

So the TL;DR version is that merle is a coat pattern that dilutes sections of a dog's coat giving a mottled effect, but which can apply to any of the coat colours (black, tricolour, red/chocolate, ee red, etc).  It can be "cryptic" or in very small patches.  Some coat colours can make it very difficult to see the merle pattern, usually because the coat colour is very pale.  So great care should be taken in breeding a merle dog to be ensure the other dog is not a cryptic merle, and dilute colours like lilac and blue, and pale colours like ee red and sable, should probably be avoided. And of course, never breed two merles!

PS if you have not already done so, we love photos of your dogs here!

Just some suggestions to try for really high value treats - have you tried something like liverwurst, or blood pudding?  Smelly and messy but that may be attractive to her.  Otherwise roasted chicken, crispy bacon, pieces of tuna or sardines (ideally baked into treats so less messy - there are several recipes on here and on the internet).  My dogs go nuts for cinnamon donuts and homemade Anzac biscuits (Chewy oatmeal and coconut biscuits - an Australian and New Zealand tradition).  Obviously sugary things are very much in moderation, and require tooth brushing!   Maybe try several things until you find whatever is the highest value treat for your dog; they will all have their own tastes.  And maybe she will not be terribly food motivated, but at least you can say you tried lots of things.

Erect ears were definitely a fault, and I think blue eyes were too, although blue eyes are allowed in merles now.  Technically floppy ears still are, and heterochromia is too.

But that is the problem with a breed standard - when you have to decide what "looks right" you also have to decide what looks wrong, which is everything else...

In Australia we have Bravecto and Nexgard.  Bravecto is for three months, Nexgard is for one month.  We also have issues with ticks, not for Lyme disease but we have paralysis ticks which can and do kill dogs within a day or two.

My choice is to use Nexgard, which is a lower dose, when necessary.  My boys cope with it well - it is actually the only medication they eat and come back looking for another, as if it was a treat.  One of my dogs has a sensitive gut after suffering green potato poisoning as a puppy, and he may get some diarrhoea a day later, but it is minor and short in duration, and then is fine.

I have never had any of mine suffer any neurologic symptoms.

Obviously some dogs are sensitive to the drug, but that is the case with any medication - same as for humans.  My mother will throw up for 48 hours straight after being under general anaesthetic.  Most people have no such reaction.   There will always be someone who is more sensitive or who will suffer a different side effect, but if it was common, it would have been obvious before now.  Chances are your dog will be okay, but it is up to you as to whether you want to take that chance.

On 6/29/2019 at 3:54 AM, GentleLake said:

 Does the ANKC still have limited colors they recognize that causes people to incorrectly identify the odd colors as the closes approximation just so they can have them registered?

Not since July last year. They finally updated the breed standard to allow "a variety of colours but white should never predominate".  Up until then, you could have blue merle, but not red merle in a pedigree dog, so red merles were registered as chocolate and white, for example.

Although I have never owned a pedigree dog, I think they also changed the standard to include short coat and erect ears at the same time.

I think the term Aussie red came about because in Australia ee red dogs are just called red dogs by the ANKC crowd, while what you in America call red dogs, we call chocolate. But the ee red are also called wheaten by BYB and the uninformed, although I have also seen them called champagne, caramel or honey, essentially as descriptors for their colours, rather than as official coat colours.  I recently got told off in a Facebook group in Australia for calling one of my dogs a red merle and not a chocolate merle...

My understanding is that merle can be very difficult to spot in ee red dogs (aka wheaten or Aussie red dogs) and therefore it is considered dangerous to breed ee red dogs and merles, because of the risk that the ee red may be a cryptic merle, as Michael Parkey described.

I am afraid I do not have answers for your questions about when her eyes will finish changing colour.  Once the colour change happens, it will almost certainly stay that way.  It is a subtle but distinguishable change in your puppy's eye, and she is very cute!  But heterochromia to the best of my knowledge does not indicate a health problem.   Heterochromia is a genetic trait, and it is common in merles, but not genetically linked only to merles.

I have two dogs with heterochromia, but neither are merles.  My merle has normal colour eyes.  This response is really an excuse to post pictures.

My boy Oscar, complete heterochromia

My boy Shadow, complete AND partial heterochromia

These two boys are related (uncle and nephew, in human terms) so heterochromia is obviously in that bloodline, but merle is not as far as I know.

Hope this helps you.  Best of luck with your gorgeous puppy!

I have four BC boys. 

One is quite wary of other dogs, and by and large will bark at them to try and keep them away unless he knows them quite well, but it is a "bark, bark, see I am big and scary, please stay away from me, pretty please" type of frightened bark.  He has learned to tolerate other dogs being near to him if we are with him while he is on lead, but he is uncomfortable, and we do not push him to greet or play with other dogs.

Another dog can be quite reactive to certain dogs, i.e. big black dogs (even labs!), boxers and a range of other dogs, especially when he is on lead.  Other dogs he will go up and greet, but then we need to take him away or things will escalate.  Off lead, he reacts better and is more inclined to play, but his idea of play is to chase, which is not every dog's idea of fun, and so we need to be watchful then too.  Overall, he is best with other working dog breeds.

One dog (our entire male) is entirely too fascinated with sniffing the private parts of other dogs.  He will sniff them far past what is polite, and to the point of angering the other dogs, so we tend not to have him off lead with other dogs.  Also, his recall is not the best, so we only let him off lead in enclosed areas.

Our last dog, the youngest, is by far the most even tempered and outgoing of our dogs.  I have not yet met a human or dog he does not get on with.  He has played with a giant breed dog who was climbing all over him, and he was perfectly calm and happy.  He is interested in all dogs, does not react when barked or snapped at, and would, I think, be a wonderful therapy dog for nursing home visits etc, if I had the time for it.  

I do not believe in overly correcting warning behaviour such as growls, so long as they are warnings, not aggression.  I do not want to teach my dog not to react until it bites.  Familiarising my dogs with others? Yes, this is good.  Teaching not to warn, not good.  You can desensitise without correcting the warning behaviour.

I do not think BCs are more prone to display this behaviour than other breeds necessarily.  There are some breeds which are less likely to display it, but most breeds are equally likely to display it, and some, particularly those bred for guarding (either livestock or property), which may well display it more.

So what do I do with my dogs?  I take them to dog club (obedience training) where they may or may not meet other dogs and have either a brief "meet and greet" or a more extended play on lead before class, before working through training alongside other dogs.  But mostly, they have us and each other, and we go to a local sports park, where they get to run around a baseball diamond, chase each other, and, if other dogs approach, they meet through a chain link fence, which minimises risk of injury.  Or we take them to a local beach, where they run around off lead because there is no one else around.  I am a very big believer in avoiding and managing risk rather unless you can be absolutely sure of what will happen.

Oh, and although I live in another part of Australia entirely, we have these spiders too.  Here is a photo of one we came across on a fence during an early morning walk, although it is a smaller version.  I have come across much larger versions in my bedroom in the past.  I do not have photos of those.  I did not stop to take photos of those; I was too busy screaming and running away.  I did not take this photo.  I would not get that close.