Where the Wild Things Are

[barbarianoftheuniverse]

I have an eight month old Border Collie called Meg. She is far from perfect (and so am I).
Today she has been about 60/40 good. The 40 included chewing up my camera memory card which DH is sure he put safely on the mantelpiece. Every time I look down at this screen she takes a quick munch of the coffee table with her eyes on mine. This despite a 2 hour walk which included much in and out of streams.

Can I just share my embarrassment with you? Dd 11 shouted "Mum come and look at this Eric's brilliant" She's playing with the spacehopper with Eric and is most impressed at him "twerking" along to her singing Wrecking Ball I didn't have the heart to shatter her illusions and fill her in on him humping the spacehopper.

Finn escaped from the garden today, fortunately ran round to the front door, DH is off to get a barrier for the impossibly small gap in the fence tomorrow.
We're off for a social walk with a local dog trainer on Sunday, 3 hours so he should be exhausted for our friends coming for a late house warming lunch. The walk includes assessment and advice from the trainer who happens to live two doors down from us, a definite result! I'm hoping she might prove to be our doggie daycare as her company does that.

insanity!! When Fitz was at the height of his humping phase ds2 was rather touched that he liked 'hugging' his leg ....

Eek NCIS you have a Houdini dog - what a relief that he just went round to the front door

How's Pip this morning?

insanity!

None of my male dogs have ever humped, which is rather fortunate as they've all been huge.

Glad Finn had the good sense to not run off. It's so scary when they get out.

Well, it seems he was just having an off day, as he's absolutely fine this morning. He's had every single toy out of his toy boy, shredded two cardboard tubes all over the living room floor and almost made dd late for school by generally being on form and too entertaining. He's now taken up sentry by the front window to watch all the morning dog walkers on their way to the park. Phew!

Oh that's good Moose. Relief!

The humping is funny, we have lots here but only on people - the space hopper must have been hilarious! Minty usually goes for teenage sons leg so I do wonder if he's sensing the hormones that are evidently coursing through DS1s veins right now! He's actually quite a chilled chap but the spots are furious.

Minty is so smelly but so big to lift into the bath and we have no walk in shower, I'm booking a groomer next week just to give him a clean which seems a ridiculous waste of £46 but there we are.

NCIS - what are you aiming to work on with your trainer walk and assessment?

I've asked to look at recall, getting a bit sloppy although he still doesn't want to lose us so stays close but with a look around when called to see if there's anything more interesting, and heelwork. I really want a dog whose as well trained as my previous two were. I had a fabulous trainer then but she's just retired.

Mainly I think I need help to have a dog who is always under control. He is really very good for a 10 month old Border Collie, I've got the moon but I want the stars too.

It's interesting NCIS - I'd like to do the same actually as I am finding recall is haphazard. We have other issues, like charging into the garden for final wee and barking really loudly at the fence! I think that's totally unacceptable at 1030pm but it has become a recent habit.

Does your trainer offer a 3hr walk as a set thing or did you ask for that? Our trainer offers home visits for £50 fee and she did this when minty was a puppy and was with us for 2 hours and left an action plan which she wrote up there and then. Maybe she'd do a walk if I asked.

The walk is a regular thing, there will be other people and dogs on a 43 acre totally enclosed site so room to practice recall and several trainers to give people individual attention. Really looking forward to it plus hoping it might tire him out a bit.
One of the people coming for lunch is bringing her 14 year old dog who Finn knows well but who may appreciate a bit of peace.

Sounds fabulous, and quite an unusual set up. Enjoy it!

I hope you and Finn enjoy the training - lucky you to have a trainer so close (although will you feel like you're being judged every time you walk out of the front door? )

Fitz's energy levels have changed in the last few days - he's become much more driven and is constantly dropping his ball into my lap if I dare to sit on the sofa

He has two walks a day at the moment - about 45 mins in the morning and 30ish mins in the afternoon with a mix of running, ball retrieving, sniffing stuff and best of all playing with any of his friends he meets when we're out

We do a few quick training sessions as and when during the day

I'm starting to think he needs more activity now - we've been worried about over-doing things but I'm pretty sure he's fully-grown now - he's 10.5 months and has barely grown at all in the last 6 weeks or so

I'd love to take him to agility but there's nowhere near here which does it (closest place has beginners' sessions on Saturday afternoons but our weekends are already so chick-full of children's activities that I'm loath to add any more

It's funny he's definitely much more collie-like than any other retriever breed I've met ..

Oh and glad Pip's better, moose

Gosh minty - that's expensive to get minty groomed - do they charge more cos he's big? Mind you when Fitz came out of the groomers a few weeks ago he looked, felt and smelt utterly gorgeous :)

Yes he takes an hour and a half to do! It is expensive though - I had grooming in our dog-budget at £20 a month but he could really do with a monthly wash & groom which isn't going to happen as it's three times the amount we have.

Sounds like you'd be fine BB for upping the exercise levels but will you have the time!?

that is expensive Minty. It only costs 30 - 40 to have a BT hand stripped and that takes 3 or 4 hours!

We bath ours in an enormous plantpot - like this - using hose on the mixer tap so we have warm water. We used to do it in the bath, but stopped when we has the bathroom refitted.

Pip has so little fur that he's very quick and easy, but Lurcherboy has a ridiculously thick coat that's really hard to get the shampoo all the way through and rinse out.

They're both very well behaved when we do it though. My first Lurcher was like trying to bath an eel. I used to have to get in the bath in a pair of old leggings and tshirt and hold her while dh did the shampoo and rinse and even then she would often manage to squirm enough to escape.

Gosh fan that's good value. I need to look around a bit.

I need to man up a bit Moose - I'm such a wuss when it comes to washing and mucky stuff, not like you!

Very good friends of ours have just let me into their secret that they're getting a puppy next week! I'm very excited but they were going to be our first port of call for a weekend dog and teenage boy sitting in the autumn to cover a no-kids family wedding in Scotland. They adore minty and the guy goes straight and does big rough and tumble playing which minty is well up for. Think I might limit my ask to teenage boy sitting and find the dog and 9yr old other homes!

I'm off to their house on Saturday with our old crate and other puppy bits to give them some layout advice.

Yeah, I know, I'm just a mucky mare!

To be honest, I think having worked mucking out rescue kennels and helping groom the dogs etc when I was younger, anything involved with cleaning up just two of my own seems like a walk in the park.

How exciting - a new friend for Minty.

That would toughen you up for sure, my friend used to have a pony and I'm embarrassed now to think of the hours I spent watching her mucking out while I sat on the bench and chatted!

The puppy is lab/collie cross and they are a super active family with kids same ages as ours so will be great but I'll be very worried minty will be too big and boisterous for a good few months. Also don't want him passing on his arsy attitude!

I had a horse too - and worked at a local riding school. Thinking about it, I seem to have spent a lot of my life surrounded by muck.

You may be surprised, Minty may be a big softie with an obviously little pup, perhaps just keep him on the lead for initial introductions?

Fitz has made a new friend - a tiny but very feisty 4.5 month old border terrier

Fitz has been incredibly gentle with him - when they're doing the chasing round in circles game Fitz keeps looking back to make sure he's not going too fast for the other pup and goes much slower than normal so he can keep up, and when they're wrestling and rolling around on the ground Fitz has toned everything down so it's not too overwhelming

You may well be surprised with how minty is with the new pup

It makes me smile BB how many people tell their big dogs to go steady with Maz and be gentle ...until they see him in action! Only reason he's never been squashed by the big ones he plays with is because he weaves in and out of their egs like lightening.

I was on the other end yesterday though as someone in my morning dog group has a 11 wk old min wire haired dauschund. She is tiny and was bombing around a big group of labs, spaniels etc. She had a bee line for Maz and a whippet who were having a mad wrestle and wanted to join in! I was scared of squashing her myself!

There must be something in us former horse owner that means we are forever immune to noticing muck Moose. I'm always.having a go at ds when he says he can't take his wellies off because they are too dirty to touch. We used to help the farmer in return for reduced half livery so we only had to go once a day ( and he'd step in if we couldn't go). Once you've shifted a year old muck heap or mucked out a cow barn you are past caring!

at wellies too dirty to touch. We had that with dd at the festival.

Oh yes, favourite job sorting the muck-heap. The owner of our stables was obsessive about the muck-heap being perfectly square and level, so one of us had to spend an hour each weekend day up on top of it with a fork, turning it over and squaring it off. My mum used to make we strip to my undies at the front door and go straight upstairs into the bathroom on those days! Everyone used to disappear and suddenly look very busy when it was time for muck-heap duty.

Our stables were fairly old school. The farmer was from a travelling background so was an old friend of my gr grandads. He bred good quality horses for some big horsey names ( if his tales were true though he did have some nice horses so who knows!). He was a real character but the yard was from.another time....a set of geese who bossed the show, ratting terriers doing their own thing, ramshackle barns and an eccentric old farmer. I loved it there!

Sounds fab fan. Ours was run by the woman who eventually became my Dad's life partner. She has er, quite a few issues, probably ASD, definitely OCD and something else, possibly some sort of personality disorder to boot. Extremely difficult to work for and ran a very tight ship, despite the actual stables being in a terrible state of repair, barns/looseboxes falling down and big rats in the feed barns etc plus it was running at a serious loss (frequent loss of customers and liveries due to personality clash with owner ). He really knew how to pick 'em my Dad!

Seriously though, she was/is a lovely person with a great big heart, just not great social skills wise and has her own, very strict, way of doing things with a distinct lack of ability to see anyone else's point or perspective. It took a long time to get to know her, but when I did I became extremely fond of her and she was part of our family. Also, what she didn't/doesn't know about horses isn't/wasn't worth knowing and I have nothing but respect for her. We're no longer on speaking terms, but that's a whole other story.