5Bordercollies

Hi all, Me and my five hooligans recently moved from the farm to the city, things are in general going ok. We hit a slight rough patch when the neighbors bunny came calling in the night and didn't survive, but overall neighbors handled it rather well. My problem is I can't always physically take all five

Thank you guys, well he hasn't stopped barking. Last night something bothered them again and he and especially the girls again spent more than half the night barking everybody within Earshot deaf. He is acting perfectly normal in every other way. Eating and drinking normally so I'm hoping its just overuse. I will call my domestic worker a few times during the week and check in, I believe she will call if she thinks something's wrong. If he's not better when I get back I will take him to my vet and have him take a look. Tried looking down his throat, but with limited success, he's not keen on opening wide so I can look in there.

My eldest dog Zorro has suddenly gone a little hoarse. I noticed it two or three nights ago that the sound of his bark is a llittle off. They did have a rough night Wednesday night barking till the early hours of the morning so I don't know if that might have something to do with it. He is almost nine years old, can it maybe just be an old dog thing? His chest sounds fine, I'll try and look down his throat tomorrow see if there's anything concerning there. He eats well, is otherwise acting normal. I guess I'm just concerned because I'm not here this week, we're leaving Monday very early and won't return before Saturday late. And my vet doesn't work on Sundays. Anything else I can do/ check to put my mind as ease or at least rule out a crises?

I have five dogs, Zorro, Xena , Rusty Jess and Meg. Zorro and Rusty twice had pups. Each time a pup stayed behind - Jess now 5 and Meg, soon to be 4. Rusty is cool with Jess, (she and Xena don't always like each other) but in a lot of ways as far as she's concerned Meg's "puppy license" has yet to expire. Meg can stick her nose in her mother's food bowl where any other creature would immediately get first the stink eye and soon after war will be declared. It would be very interesting to see what she would make of her other pups should she meet them. Maybe I should arrange a meeting before we move away from the area. The other pups all live locally.

It's easy to fall for the right buzz words. Especially when you're still relatively new to the game. Got my male from an OK breeder, not the best, but a hell of a lot better than the second one I fell for. A local farmer, he talked the talk, but in retrospect red flags should have gone up and I should have run away as fast as possible. Don't get me wrong, I love Xena to bits, but she has absolutely zero "herding/ prey drive".

Meg has a stitch left over from her spay surgery that Dad missed when we pulled her stitches. Only a fool would assume she hasn't been spayed. As for the other three bitches, there's no indication on mother earth that they'd been spayed. A little green line would tell anyone who might have the unfortunate experience of having to figure it out.

NOTHING moves on this farm without one of the five making alarm. Meg (youngest ) and Xena (eldest bitch) are especially prone to making alarm. So I guess they are excellent watch dogs. Guard dogs? I don't know, I would not rely on them to protect me in an emergency, but recently a few incidences happened that has people thinking twice about just entereing our yard. A friend of my dad's a mechanic from town one afternoon just stopped by and entered the yard, dad and me was in the kitchen and when I went to investigate the hullabaloo that had broken out outside, the guy was doing a dance trying to avoid four pairs of snapping jaws. He has since taken to stopping outside the yard gate and hooting to draw attention. It's a farm, there are no bell or anything at the gate.

My eldest bitch lost her right eye being kicked by a horse. Jess got kicked lights out just the week before that, same colt. If your pup one day nips one of the kids too hard, they might end up fearing her, not something you want to happen, I'm sure.

Liz P, thanks I hadn't thought about the worst case scenario. I guess I have to start shopping around for crates, training dogs to go in the crates, etc... Thank goodness I have a few months to do it in. The move will only be in the later part of the year.

Liz P, thanks I hadn't thought about the worst case scenario. I guess I have to start shopping around for crates, training dogs to go in the crates, etc... Thank goodness I have a few months to do it in. The move will only be in the later part of the year.

Dear Mr McCaig, You do raise a good point there. Especially since two of the girls don't always get along to good. My biggest problem is whether I'll be able to fit five crates in the back of a double cab pickup. At the moment the plan is to olnly take the one pickup down to Cape Town and if\when it becomes neccesary acquire another. What we used to do for the cats in the good old days when cats still went with on holiday is to keep a litter tray in the back and when the cats started showing signs of having to go, we would pull over somewhere quiet, cat was fitted with a harness and the litter tray put on the ground and cat allowed to do his business. then we would load up and continue with our journey.

So it seems our time on the farm is slowly but surely coming to an end, which mean that some time this year we'll be moving away. Probably far away, 1500km's +-. I am planning on taking the woollies and the kitties with, but since I've never travelled further than town with the dogs, I"m looking for some advice from those of you who have either moved long distance or travel long distances with multiple dogs. How does one do it? How do you load up 5 BC's and 4 cats and move across the country? We are for now thinking of crating the cats who will have to travel in the cab of our double cab, the two meezers sharing one crate and the other two one each to a crate and the dogs loose in the canopy. it's probably less than ideal, but they're not used to being crated in the pickup, so that might take some doing to crate them, providing I can fit 5 crates into the back of the pickup in the first place.

Just want to quickly thank my lucky stars I've found this thread. Of my five one is pretty reliable with kids, especially older ones, one avoids strangers pretty much at all costs - unless they have food - and the other three... let's just say they are not allowed anywhere near children and even sometimes will be caged when visitors arrive. At this moment it's not a huge issue, I don't have kids and I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. BUT and here's the big big problem I'm moving to the big bad city next year. And I've been seeing problems everywhere I look, but i"m not wiling to give up the loves of my life just because circumstances no longer allow us to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Just a quick question, what if she just wants to keep holding the sheep and don't readily come to the same side as you are. I want to start Meg on goats, don't have sheep anymore, but if there's a cat under a tree she will continuously balance to me, never coming to the same side.

A local farmer told me he trains his sheepdog puppies off horseback. This was ten years ago, I had just gotten my first BC and was wide eyed looking for any "advice" the old man could give. All the while I am wondering "how the hell do you correct the dog from way up there?" His solution? Whenever the pup does something wrong he shoots it with a pebble from a slingshot! Yeah, whatever. Aint gonna happen, not to my dog.