kate40541

Kate somehow broke a lower canine tooth about 10 years ago. It's not as straight across as Charlie's, more of a slant with a minor chip later on but it looked to me as if the pulp was exposed. I did take her to the vet in a panic after it happened but he wasn't concerned and didn't recommend we do anything for it as I expected and was prepared for. Nothing was ever done to it and she's never had a problem. We may have been more lucky than not. However, a girl we had that's gone on ahead now had three of her four canines broken off just above gum level when we got her through a rescue supposedly from grabbing a chain link fence when penned. The fourth tooth was broken off about 1/2 way down. We did have a lot of dental work done on her when we got her but those teeth were damaged long before that so nothing more was done to them and she never had a problem either. Our youngest boy also has just broken a lower canine (I'm beginning to think I'm bad luck!). I'm taking him to the new vet to see what he thinks about it.

That's a wonderful story Sam's Dad, I'd definatly say all BC too. Sam looks smart and ready to get to work with you. And look at that first picture! He's already getting acquainted with the vacuum, I like that in a man ;-)

I agree, the right one is out there but not ready for you yet. When the time is right...

From your examples of your mother's 'need' for a puppy it hasn't been going on all that long, just over a year. Would that be correct? I do hate to say this but it could be the start of some form of dementia. My m-i-l is well into dementia now but this is how it started, with an unstoppable determination for something completely inappropriate as well as being impossible to reason with. I doubt if it would be easy to get her to have a doctor do a check-up but it might help to handle the situation. On another note, I used to have an neighbor with a daughter-in-law who would get a puppy and all would be wonderful. Until the puppy became an adult, then the neighbor ended up with the cast-off grown dog. My neighbor never seemed interested in seeing what was happening but since she was happy to take the dogs from her d-i-l there wasn't much anyone could do about it.

Mary, check Craig's List for your area, I saw one of those listed on there here in Sarasota last week. A feed store/farm supply might be a good place to look for a decent price too. I can sympathize with your problem, we had a girl that couldn't be confined, it could be a real problem. Suzanne

I read years ago that "this animal was abused" is a way to manipulate people into taking in that animal, people like to feel they've 'saved' a poor little one. My mother in law told the story every day of how she saved her cat from abuse, but it was only that the first owner had three small boys and no time for the long-haired, sort of shy cat. Our first true rescue was Maggie, she was probably 7 or 8 when we got her and I knew people who were friends of her first owner. I was told stories of how the woman was coarse and rough with her dogs (and herself too) and I could tell from the way Maggie reacted when I tried to teach her something new, she'd disappear inside herself and do nothing. She was afraid to even try as if she was better off doing nothing than the wrong thing. She'd given up on the chance of being right. I thought she'd been treated fairly roughly in her past life but not necessarily from the scars and broken teeth and sunken spot in her skull (dogs can be pretty rough on themselves) but from her attitude. Nicky is three and he's fearful of almost everyone except my husband and me. I think his problem is that he's a truly gentle, naturally shy soul who ended up on the street at 6 or 7 months, was picked up by animal control and the experience of being in a kennel, then neutered, becoming gravely ill and given rough treatment by a vet made him believe that his best chance was in chasing the ones he's afraid off before they hurt him. We've made progress but he'll never be as confident as the others are. I don't think he was ever actually abused, he just doesn't have the confidence he needed for his experiences and they happened at that 7 month fear stage. Suzanne

Diane, it's so nice to read about you and Rush, that you want to learn more and do what is right for her, and by extension you, and to know that you will listen, do the work, and end up with one very lucky and very cute girl. We all have at least one episode in our past that we would have handled better if we'd known then what we know now, it's part of the experience. She doesn't have to associate with other dogs to participate in agility, if you keep your dog under control and her attention on you then you might find that other people will be standing near you because your dog isn't acting like an idiot around their's who is also under control. Suzanne

Nick is tall (22"), lanky, narrow in the body (aerodynamic, he's aerodynamic!), with a long fluffy tail but he's also a pretty classically marked black tri. I was asked if he's a Russian wolfhound. We've always said he looks like Wiley Coyote. Then Kelpie who is small, black tri, almost no white and none on her narrow little face was immediately identified by someone else as a BC, that really surprised me since she has less of the 'classic' look. When we had three black and whites we were always asked if the old one was the mother, when we said no to that then we were asked if they were related. No to that too usually stumped the questioner. But the old folks down here in SW Florida almost always know them calling them farm collies because when they grew up in the upper mid-west there was always one on the farm. I always liked talking to those people but there's fewer and fewer of them as time goes by. Suzanne

We need to take a moment to give some thought to the woman he's moving in with. He's already shown that he will ignore advice, act on impulse, and when the going gets the slightest bit tough he'll bail at the first opportunity. Then after all this if the error of his ways is pointed out to him he will attempt to slough off the responsibility and pass the blame to someone who has only been trying to help him grow up. EEK!! Run girl, run as fast as you can and take your doggies with you! How soon after he moves in will her dogs become inconvenient?? Suzanne

I'm so very sorry that Missy has had to leave you to go on ahead. Suzanne "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan." "The Once Again Prince" by Irving Townsend

This sure caught my attention Dixie Girl! Our first boy border collie was TJ named for Thomas Jackson. I'd read a biography of his wife but needed a name for a boy at the time so TJ it was. Kate - named for her mother Katie who was a really nice girl and it fits my requirements for dog name, short, sharp and can be screeched at the top of my voice without too much embarrassment. She's Katie Scarlett O'Hara but I call her Doodlebug for a, by now, forgotten reason. Her attitude has always been "I'm Kate and you're not." She holds me to a high standard expecting me to always do my best although she understands it's never as good as her best. She's more athletic, smarter, better looking, and way cooler than I am and makes sure I know it. She's my favorite, maybe because she lets me hang around with her. TJ's successor is Nick who is pretty much only called Nicky because it just fits his personality better. He's named after our first border collie Nikki who had to leave us far too soon at 4 1/2. For some reason I had a hard time at first using her name again until I remembered that I'm named after my great grandmother because my parents loved her and wanted to remember her. I wanted to remember Nikki so he's Nick. Kelpie - I regretted this choice for quite a while because of the comments "but she's a border collie!!" "but she's not a kelpie!!" She's named Kelpie for the Celtic mythological creature the kelpie, a shape-shifting creature associated with rivers that could be a horse or a woman. Now I shorten the explanation to a water witch, and say it's appropriate because she loves the water and she can be a witch. Kelpie was a dog's name before it became a name of a dog breed; I'd still like a kelpie dog one day but for now I have my Kelpie. She gets called the Kelpinator a lot because she's a pushy little girl who covers all the ground she stands on. Alabama Jack - after two weeks it's still a bit of a surprise that he's here. He's actually Kelpie's litter mate although she's in denial about it. He was adopted but returned after a year because his first owner graduated from college and realized a young BC didn't fit in with the demands of her first job. She'd named him Cupid, I always thought it was an idiotic name but never thought I'd be able to do anything about it. He was at the rescue again for 5 months before I saw him. I'd been told he was a wild child and no one would take him on but when I saw him I didn't think he was wild at all, he's just a two year old border collie. I've said I'm passing the buck that I think the Lord put the thought into my mind that he really needed to get out of there but I can't think of any other reason the words popped out of my mouth like that or why my DH agreed without any discussion. I spent days making lists of names for him but none seemed to fit. Their litter was from Alabama, a old Florida fish camp style restaurant in Key Largo called Alabama Jack's is a favorite of my husband's, and it just seemed to fit him so now he's Alabama Jack. I don't know how that red tri boy got in the middle of that black tri litter, sometimes I still call him his temporary name of Red Dog. He's not wild and he fits in just fine, I can't imagine life without him. Silkie is our cat, another Celtic mythological creature who changes shape between a seal and a person. She came to us as a stray a few years ago during a week of hard rains when a seal didn't seem quite so inappropriate for a seal brown cat. Suzanne

"and that the dog's different when they work with you (or Jack Knox, or any other person who has "presence")." This, to me, is the equivalent of the vet or some other confident person - who is not the familiar owner - can more easily do something/perform a procedure with your dog that you have a more difficult time with because you are a known quantity to your dog. It isn't necessarily that the stranger is a better handler than you, it's that the dog doesn't know them and what the limits are with that person. That person has confidence from experience that you don't have and they're not nervous being in a new situation (that would be you). I don't think the sheep herding in itself has any unusual power to transform a dog, I think it's the self-confidence the dog gains from learning a new skill. I haven't heard it in a long time but agility used to be thought to help a dog feel more confident and secure because they learn to do something that at first appears scary, manage to live through it, and realize "that wasn't so bad, maybe I can relax about something else that seemed scary."

that's nothing, just wait til you get excited about the end product.... Suzanne

I doubt if your training is inadequate, or least I hope not, because my goals are exactly the same as yours. I think that most or all of us have that same goal, we just all have different circumstances that may influence how to get there. Some people do want to tell their dogs what to do for the rest of their life. I knew a woman like that and it wasn't any fun to be around her for me or her dogs. To me that says her training was inadequate but I also knew a man who actually used his dogs to make his living and he was as compulsively controlling as she was. They stand out because they aren't the norm. Me? I'm too lazy to do all their thinking for them, I'd rather set them on the path that goes where we want to go and then expect them to think for themselves. I think it's not a black or white situation of either you tell them everything to do or you don't, there's a middle road of running along holding the bicycle until the rider (the dog) learns balance and control, I think that's where most of us are. Metaphorically of course Suzanne

Melanie, you said what I've been thinking as I read this thread. Like it or not living in a highly urbanized environment is a fact of life for an awful lot of us. The attitude and opinions of other people, idiotic or not, are a fact of life for a lot of us. Our dogs have to conform to a different model in many instances than some dogs do. In the beginning of their training some dogs do need more guidance than others to learn how to make decisions, then they can be allowed to take more initiative in how to behave. It's like the mother I saw at the supermarket one time, her little boy (about 4 years old) kept bouncing away from her as they walked through the parking lot, she'd say "don't do that, don't do that, don't do that" but he was never given any kind of suggestion as to what to do instead. How about beginning with just saying "Hey sweetie, come walk by me" without specifying which side? It is replacing one action with another but it's not removing the ability to make independent decisions, it's guiding the process into a channel that will work better for the environment in which the child or dog find themselves. Suzanne

What coat color do you prefer, if any? Black and white with an interesting, nicely shaped blaze and collar. Mostly black on the body, but I don't have a problem with a larger amount of white. I used to prefer prick ears but now tipped are my favorite And why? It's a clean, sharp looking combination of colors. Stylish and classy not to mention classic. If you have a preference, would it dictate your choice of dog? It would be the first thing I'd notice of course but unless everything else is equal the personality is what would be most important in the final selection. Does your current complement of dogs reflect this color preference? No, only one is black and white. We have two black tri-colors and one red tri, colors are becoming more common it seems. The red is a deep, dark red, really a chocolate although he's definitely not brown. The breeder we got the black and white from said he liked the tri-color because they looked like they were touched with gold highlights. Poetic description isn't it? And I'll admit this (and yes I know it's silly and obsessive), we've had other breeds including mixes but I like all my dogs to match as far as what they are so we have four BCs and it'd have to be a special dog to break the set. Suzanne

This is based on observations of a limited (to SW Florida) area but the sheltie people I've seen around agility and obedience clubs/classes/trials all know each other and hang out together only needing the shared breed to have something in common. BC owners in contrast are mostly loners, without the need? desire? to hang out with other people who belong to border collies. Has anyone else noticed this? I used to have people tell me their dog didn't like border collies meaning the dogs didn't like the 'stare' as the BC watched whatever was going on but I never had a sheltie owner tell me this. The shelties I've known don't seem to care what another dog is doing, unless they can bark at it (and bark and bark and bark). In our area it's very common for shelties to be debarked, usually shelties come in multiples and with their reactivity if one barks all of them do. Most of the shelties though are more focussed on their owner than on other people, only one has been out-going enough to be buddies with anyone who crossed his path. Suzanne

Kate - 14 1/2 Nick - 3 Kelpie and the new boy without a name yet - 2 I didn't want 3 so close together in age, it just happened, again... Suzanne

Kate - black and white Nick - black tri Kelpie - black tri new boy without a name - red tri Suzanne

I never wanted anything but black and white so why do we have only one black and white, two black tri-colors and one red tri?? The dog must be more important than the color no matter what I thought... Suzanne

I couldn't watch it but I really didn't think it would be what Mr. Yates claimed it would be. Glad to know Oprah did a good job with it. Suzanne

It's been quite a while since I read it too but I remember it as worth reading and at some time I'll read it again. I didn't like the follow-up Nop's Hope much, I'd had high hopes (sorry...) for it since NT was so good. Suzanne

There's a reason she's never been allowed to have that opposable thumb transplant she's always wanted - I don't need that dog to be able to write to me Suzanne

This is exactly what we do. The crates are no longer out but it's not a problem for a dog to be put in one if it becomes necessary for some reason. I do crate at agility trials and traveling as well as if a dog came to stay that I wasn't familiar enough with them to know if they'd be ok loose. I do work from home and am with them almost all the time so they're fairly well-supervised. We have three dogs and one cat who only respects the oldest dog and she doesn't have problems telling any others what to do and how. Suzanne

Kate my old agility girl and I were playing around on the equipment with a friend and her shelties before class one morning. Kate went up the teeter, just as she got to the balance point and it started to drop (she loves to BANG! it down) one of the shelties wandered under the teeter. Kate immediately pivoted on her hindquarters moving back to the lower end of the teeter enough to stop it from creaming the sheltie. As soon as the sheltie got out of the way Kate finished the teeter and went about her business as if it was nothing. Neither my friend nor I could believe what we'd seen as it was clearly an example of seeing what was happening, realizing the consequences, and doing something to change the outcome before I could even form the words of what to do. Suzanne