Are BCs that hard to live with? - the worst thing your dog ever done

[Anda]

smileyzookie wrote

 

She's so afraid of doing something wrong, and wants to please so much she just doesnt do anything bad.

Riven is the exact oposite of Ouzo He would stop sometimes and you can read on his face cristal clear that he's trying to figure out what to break next, or what to steal, to provoque us. I'm trying not to overeact or give him satisfaction, but it's so hard.

If he steals something from another room, he intentionaly brings it to us, cautiosly, just close enough to get a glimpse, and then he bolts back to where he came from, pulling a "Lil' Stewie impression, from Mad TV: "Look what I can do!". :mad:

[INU]

Only one plant survived - it has been 9 years and it's still only 5 feet tall and has never been the same since. Traumatized

His look clearly said, Why didn't you season the whole thing?

Pearls Pop:

 

How did you find her? Did the 'new' owner adopted without knowing she was yours?

 

Jay:

 

Have you read Jon Katz 'the dog year'? There is a story just like yours!

[Bordercentrics]

I don't think they are necessarily hard to live with, but every Border I have seen has been high maintenance. They seem to have stronger personalities than most Shelties, for example. Neither of our Borders is destructive, but they both want a lot of interaction and attention.

 

Ruby is sweet as pie, but she is extremely active and excitable, so her training consists mostly of trying to get her attention when she is watching birds or kids or dogs and screaming with excitement. Of course, she needs lots of physical activity and mental stimulation.

 

Meg is calm and quiet, but she's definitely a diva and a drama queen. She is always watching everyone and everything and she frequently gives kisses and asks for petting or play or a ride in the car....and for some reason I give her what she asks for.

[Lunar]

Anda, Zeeke is just like your Ouzo. Drives me bananas!

[jay7347]

Hey INU, no I haven't read his book. I've had "Marley and Me" since my birthday in Feb and have yet to finish it. I'm horrible on enjoyment reading. Just too darn behind on 3D Computer technical software manuals. Second career retraining a 52 year old takes time...

 

Anda, my jaw is still on the floor. Makes Derry's turning the house into her own personal agility course seem like a lazy summer afternoon. You hang in there!

 

So I pick up my wife again tomorrow at DIA...do I bring Derry and her new rescue sister? Do I tie her down? They both love the truck, even for two hour rides.

 

Ain't these BC's a hoot! lololol

-jay

[border_collie_crazy]

most people would not guess it by looking at my girls now, but Misty was actually the good pup..Happy was a hell puppy, I would not wish her puppyhood on anyone, I was driven to tears almost weekly. she attacked people, kids, dogs, she grabbed everything from my room, jumped over the 4 foot gate with it brought it upstairs where my dad would find it and scream at me, she could not be trusted anywhere, I could not hold her, she did not listen and had no intrest in learning, the list goes on. now Misty has broken through 3 doors and dug a 5 inch hole in the floor, but that wasnt her being a "hell puppy" in all cases she was trying to come to me. the only time I cried in her puppyhood was when she crashed through the front door, and thats because the font door was all glass, and opened onto a very busey road that everyone speeds through, and is known for accidents, and Misty was 5 months old! the hole she dug in the floor was not as a puppy..she always does it if I dint crate her before leaving the house(doesn't matter if anyone else is home)

[Nik]

Oh I'm sooo glad that my two aren't the only ones that are mischievious .

 

I can think of quite a few things but the one that stands out in my mind so clearly is....

 

Once upon a time, I didn't believe in crating dogs. (I've learned my lesson, trust me). When Navi and Pache were just a few months old, and still in the "sweet" stage mind you, (or so I thought)...we left for a few hours so I put them both in the kitchen w/ a baby gate up and two chairs in front of the baby gate as added measure that they "surely couln't jump over the chairs yet". Boy was I wrong. I came in the door and no dogs were anywhere around. I found them in the living room exhausted from all the playing they did. Stumped, I couldn't figure out how in this world they got over the baby gate and chairs, and then I realized they didn't go over, they went through. But they chewed their way through so that the lattice work seamed back together and you couldn't even tell they bit through it.

 

The best part is, (of course after I got over my surprise of how they escaped) they took a poopy in my floor and thought they had to play slip and slide in it. It was everywhere on the linoleum. That wasn't quite good enough though because I walked around the sofa and there were boocoodles of little poopy doggy footprints all over my new (about 6 mths old) carpet. It took me forever steam cleaning to get it all out. Needless to say it wasn't long before the carpet came up and wood flooring went down.

 

Another more recent thing that comes to mind is... we have this construction going on w/ the addition so there are plenty of nails that get dropped. Every day I go around making sure that all the nails are picked up so noone steps on them and gets hurt. To make it easier, we bought one of those magnets on a stick. The day after buying it though I noticed Pache had a nail he was trying to chew on. I told him to bring it to me and he did of course. (Good Boy!!) Now I don't even need the magnet. He just goes around picking up the nails and brings them to me. I just wish he would have figured that one out a day earlier. I could have saved some money.

[pearls pop]

INU, How did i find Pearl? On the third day she was missing and i accepted that the local animal control hadn't picked her up,I took a week off work to search,I started plastering my town with flyers. On the ninth day i came home and there was a spaced out message from a woman who said she might have my dog,she didn't even leave her phone #,but i got her number from *69,called her and .flew over to her house. When i got there it was Pearl!!!! Pearl still had her collar and local tags on and i asked the woman why she didn't call animal control or try to find out who owned this dog and wouldn't she be upset if someone had done the same with her shetland? Get this, the woman said she looked at Pearls tag. She said she thought Pearl was a time traveler and was meant to come to her,as her tag said 1968. I pointed out to the woman that 1968 was her tag number and that the tag also said it was issued for the year 2001!

[INU]

wow I am speechless...

 

I was going to ask about the tag. I'm glad you have her back!

[jay7347]

"Time Traveler"... oh my, you have some folks like that down there also. Glad you got Pearl back!

-jay

[Anda]

Pearls Pop, What a morron that woman was! Time traveler! From the flower power era! Bwwwaaahahaha! Glad you got her back.

 

jay7347, I'll be hanging in there without a problem. He's settling down more and more.

 

Wanna mention here, most of the things listed above were done while everyone was in the house. When he's alone, he's (75% of the time) an angel. It's when he has an audience that he turns evil

We love him like crazy and he makes up for all the crazziness by being funny and smart and surprizing us with his ease of learning and understanding. Too bad he has such a strong personality and independance Which, again, is something I love about him

[pearls pop]

Even after 5 years my heart still swells when i think of how HAPPY i was when i found Pearl. the woman said Pearl had been at her house for the nine days.

An incident that i had forgotten has come to mind. The day after getting Pearl from the local shelter I was going to the store for dog food. A friend offered to drive. We got to the supermarket and i asked my friend if she would go in and buy dog food for me while i minded Pearl. she said just leave Pearl in the car. So we left Pearl in the car and headed to the door of the store. As we got to the door i had a funny feeling that I didn't trust Pearl as I only had her overnight. As I walked back to the car I saw Pearl sitting in the back seat looking calm, but upon closer look I saw some big white thing in front of her. When i got to the car I saw the front passenger headrest was demolished. In the minute and half that i was gone she had torn the cover and stuffing from the headrest and stripped it to the metal frame. that was the only thing of value that Pearl ever did destroy. she really turned out to be a gem.

[CoRayBee]

You know, I sat back to think about how destructive Barra was in her younger years.....and couldn't think of anything. Sure, there are the usual things like sneaking snacks off the coffee table (when I am dumb enough to leave them out) or pulling the pillows off the couch so she could lay up there, but that's the worst I can recall.

 

I suppose that if I really give it some thought, I could credit a) the fact that she came to work with me for the first 3 years; I was already a convert to the gospel according to CRATE; c) there were a lot of extracurricular activities;

and d) she goes almost everywhere with me (always has.)

 

None of that is original, though- it's nothing that any of you don't do with your dogs as well. So maybe part of it was luck. Either way, I feel that I have been absolutely blessed by owning Barra......and I am cringing as I write this because it's all probably going to balance out in the end- which means the next dog will most likely eat my floor and destroy the furniture.

[melly]

I'm beginning to think my 2 eight-month-old BC's are angels after reading some of these stories.The only really "bad" thing they have done so far is this:

 

My 10 year-old grandson had a beloved stuffed platypus that he has dragged around since babyhood. Needless to say, this poor thing will not survive much longer, but Kyle still carries him around.

 

Anyhoo, when the pups were about 12 weeks old, we went out for a while, leaving them in their kennels. When we got home the back door was standing open, the pups were outside, the kennel doors were both open and the living room was trashed--along with Kyle's "bassiebooh". That child dropped down onto the floor over bassi's remains and went into deep grief, crying as if he were heartbroken. Of course, he was my first concern, so we gathered up bassie's remains, and I set to work to put him back together.

 

I then called the police, who came out and tried to convince me that these 12 week-old pups had opened two locked kennels, the back door, then proceeded to trash the living room. Yeah, sure. Since nothing was missing and no other room as trashed, I had to go along with their theory, but I still have my doubts. They have never since opened their locked (or unlocked) kennels or the back door. I concede that they trashed the living room, since they can do that with me standing there watching. No shred of paper of any kind is safe from Geaugeau. I am seriously thinking of building shelves just under ceiling height all aroung the house so that I can put things out of their reach.`

[Allie Oop]

Hmmm. A lot of these stories are horrific, but vaguely familiar . . . .

 

Our previous dog (GSD/Rough Collie) was a "yard dog" who hung out happily in our totally fenced back yard, running, playing and sleeping in the shade. My husband thought that Allie, our now 15 mo. old BC, would be thrilled to do the same (and it is a very nice back yard). However, . . .

 

$200 worth of electrical wiring, $100 worth of chewed leather BBQ gloves, hotpads and grill covers, several hundred dollars worth of plants, etc. later we discovered that the crate we were so disdainful of was actually a wonderful thing.

 

We love Allie to pieces, and truthfully, the mistake was ours -- Border Collies need company and attention -- so, we have all adapted.

 

I say this with a little roll of the eyes however, as Allie was just up at the neighbor's house and decided to pee in the middle of their carpet for some reason. She hasn't done anything like that for over six months!!!!

[MaggieDog]

Let's see...in the last 6 years Maggie has:

 

- taken numerous things off of counters and eaten them, including: at least 3 loaves of bread, 1 12 oz bag of liver treats (which made her blow up like a balloon and sent me into a panic), a tupperware container of cookies, various containers of leftovers (without spilling anything on the carpet), a chocolate muffin, etc.

 

- bent crate wires on 2 crates, escaping once w/ only a slight mark on her nose

 

- jumped a 5 ft fence from a standstill

 

- escaped a "secure" dog pen outside through a space approx. 2in by 10in

 

- attacks my parents' 11 yo dog any chance she gets

 

- just this year worked through guarding issues that prevented her from being around many dogs

 

- chewed carpet on the stairs when locked in the basement

 

- kicked the pan out of her crate and destroyed the underlying welcome mat at my fiance's mom's house

 

- escaped our fenced yard and ran amok in the neighborhood, harassing dogs (my parents' rottie mix chewed the hole and Maggie followed; the fence has been repaired since)

 

- shredded numerous towels and blankets when crated

 

- chewed the plastic hands and feet of my favorite stuffed animal - a gorilla my grandma gave me the year before she died.

 

I'm sure there's been more, but at least I know she's not *always* an angel - that would be boring. Maggie is my heartdog!

[MJCHAMPION]

The Champion destoyed about a dozen remote controls from 6 mos. to a year old...He would shred them into a billion of small pieces... Always happened on Sunday nights, I suspect it was from the scent of my hand or that my friends & I were watching too much NFL on Sunday Ticket @ the house... About the only damage he ever did... I have always been careful about leaving my cell phone out because of this and have never had a mishap but was more careless about the remote controls... I spent alot of time on Ebay replacing them... As I am writing this, I am thinking I have not had any remote control damage in over seven months & now leave any remotes out in the open without a problem... If the remote control damage reappears next month with the start of football season I actually will be pretty impressed...

[Sky92x]

So, wife and I get home from a movie. Rezzie is in the front room, tail wagging. "Look dad! I got out! Aren't you proud of me!?"

 

Rezzie finally ate his way out of his "tent"

kennel.

 

He made a visit to the office, with a camera on a tripod in the middle of the floor, my new Canon 30D on my desk with a tasty looking neck strap dangling down, and a very tempting Canon 300D on the floor.

 

Not to mention a delicious guitar, amongst other things.

 

And what did he do?

 

Unpacked the stuffed animals, "decorated" the room with garbage,

 

Found a speaker at the bottom of a for-goodwill box and placed it in the middle of the living room. (somehow not disturbing the rest of the contents)

 

Rearranged my wife's shoes around the house.

 

But he destroyed or damaged nothing (Aside from the $100 tent kennel)

 

 

He just moved things all around the house.

 

Weird dog...

[Beth G]

Originally posted by smileyzookie:

Riven is BC mix, but she's a total doll. She hasnt done anything destructive really except poo in the house a few times. She chewed up her brush once, but I think that was cause she doesnt like getting brushed.

Oh yeah poppy did that too...lol. I had forgotten about that. Our 2 yr old son(now 3) had taken it down and left it on the floor without us knowing that.