Aerie

I love you people!!! Baby socks!! Freaking genius. We only have a bajillion of those things sitting around. I shall put one of those on her when she goes out, that'll be much nicer than wrapping it and unwrapping it. It's still looking good and she's still not bothering it...so far so good. Thanks folks!

My mom and her friend were playing with the dogs yesterday morning around 8:30. Mom came in and woke me up, telling me that Recon had cut her foot and I needed to come down and take a look. They were just going to wrap it up, but the amount of blood I saw (they'd stopped it by then) was pretty ghastly and she was looking pretty pathetic. So I took a look...she let me poke it a good bit and I wanted to see just how deep it was so I pulled the skin a little...it was down to the bone. Luckily, our regular vet was open for emergencies yesterday so I took her in. After an hour in there with them they had her all fixed up...though it required several stitches and a huge dose of antibiotics. The bowl (no one has any idea how the dang bowl got out there, much less how it got broken) sliced all the way to the bone, and cut a blood vessel, too. It was pretty horrendous and I was having a mini panic attack, but the doc did a beautiful job making it better. I took the bandage off this evening because it seemed the leg was swelling a bit and I didn't want circulation cut off. Swelling is down now, but I'm having to keep her on the pain meds because she whimpers a great deal when it starts wearing off. And Recon isn't vocal at all, so I know she's hurting. She wasn't putting any weight on it at all this morning, but as of tonight she was trying to play with her toys again, so I guess she's feeling better. My poor baby She was miserable in the e-collar so we tried a muzzle... But she was miserable in that, too. She was trying to chew on it yesterday, but today she's mostly left it alone. She's licked it once or twice, but no chewing and no fretting with it. She is still definitely limping. Here's the line of the cut - you can see that she cut the pad of her foot, too, but it wasn't bad enough for a stitch. The wound itself looks really really good. I was expecting it to look a lot worse with how bad it was. I'm impressed so far with how it's healing. I wonder, though, if I should leave it as it is, or wrap it again - although a bit looser this time. He did say that the bandage was mostly to keep the bleeding down while that blood vessel did its thing and told me I could take it off and leave it off as long as there was no bleeding. So I guess it's ok to leave it off? I am so not good at this. I feel so bad for her.

Wow....Dazzle is pretty amazing. And you're an excellent trainer. I don't know how "cool" it'd be in a video, but you could possibly teach her to toy match....get two toys of each type and show her one, ask her to get the matching one. I had a friend whose doberman could do that and it was neat to watch. Anyway, cool vid!!

I have a little bitch (Eilidh) who, on about 10 goats and a dozen or so cows, has shown some potential. Or at least so my stepfather says (I know nothing about herding, really, but he runs a farm so uses dogs daily). She's quick and she listens well when on stock and is just really keen. But we can't push her or try her on bigger groups or for longer distances.... because she's already had to have surgery on one hip - and she's about to have to have replacement done on the other. Oh, and then there's the part where she's SO super shy that we can barely get her to the vet without sedating her. Oh, and she gets started easily and will snap at people out of fear - including myself and my mother - who she adores. She is terrified of new situations, sounds, places, scents, and people. She is SO hyper and will not settle until she's nearly exhausted herself. I have had her since she was approximately 6-7 weeks old - she has never been abused. She has been socialized as a youngster, taken care of, treated nicely, trained with consistency and patience, and just generally treated well. There is no reason for her to act the way she does - except bad genes. Her full sister is gorgeous. She's played on stock but not enough to judge her ability. She's calm, obedient, not at all skittish, really people-friendly, she loves to ride in the car and her hips are only "slightly" bad - not enough to tell by just looking at her. She's been spayed, though, because her owner is rational and doesn't want to breed unknown dogs even though she MAY turn out to be decent on the cows. Why? Because she might deliver a litter of 10 little Eilidh dogs because those genes are lurking in there somewhere. I love Eilidh a LOT. I put in a lot of time and effort with her every day. But my God, I would not wish her on any other person in this world because really, she must be miserable, and she doesn't exactly make day to day living easy. Your dog is shy already. I couldn't even IMAGINE breeding Eilidh and ending up with a litter like that. How could you? It really just isn't fair, and it's actually kind of cruel.

Thanks guys. Yeah, that nice, peaceful, wonderful time period has definitely passed. My mother's terrors...er, I mean terriers...plus the BCs....oh my goodness. Oh well, it was sure nice while it lasted!!

Recon gets 1 cup of kibble mixed with 1/4 cup water and 4 teaspoons of canned food twice a day. She has to "go outside" twice a day generally. I feed chicken soup for the pet lover's soul adult formula. FWIW, I know she's not a BC, but Sage eats 1/4 of a cup of the same food mixed with a little water and canned food and she also takes a trip outside twice a day.

Firstly...hi. I hope everyone here is doing lovely. All things are good on this end - Eilidh's hip has healed and she's as good as (well, better than) new. Recon has been heartworm free for a year now, thank goodness, and all is fine and lovely on that note. Sage has developed a flea allergy because our wonderful neighbors have an infestation and we're having an all out battle against the bloodsuckers (the fleas, not the neighbors)....so that's fun. We've survived the first year of BYB-bred Eilidh's puppyhood. Let me tell you, that dog is a handful. My first year with Recon and with Combat (and Recon joined us when Combat was just 6 months old, so I had TWO adolescent BCs at once) went SO much smoother than with Eilidh. For the record, I see a definite difference between (bred-for-working-ability) Combat and Recon and (probably bred for color) Eilidh...in terms of personality, attitude, intelligence, OCD type behaviours (and by that I mean negative ones that pop up randomly, not the fixation on stock that one would want with a working dog.), Eilidh is just, to put it plainly, a nut. She's also timid and can be aggressive when reacting out of fear...and she's fearful of quite a bit. This is a dog that has never been abused, was raised from tiny puppyhood in a structured, positive, BC-friendly home, has been socialized as much as I possibly can socialize her....I think she's just got bad wiring. But we love her. Anyway, the point of this post is...everyone got their vaccinations today, so everyone is tuckered out. It's so QUIET in my house. I think I love it. But I'm also weirded out...no one is bringing a ball to drop in my lap. It's crazy. That's all. Just a general hi to you guys. Take care!

Recon is 3 years old and weighs anywhere between 31 pounds and 35 pounds. When she's at 31 she's a bit too skinny, but keeping weight on her is a chore. I wish I had her metabolism. Eilidh is just under a year old and probably weighs about 40 pounds. She's a tad overweight, though.

I used the "down" time after Recon's spay to teach her different tricks. I don't recall which ones exactly she learned at that point, but it was several of them. Lots of mental stimulation. She's a ball fanatic, though, so she kept wanting it to be thrown... to get around that, I made her lay down, then rolled the ball to her. She got to where she'd push the ball back to me with her nose...so we spent a LOT of time rolling the ball back and forth between us. It was fun for her (I guess, anyway, she seemed to love it) and it kept her from moving a lot....so maybe you could teach your pup that?

Prayers said and good thoughts sent... So sorry to hear about this

Thanks for the kind words, guys. I didn't realize how attached I still was to him. Going to get feed isn't the same without him there to greet us. Poor Jim is still broken up about it. Originally, Swoosh went to Jim's wife - she was going to do the agility thing with him. Jim, however, discovered that Swoosh was good on stock so Swoosh worked the dairy instead. He says it's really a double blow - he misses him as a companion and it hits him even harder every day when he goes to bring in the cows and he has to do it alone. I am so sad for him.

I know a lot of you probably don't remember, but some of the older (as in, been on the boards longer, i'm NOT calling anyone "old"...oh dear) members probably will... Several years (wow, been a while) back I took in a female BC who was badly neglected. Horribly so, in fact, and she was also pregnant. She was vetted as much as possible after I got her and fed well and taken care of and loved and cuddled, but soon after giving birth to the puppies her heart gave out. I bottle fed them round the clock till my sweet Recon became their foster mom...for some weird reason even producing milk for the little buggers. (she's gone on to do that once more, when our kitten kept insisting on nursing off of her, so I guess she's just....milky?) Swoosh was the puppy I almost lost - he was the last one born, Kip was extremely tired, and he was a big puppy. He was stuck for a while, inhaled quite a bit of fluids, and just had a really rough start. Had to really fight to get him to breathe...so I was very very attached to him from the beginning. Anyway, two of the puppies were brought down here to Mississippi. I saw Swoosh's (the puppies) owner in the feed store the other day and inquired about him as I always do. I found out that he had to be put to sleep just about two weeks ago. He started having seizures and they weren't able to take him off the IV drips after a while, so they decided to let him go. RIP little guy. Here's the lil fatty on day 1: And here he is doing exactly what Border Collie puppies NEVER do....get into mischief: I wish I had an adult picture of him. He was a beautiful guy. Sorry for rambling on, I'm just really sad to hear about it. Recon adored playing with him when we met up at the feed store. She was even looking around Jim's truck for Swoosh when we were there that day.

Such sweeties!! No idea what she is, but that pupper is a darling.

My neighbor has a deaf dog. Mason is the old girl's name and she's a GSD, born deaf. She's 10 now and puts my Recon to shame with the number of different commands she knows. Hand signals and light signals (neighbor also does the blinking porch light thing to call her in at night) and is very very quick and responsive. She has a standard poodle sister who will, when the dogs are called in during the day, go in front of Mason and turn her back towards the door. Once that has happened, she heads to the door on her own. She's friendly. She's fully house-trained. She's never met a stranger. Does not bark at the mailman, yay! She's also awesome during the 4th of July, Mardi Gras parades, New Years, thunderstorms, hurricanes, you name it. Oh, wait...I'm supposed to be listing negatives...erm....well, I'll think on it.

Recon destroyed my cell phone about two months ago. She has a hard-plastic fetish, it's odd. Only things she's ever chewed were a pair of headphones (the microphone off of it), the cell phone, a neosporin cap, and a bottle of lotion (the corner (hard) part of it, and the top). I got lucky - the "nice" phone rep that I was talking to forgot to mute me and called me "crazy" as well as a "whiner who just wanted her way" and that I needed to "shut up and get over it". (I was insisting they give me an advertised price, even though it was an error. I had been told by a previous rep that that was fine.) Anyway, when she got back on the phone, I calmly and very politely asked for her name and ID number, she gave it, then I repeated what she had said and asked for her supervisor. I got a free phone. Shipped overnight. Geez I love this dog.

Recon and Eilidh both know this - came from having to live in an apartment for 6 months (ok, well, Eilidh was only there a few weeks, but she still learned it!) that has a super SUPER tiny bit of grass and an owner that had about 2 seconds of time between class and work - so the girls had to learn to go when I told them to go. Recon will still go outside and do her business with no prompting, but she'll also respond immediately to the "potty" command. Very useful.

She's doing MUCH better today. She's still not willing to move much, but she's figured out how to manage to at least do her business outside and is standing up to eat her dinner. She still only drinks lying down. I believe the meds are working reasonably well - she starts whining a bit right around 20 or so minutes before her next dose of medicine is due. She's holding up rather well, though. Around the incision is puffy today but isn't really bad, and the incision itself looks nice and neat and not at all red. When should we let her up to walk around? (Well, other than going outside to potty, I mean. We carry her to the yard but let her walk to do her business.) She's hobbling a little in the house, but we've been confining her to a limited area just bigger than her crate.

Well, the surgery went ok. She's home - mom didn't want her to stay the night. The poor puppy can barely move. It's so awful to watch her try. For the most part she's lying still, though. The incision is huge but it looks clean and not swollen - maybe slightly puffy. The good news is, when we took her out to potty she was trying to move the leg and not whining or whimpering when she did. My poor sweet puppy. She wasn't allowed dinner tonight and her stomach is horribly upset. We're going to give her boiled rice and chicken tomorrow and let her eat that for a while till she's feeling better. I feel SO horrible. I just want to make her feel better. I'm encouraged, though, reading through this post and others about the procedure...i'm confidant that, being that she is young (around 6 months old, give or take a week or two, since we don't know her exact birth date) I think she'll be ok. I hope. Geez I'm worried.

Well. Eilidh went to the vet on Saturday because she was limping pretty badly. They scheduled x-rays and such for today. The news isn't good. Her left hip is completely out of the socket and the socket itself and ball of the hip are apparently pretty bad. The right hip isn't in the best shape, either, but it's holding and not causing her any pain. I wasn't there for the decision-making, but what Mom and the vet chose to do is not the hip replacement surgery, but where they cut off part of the bone...the ball part? The surgery happens tomorrow. I am so so so worried about her. Mom's beside herself, 2nd guessing her decision, plus she's still feeling guilty over the whole Recon-ate-a-container-of-pills thing...so it's tense. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing in such a young dog?

I was so happy that she was ok that I completely didn't mind her inability to settle down. She's always energetic (she IS a border collie, after all), but it's generally manageable and she always settles to sleep when I sit down somewhere. Yesterday - and all last night - she was just -everywhere-. Nonstop. Bouncing and squeaking toys and running up and down the stairs and pouncing on the other dogs and really just acting like a total nut. Thanks for the spelling, Rosanne. I'll do a google on it in a bit - right after I get some sleep. Work was horrid today and my Recon was feeling clingy (and so was I...and I soooo do not mind!) so we've been taking a walk - so my feet are double tired and i'm about ready to just drop. MAN am I glad that she's calm today. Do you have any idea how many times I picked up toys off the floor yesterday evening? Goodness, she knows how to make a mess.

Yeah, i'm super glad she's ok. Our vet, though, gave my Mom the pills in a little paper envelope instead of a bottle. Next time, they're going in the glass jars that we reserve for treats. On the top shelf. Really far back. She's sleeping on top of my feet right now. Soooo glad she's finally settled down some. Still worried, though, and I keep staring at her watching her breathe. It was awful. I never want to go through that again.

So... Early this morning Mom took Eilidh to the vet to get her right leg checked out...she's limping on it pretty badly. Doc gave Mom some pain pills. Duramax, or something. I can't find much info on it on Google. 100mg tablets - 20 of them. Mom came home...Eilidh went to her kennel to go to sleep...and Mom put the pills in her purse (they were in a paper envelope) on the kitchen counter. Sometime between when Mom went outside to check the horses and coming in to take dinner to my grandfather (about 20 minutes), Recon got into the purse and ate the pills. Mom called me at 6:00 this evening to tell me what happened, so I immediately talked to my manager (I work at PetSmart) and he called our Banfield vet...who told me to give her peroxide to make her vomit. We did it, she didn't vomit, mom gave her more....and she wasn't budging. Long story short, we ended up taking her to the Emergency Vet. They made her vomit and $120 later we left. My manager let me leave work to meet Mom at the vet, which was incredibly wonderful of him. Of course, by the time we got there, some of the stuff had obviously entered her system. They counted the pills that came up and found most of them, apparently, but she still got a pretty strong dose. So for a while she was all groggy and then...wow. She was hyper as hell. For the most part she seems normal now. Well, she's still hyper...like a border collie on a high dose of some hyper-pill...but at least she's alive. And the bill wasn't horrible. I was so so so so scared for a while there, and I'm still watching her very closely. Recon is my heart, and though I know every day that I love her dearly, this really reminded me how very much I adore this dog.

Recon will dunk herself in the pond (head and all. totally under water.) several times while we're out playing / working / walking / whatever. Eilidh finds shade and pants and eventually gets sent inside into the AC because even if we wet her (she's not so fond of water) she doesn't cool down as quickly as Recon does. Difference - Eilidh has a super thick undercoat and Recon does not. As for the horses - if we've been working them hard enough to break a sweat (which in this heat and humidity means walking them from the barn to the pasture) we spray them down with cool water until the under side of their chests and their legs feel cool to the touch. If we are just spraying them to cool them down while they're grazing and we're not worried about pretty factor and rolling in stalls we don't scrape them...and they generally don't sweat as badly for a while after they've dried in the sun. If we're about to put them in their stalls in front of the fans we'll scrape the excess...there's no sun in a stall, see. To do the evaporation thing. And they roll to get the extra water off and then could get cast in the stall and not to mention filthy and...yeah.

Ah. July 4th. Combat is terrified of the noise, but ignoring him pretty much was the only help. If we did the babying thing, he got worse. It was a free for all day - he could sleep wherever he wanted - including usually off-limits places. He was thunder-phobic as well. Living next to an artillery training army post was horrid. All the bombing of mount scott plus the fireworks on various holidays - goodness. I don't know what Mike will be doing with him this year - hopefully he'll be ok. Recon had started showing signs of developing a phobia, but now that she's away from Combat she's only slightly annoyed by storms. She'll tuck her tail and go hide from fireworks, but only seems mildly distressed, not horrible. All of mother's yapping little dogs do what they normally do - sleep. This will be Eilidh's first 4th. Now we DO have a problem with our horses. They used to be fine, but... the adults (we didn't have the babies then) spent all of Hurricane Katrina in a 350 acre pasture in the wind and rain and horribleness. We moved them 50 miles north to this pasture (that belongs to my aunt) to get them away from here (we're much, much closer to the water), and thought they'd be fine. They had some cuts and bruises and were skittish as hell, but were otherwise fine...except now loud noises (fireworks, storms) just really do them in. We spend our 4th of July in the barn soothing the worst two, walking them, keeping them occupied to prevent them from stressing so bad that they colic.

So, most of you guys know about Eilidh. She's definitely Mom's dog - Mom adores the little beast and the little beast takes TOTAL ADVANTAGE of the fact that Mother is so concerned with not stressing her and making her sick again that she lets her get away with everything. Now, while I had Eilidh I had begun teaching her to sit, down, and high five. Just some small, fun sessions. She'd gotten pretty good at it. Mom continued with the sits and downs, but that's about it. She knows nothing about a leash, hardly cares what 'no' means, won't settle down, and is becoming slightly destructive. I can see this escalating into something crazy. She could very, VERY easily become one of 'those' types...you know, the ones that are sent to rescue because their families just can't tolerate their crazy behavior? Mom gives her no rules, no guidance, and limited mental stimulation so Eilidh has become a relatively timid dog. Won't approach strangers and hesitates to go anywhere without Mom right there with her. Of course, a lot of that started when she was so sick, but I think "babying" her has made it worse. And no, I'm not saying that Eilidh will end up in Rescue...we made the decision to keep her when she got so sick, and that will not change. In the two weeks that I've been here, she's actually gotten a lot better. I am the "rule enforcer" and she's looking to me now for guidance instead of Mom. I honestly think that her more structured days are giving her more confidence. She's learned high five and shake and "shame" (puts her paw over her face). When I say "come" she's actually coming to me instead of running happily away. She still walks all over Mom, though. Mom always has been incredibly impressed with Recon's manners (her recall is excellent, obeys her "trick" commands immediately, snoozes quietly in a corner when we're eating instead of begging, and just...well, she's great). But she won't let me do what needs to be done to get Eilidh to that point. My method of training is FAR from harsh (I reward for the correct response, ignore incorrect ones. There's no punishment involved in anything.) and I do not think it's going to hurt Eiilidh's health in any way. I do, however, make Eilidh get off the furniture or stand still when I want her to stand still (brushing her, etc). Mom thinks this is too touch on her. So, I guess my question is....how do I get Mom to loosen up a little and let me do what needs to be done. I know Eilidh is 'her' dog and, in the end, it's her choice...but she's SO smart and has the potential to be a great dog - or our worst nightmare. I'd like to avoid the nightmare part.