Dixie_Girl

Thanks y'all. Unfortunately, I didn't even think of a necropsy. I was so devastated. DH dug the grave the next morning. He is out with Sammy and Cheyenne and Holly.

Hey all! I know it has been a long while since I was on here. So much going on but I did stop in now and again. I am on here now with a heavy heart and seeking some info. Friday after my husband had put the chickens up, he threw the ball for Jackson and Skip a few times. They came in the house and left the ball outside. Jackson got on the couch waiting for DH to throw the ball. He told them it was outside and sent Skip out to get it. Jackson jumped off the couch and went under the bench at the table which is what he always does. I was cooking and heard what sounded like quick scratching on the table. I looked under to see what he was doing. I said, Jackson, what are you doing? And he was gone. Just like that my boy was gone. No symptoms of anything prior. He literally went from an active, alert dog to dead in a matter of seconds. We are devastated beyond words. I have lost dogs in my lifetime, but this.................... It wasn't a matter of him being sick, and now he's not suffering. It wasn't an accident, that you can accept. I am still crying over him. I think he had a seizure. Maybe a heart attack? I just never had this happen. He has never been sick. Never showed any signs of any problems. If anyone has any experience with this happening or ideas, I would appreciate it. Thank you all.

A few years ago, when I was still driving truck, I was making a run down I-95 in FL. It was around 3:a.m. and I only had another 30 min. to my destination. I go by this sign on the side of the road about 1/2 mile from the next off ramp. It was a simple rectangle green sign with the word STADIUM on it, nothing else. I drove for the next 10 min wondering who St. Adium was!!! It wasn't until I kept repeating it real fast that it finally dawned on me what the word really was! I laughed about it and now we refer to St. Adium as the patron Saint of all football fields!

Jackson is the only one of mine that does this! He looks so dorky when he does it! But I haven't told him this. He is so sensitive!

Give Whisper a treat from me!! Yay Whisper! You did good with her and she did you proud!

I think the combination of slower activity, and the fact that he no longer lives in the city probably have a lot to do with it. I know it has been a while since y'all moved but sometimes these things can be cumulative. There were, I imagine, much more sights and sounds, that while they didn't appear to affect him, certainly would have stimulated his brain, while he lived in the city. Plus, when he was taken out, it was probably to much busier types of places. Now he doesn't have that constant barage of seemingly un-noticed noises, and his brain is now free to, um, invent some stimulation. It is like the reverse of taking a dog that is kept in the country, and putting him in a city. While the sights, sounds and smells will overwhelm that dog, Solo is being underwhelmed. Of course these are pure assumptions on my part. But that is what it seems like to me. Hope you find a solution for him. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Solo. There is just something about his eyes! Like he is a soul watcher! Anyway, give him a hug and scritch for me!

I just bought what ever Lowe's had. Have had it for going on 5yrs. and it has seen lots of action, up to 6 dogs using it! It is fine still, but in the winter or summer, if the wind is blowing just right, it can blow in cold or hot. But the convenience it affords out weighs that! Jacksons favorite thing is to lay on the floor with his head hanging out! He gets to keep an eye on grizzly bears, but still gets to be close to me! He has it figured out! He stays warm/cool, and still gets to "hang out" outside! Some people don't like them, I can't imagine life without one!

Ruth really hit the nail on the head. I really hate that people have a strict "dog must never bite under any circumstance". They ain't robots and we shouldn't assign one of the "3 Robot rules" (Issac Asimov) to them. Annie clearly did not bite as bad as she could have. To me, a dog that bites and then stops is in no way a vicious dog. A vicious dog just keeps going at a person or animal. Tell your son he was the one in the wrong and leave poor Annie alone. She did good under the circumstances.

Actually, this is an important point. My foster (well, guess you can say my dog, since she can't be adopted) Holly bit me several times when I first brought her home. It took a minute for me to step back and realize it wasn't fear, it was, "I don't wanna do this, so I will bite you and you will leave me be" attitude. After that, I literally flooded her with those situations. When she realized that her biting me wasn't deterring the fact that I wanted her to do something and usually ended with her in "doggy jail", she quit. She will mind me quite well now. We have an understanding. OTOH, I have seen CM with truly fear aggresive dogs, and I have seen him sit in a room with this dog and wait the dog out. He has done many shows with fear aggresive dogs and knows there are different ways to handle them. As far as the "poking" and the "shhhttting" goes, it is not some hard poke, it is simply a way to get the dog refocused. And the "shhttting" is really no different than the aaccchhht that I do with my dogs when they are about to do a no-no.

Leash or long line is fine, but it is apparent that Jin KNOWS what is required of him, but chooses something different. My house is surrounded by woods. Deep woods with an abundance of wild life, especially deer. Because of Jackson once getting lost in these vast woods, and I knew he had a great recall normally, I had to do something that would be as fool proof as possible. So, after we got him back, I started working with him in the fenced yard. Next to sheep, Jackson loves balls (really anything that can be thrown a distance!) and he is very intense on them. So, I would throw the ball and when he would take off after it, I would immediately order a down. It took a while but soon, when he heard down, he went down. I then started saying, that'll do. He knows this to mean what ever it is he is doing, has to stop and he looks to me for further instruction. I have called him off two deers, Skip too, and it was a success. And yes, he was already in chase when I called him off. Something you might consider. Just understand that nothing in this life is guaranteed but death and taxes. ( I just wish I could do them in that order!) Good luck!

The thing is consistency. Really, none of the Border Collies have read any books on shepherd's whistle use. In the beginning, when sheep dogs were used, I imagine the shepherds used what ever whistle they had, be it their own mouths or something else. Using the shepherd's whistle on working sheep dogs makes sense if you need to occasionally let someone else work your dog or sell the dog. Dogs have very good hearing but they can also distinguish subtle variances. They can tell the difference in the motor noise of certain people's cars, so it is quite accute! If you are very consistant in your whistles, it doesn't really matter what you use. Not to the dog anyway. They just want to know what you want. The delivery of it is beside the point. So, if you are not trialing or selling or loaning out a trained sheep dog, it is really up to you and your comfort and what you can be consistant with.

I live completely surrounded by woods and I have a fenced yard AND a doggy door. There are some who like doggy doors and some who don't, I love mine! My dogs are fine alone in the house, I think they just sleep cuz the water bowl is always the same and no food is ever eaten. But it is nice to let them be able to come and go as they like. The thing is, they have never spent more than 5 min outside alone! But for my Cheyenne it was a Godsend. She liked to just lay about the yard soaking up sun. With the doggy door she could do that when she wanted. Also, I like the fence because it is way less stressful when there is company around, especially kids. No worries about someone letting the dogs out to play with them. Plus, it was a secure way to teach a recall. Mostly rescues do require a fence because the dogs may run off when they first get to a new place. But, with the woods all around, the best thing about a fence is keeping critters OUT!

Julie, I will agree that there is socialization going on just by attending trials and being around all the different people, animals and such. Again, I was not as clear as perhaps I should have been. When I said they were not "socialized", I meant with respect to puposly taking them to "play dates" or dog parks, or what have you for the express purpose of letting their dogs interact with different dogs and people. Also, my knowledge of "working folks" is limited to those in SC and GA, and by no means includes all of them. I was simply stating my own observations of things that I have seen. I have not seen any problem with Jackson living with me and making "go to town" runs (in the winter!) adversly affecting his work with stock. In fact, when I first started training him, my trainer was quite sure I had ruined him by letting him fall so in love with fetching balls! I think she was sure about it because once when we had been training a while, she brought a ball out, and Jackson ignored it in favor of the sheep. I never said anything, but inside me there was a big WHEW! BTW, my analogy with the feral children had nothing to do with socializing per se. It had to do with the wiring in the brain. I think that is why it is so hard to change things you grew up with. Why it is hard to overcome childhood fears. IE, I still am freaked out around clowns! But that is really what I meant. Dogs raised in the house around people and their goings on will be more comfortable than a dog that has spent all their life in a kennel. Again, there are exceptions. I know there will be many people who have dogs that were raised in the house with lots of folks around and they are still skittish in those situations, but on the whole, I believe dogs, like people, are comfortable with what they know.

Thank you. I believe you explained it much better than I did!

WHOA!!!! Hold on just a cotton pickin minute! The ONLY comparison that was made was the brain pathways that are developed or not. I was not comparing a single other thing. It was an example of how brains can either have certain electrical pathways inhanced or not. Are you telling me that a dog that spends 5 years on a mountain top with no one but one person interacting with it will have the same "need" to be with other people that MOST NORMAL dogs that are socialised do? NOTHING in this world is etched in stone. There are exceptions to every rule. Why you think that me explaining how brain patterns that are disengaged and therefore lost forever is an offense to those poor feral kids is a mystery to me. I am hoping you just misunderstood me or your having a bad day or you didn't read it right or I didn't explain it well. All I was trying to say is that if you took one of my dogs right now, and put them outside in a kennel and came out once a day to work him then put him back, he would not be a happy camper. Because of his interaction with the family for all of his life, that is as vital to him as exercise and mental stimulation. Dogs that are kenneled all their lives do not have that same "need". Please ask for clarification before you decide to jump down someones throat. I meant absolutely NO slight to those kids.

When I first got Jackson (my first Border Collie, but not my first dog by any means!), and found this board, this is one of the first questions I asked about! Up to that point, the only people that I knew that had Border Collies were people who actually worked their dogs. They did trialing for sure, but they were mainly for working. And they ALL kept their dogs in kennels, outside. The folks I bought Jackson from did the same with theirs, except one female the wife insisted on keeping in the house, and when the husband told me about it, there was discust in his voice. In his mind, dogs just weren't suppose to be in the house. So, I came here and was very concerned that somehow keeping Jackson in the house with me would affect his working ability. As with this thread I was given pros and cons, and it was pretty much the consensus that it was individual preference. I think the reason most dogs are usually allowed to go with their handlers unleashed at trials, is because they are kenneled. They do not expect to "mingle" with other dogs. They have a job to do and that is all that is on their minds. When my trainer brings her main dog out, she has no interest in greeting me, or sniffing Jackson. She wants to know what her job is and to get with it. I think working dogs that work every day and are kenneled develop a certain brain mainframe that is built from the time they are born. I saw a show about feral children and the ones that had been without human voice from infancy, was never able to develop true language, because those brain "paths" were not developed and the brain disengaged them, shut them down. So, perhaps it is the same with working dogs that are kenneled except when working. They don't "socialize" yet they are able to work around and with other dogs. They are not included in "meeting" folks, yet they don't get snarky with them. They are simply not an important object in the dogs mind. I think the people who do their dogs like this care a great deal for their dogs, but they don't consider them "fur kids" or part of the family per se. But they are still a big part of their life. When you work, stock work, with your dog, you do create a bond. But it is still different from a pet bond. It is more like a partnership. That said, I did not kennel or crate Jackson. And he has a split personality. When he is at home, he is a goof ball toy playing fool. When he is working stock, nothing else in the world exists except him, the sheep, (or chickens!) and me. So based on MY experience, it is still just a matter of preference. This is not in reference to people who kennel or crate and ignore the dog or throw them out in the backyard and never or seldom interact with them. Just wanted to clarify that!

Cheyenne was my worst barker. She even barked at noises only she could hear, bless her little heart. If she was in the truck or my pickup, she barked like crazy at anyone that came within 20 ft. of it. Holly only barks if the boys are playing and she is chasing them. She doesn't play, but she sees them doing stuff and feels like she should do something, so she chases them and barks. Skip only barks at the wild life outside at night. Or the riding lawn mower if it looks at him funny. Jackson very, very seldom barks. Really the only time he barks is if I am in the house, and I holler out, "HELLO!" Skip and him both go running outside, barking. Don't know why they do this! But it cracks me up so I will do it at least once a week. None of them bark when they are in the car. They don't bark when someone knocks on the door. They are pretty quiet. Mostly it is Skip and his outside barking. I make him stop after awhile. I just hate the barking going on and on. Jackson is so quiet, if he barks it startles me!

Looks like a cool book. I love old stuff. But that dog looks more like a rough collie(lassie type) than a Border Collie. Maybe the other pics show different, but thats what it looks like to me. However, like I said, cool book, I'll go look!

I believe it was George Carlin who once said, "Shoot, is just sh** with two "o's". No matter the word, if the meaning is still the same.

Manwitchtude. Man with bitch attitude.

Good job Buddy!!! I started tying Jackson and Skip out in the yard on a short lead and then coming in the house, increasing the time away as they seemed to handle it. It sure comes in handy!

Good job Black Jack and AJ! I know what a satisfied feeling of saving a critter can bring. Y'all did good.

Mrs. Buster and I think alike! Probably more than MR. Buster appreciates!

Hey AJ! About time you showed up! Thought you took off to the back country or something. Glad to hear Black Jack continues to make strides. Don't be such a stranger now. Strange is okay though!

Happy belated 2nd birthday Jett! Amazing how goofy they can look when it concerns toys, and then be so dang serious when it comes to stock! Like a Jeckle and Hyde! Have fun even if you were forgotten for a minute!