Stafford

Here are a couple of the height dogs on my team, the X-Fidos (http://www.x-fidos.org/)... Eli, a somewhat large but really cool pap: Speedy the chihuahua mix: Kodi the pomeranian: They all use either the medium (smaller than standard) or really small sized tennis balls. Edit! Can't leave out Nigel, our three-legged border collie/spaniel mix flyball dog, who is also an all-star therapy dog:

Thanks much for the nice words! Just to be clear, though, that first posting I made in this thread was from 2006, when we just started out. I'm also "Dad", and not "Mom"... We've been together now for five years, after adopting Grace from PNW Border Collie Rescue at just under a year old. She has many great flyball tournaments under her belt now, as well as a fair bit of agility and not nearly as much sheep herding as Grace would like. Given her preference and natural ability, she'd make a pretty fine herding dog. This past Summer we also added a small-ish auxiliary dog to the mix, adopting him from a litter one of our team mates was fostering for the local animal shelter. Now Grace has to put up with an annoying little step-brother. She is taking it pretty well, and plays bitey-face quite nicely.

Heh - sorry for the ancient thread necromancy, but it's been a couple years since I've posted anything here. It's fun strolling down memory lane every once in a while. Grace is a complete flyball veteran now, earning her Flyball Master title at our tournament back in April. She's even attended several tournaments without me, as she'll happily run for any of our team handlers. Instamatic flyball dog, just point and shoot.

We had snow in Portland, OR Tuesday morning, and it just now is all starting to melt. Snow days! I grew up in Southern California, so snow is still a very magical and happy event for me and my family. Grace had a great time chasing after me and my daughter on sledding runs at the local park. I'd guess that she's not the only dog that seems to love colder weather, just so long as it's not too wet.

My disdain for John Katz started well before his dog related writings. From his Wikipedia entry: Bleah. Personally capitalizing on public tragedy, writing as an authority on subjects about which he has no real knowledge... Bleah.

I saw the following email on a local agility list. Yuck. I'm refraining from replying... To: AgileCAT@Yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5060 From: [deleted] Sender: AgileCAT@yahoogroups.com Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:40:54 EDT Subject: [AgileCAT] A Good Dog Hello Cat's, My friend, Jon Katz, author of The New Work of Dogs, Katz on Dogs and The Dogs of Bedlam Farms will be reading from his new book, A Good Dog, at Annie Bloom's Books in Portland on Thursday Oct. 19th. I am certain most have read at least one of Jon's books, if you are living with a border collie you will want to read, A Good Dog. For more information go to: www.anniebloomsbooks.com [name withheld]

I was a music major for a year, then got a B.A. in Russian Language. Now I'm a network engineer. Logical progression there, for sure.

Does this look like a cattle dog to you? Some lady at the park swore that Grace looked just like her "cattle dog". She even seemed a bit offended when I assured her that Grace is, indeed, a border collie.

Why would anyone want to remove a perfectly good goose dog!?! (ba-dump ching) Sorry, I just had to. No, the border collie made me do it! Yeah, that's it!

I went to lambing school - it was cool, one of the ewes was kind enough to drop a lamb with us in attendance. We learned how to clean the umbilical cords, give injections, stuff like that. It was a totally new experience for this city/suburbs boy...

It's not a bad place. Dave Viklund gives lessons out of Brigands Hideout and also out of another farm somewhere south of Salem. He's first and foremost a stockman, but is competitive with his kelpies (and _not_ AKC). Here's a short bio from last year I found from a cached page at the Brigands website: I don't mean this to sound like an ad for him - but he's good guy. He is very gentle with dogs and stock, and very soft-spoken but challenging to his students. You won't go wrong with him. The biggest problem with him is scheduling, as he has a lot of students now, plus some trialling. He's not very good about answering email, as he's definitely not a computer guy. His rates are extremely reasonable as well, which makes him even more popular.

My experience has been a bit different. We moved up to Portland from San Diego about ten years ago, and in general I've found Portlanders to be quite a bit friendlier and more likely to talk to strangers than folks from SoCal. The dog-friendly factor can be a bit...weird...here. There have been some pretty heated battles over public off-leash areas, and while we do have them, some of them can be pretty crowded and are not places to which I'd want to take my dog. However, there is a very big canine sports scene here. I'm currently looking for a new agility instructor, but I frequent and love the afore mentioned Brigands Hideout for sheep herding. I happen to think that my herding instructor, Dave Viklund, who gives lessons out of Brigands, is about the very best in the area. He's a real deal stock man, and made a living with stock handling before even getting in to dogs. He also has a great demeanor with dogs. He's very low key, and has great timing and body language. My favorite Daveism: "You have to be honest with the dog, then she'll be honest with you". I also want to get in a plug for a great flyball team - the X-Fidos. http://www.x-fidos.org We're not the most super competitive team around, but we have a lot of very nice folks and we always have a good time. Anyhow, welcome in advance to the Great NorthWest!

Congrats, well done, and sorry we didn't go. We went to the Winter Agilympics back in December and had a blast. Our team managed to get first place in the Novice group, and I was very pleased with how Grace did in her very first non-lesson agility outing. It's definitely a not too stressful, very fun day of agility. I really like the facility too - the Argus Ranch, right? The professional photog got some nice shots of us here. Warning though - his website and the Firefox browser definitetly don't get along. I have to downgrade to Internet Explorer to view it. http://www.infiniteexposures.com/Catalog/A...4GG4/index2.htm We're 12005-1009 through 1012. Congrats again! Maybe we'll catch you at the next one.

I think the AKC folks should use registered names that more reflect the kind of dogs they're putting up: Tea & Crumpets Miss Polly Prissypants Border Boutique's Blow-dried Big-Boned Billy You get the picture...

Border Collies are the nerds, or perhaps geeks (in the modern usage, not the circus sideshow definition [although sometimes that as well]) of the dog world. Thou ought remembereth, the geek shall inherit the earth.

It's going to be near my birthday, and just a 1/2 day's drive from where I live. I'm really hoping that I can drive down and watch the competition for a couple of days.

It could be food related, but it also might just be that time of year. My dog Grace likely has pollen or grass allergies, and now is about the time of year when we keep an eye on them and give her antihystamines on an as-needed basis.

There's the obvious one - Babe. The only other one I can think of off hand is Owd' Bob, which seemed pretty poorly written but did have a lot of border collie action in it. Was the dog in Down & Out in Beverly Hills a border collie?

In the greater scheme of things, your little bit of fudging means pretty much nothing to us. Your continued presence and participation here means a lot more. Do stay, we like you and your dogs. On depression - I've battled minor league depression on and off for some time. I talked to my Dr about it, and had a referral to some counselling. It helped, and we all decided that what I was going through didn't warrent medication, but I wouldn't have hesitated to use medication if we thought it necessary. Major depression, according to Dr. Drew Pinsky, has a 20% fatality rate. One in five people with major depression will kill themselves. That is not something to mess with, and forget what the crazies like Tom Cruise have to say about it. The science-based medical folks are the ones to turn to in that situation.

This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a beardie person, a conversation which I broke off before I got too hot under the collar... She was trying to tell me that the working border collie breeders years ago were putting out dogs that were so "structurally" unsound that while they could herd well, they were often crippled by age three or four. She tried to claim that it is the sport breeders who are improving the breed now. I really didn't know how to respond to this - this is a woman, another student at my agility class, whom I otherwise like ok. I didn't think quickly enough to ask whether she'd actually seen any of these "structurally unsound" border collies. I also should have asked how well could her conformation poof-ball beardie could work. It's my guess that she was just repeating hearsay from other conformation folks. Any insights?

Kristi - probably not going to make it up to BC in February. Seems to be a busy time for the team members in other activities. We'll make it up there sometime this season though, I'm pretty confident.

Thanks for all the info, folks. This is a good community. While most of our travel for flyball, agility, and herding has been northward to Washington and in the future British Columbia, it's quite conceivable that we could head south. Provided that she tests negative for heartworms, I'm inclined to start her on preventative. We guesstimate that Grace turns a very healthy two years old this month. We plan on keeping her healthy...

Our vet is recommending a heartworm screening, and if negative, heartworm preventative for Grace. According to the vet, we have had only a couple of cases of heartworm in the Portland, OR area recently. However, she said there were a large number of heartworm-positive dogs in Eugene, OR in the past year, which is about 100 miles South of us. Heartworm _may_ be spreading towards us, and she thinks better safe than sorry. I'll ask on a local canine-activities list if people in Portland are putting their dogs on heartworm preventative at this time, but I'd like to hear from the general border collie community if there are any special caveats for BCs and heartworm preventatives. Any brands/formulations to avoid? Any that are better/cheaper/what not? Thanks,

Hee hee, the memories this brings back... We used to rent a house from a nice retired couple next door, in an older, urban, Portland OR neighborhood. They happened to have about 6 acres between the two houses, and kept 4-5 ewes and one ram on the property. This was long before I got into any canine activities, and I grew up a city boy without any livestock experience. I learned very very quickly to always keep one eye on that ram. He would never charge me or be directly confrontational, but anytime I turned my back on him, he'd try to sneak up on me and nail me with a head-butt to my backside. Nothing scarey about him, just an ornery beast.

I know that one. With me, it's the lack of demand for data networking engineers in rural Oregon. Land is also very expensive here, at least in Western Oregon and I much prefer the wet side of the state.