Thread: New Family member

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

Very cute, gave me lots of laughs. I hope you're not attached to the pot plants Bob, or for that matter the lawn or anything in the back yard.

Yeah we laugh and cry every day over this pup. We it is outside and we cannot supervise it we still have it confined in a 2 m x 2 m puppy play pen as it has already shredded a begonia and a sage plant. But we are under no illusion that anything is safe. It has it's own sand pit for digging and loves digging in it but has still put a couple of holes in the lawn. It shows a lot of interest in a potted olive tree to which we have applied liberal amounts of bitter bite but it seems to make no difference to it. Yesterday it managed to escape the pen by placing a bucket up against the side and standing on the bucket.

The trick i've found with border collies, - we're on our 3rd, - is toys toy toys!
Teach the pup to play fetch, which is about as hard as teaching a border collie to breathe.
They were born to play fetch & it has the added bonus of distracting them from shredding plants or digging in the back yard.
They are so darn intelligent, they just love to learn all sorts of tricks/games.
1 fav game of our latest Border is 'hide the toy'. First i get her all worked up over a particular toy then i get her to sit & stay (a bonus part of the game cuse it comes in handy any time i take her out) then i trot off & hide the toy. She then has to track the toy down by following my scent. The first couple of times she get the toy straight away but after i've made a few false trails it'll keep her busy for a good couple of minutes while she tracks it down.
Also Borders excel at agility training, they just love it & usually dominate the agility scene.
The main thing with Borders is lots & lots of attention & plenty of activity. It'll keep em from getting up to no good - mostly. lol

Cheers & happy new years!

Thanks for the info RT, well SWMBO certainly has already blown the budget on toys for this thing. It shreds cardboard boxes on a pretty regular basis now and used socks have started disappearing - I found one up the back under some leaves.

It finally worked out how to escape the puppy pen by just climbing up the green plastic lattice like a ladder!

Update - gee they grow up quickly.
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wow shes growing fast!

Originally Posted by Rattrap

wow shes growing fast!

And she'll soon be a good shed companion,but in the meantime she has to enjoy those puppy moments to the delight of Bob & Mrs Bob

Cheers

Originally Posted by John Saxton

And she'll soon be a good shed companion,but in the meantime she has to enjoy those puppy moments to the delight of Bob & Mrs Bob

Cheers

Yeah she really is a wilfull delight. She is quite the bully-buster around the house trying to continually push the boundaries chewing, biting and digging etc. She likes people but she is very timid around other dogs. At puppy school she is the most timid of all the dogs and even runs away from the cavalier spaniels which are 1/3rd her size. Of course as soon as she runs all the other pups chase.

We are finally able to walk her and she loves it so we are up to 2 km, but she tugs like a demon on the leash for about half the distance and then calms down a bit, until she sees a bird or car or a moving leaf !

She loves coming into the shed and picking up something and taking off with it to hide it in the garden. Latest was a short extension cord I'm trying to put a stomp on that - can just imagine something I really need disappearing into the void.

One month on and she's really grown. She can now reach up and grab things from the kitchen benches and sink.

Her latest was a half rotten cabbage still sealed up in supermarket cling wrap that she reached up and grabbed from the sink and half dismembered - the reason I knew something was up was the smell permeating through the house!




She likes veggies like celery and carrot. She doesn't eat them she must like the texture because she basically shreds them and scatters the throughout the house.

We've started puppy obedience and agility classes with Willow and she loves it - it really gives her a job.

OTOH she gets offended pretty easily and appears to have become quite vindictive. Yesterday she peed in my shed for the umpteeth time (she is very sneaky about it and usually does it when I am welding and have my back to her) and this time I caught her and flicked her behind with a towel so she went off in a huff and found my walking hat and chewed a big divot out of the brim!

She's big enough to come to the tree loppers yard on Saturdays.

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Reminds me of being a little kid and going timber falling with dad and riding the bulldozer.

My has time flown, . . . .Willow's just turned one so we had a sort of birthday party for her.
We invited 6 other dogs (4 adult dogs and 2 pups) and their slaves along.
It was bedlam for about an hour and then just like human parties the older dogs sat on the sidelines and just watched the three pups rolling around in a ball for another hour and a half.
There were games, water, mud, fights, tears, falls, and one of the adult dogs ran away up the street for a while - just like a human party.
The doggie birthday cake was orange cake with liver treat crunchie bits that went down a treat.

Here are the 3 pups just before the 2 golden retrievers when home.
Note how clean they are

Willow is fanatical about the ABC "In the night garden" TV program.
We just have to play a few notes of the theme music on the computer and she rushed down to the living room to stare at the blank video projector screen.
Luckily the projector screen is a wall.
If something interesting to her appears on the laptop screen she tries to go behind the screen to see what's there.

I had the coverage on in the background and she watched it on and off all day - at least 3 hours of it.


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I know you've seen this thread Bob, but others may not have. Hope you don't mind.

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f43/do...colour-154577/