Your favourite bits about your pastoral breed :) General Chat

She looks about the same size as the one we play with most mornings (Sally) She is a very small one with shorter legs. I think the size of their legs varies so much in Border collies doesn't it?

I love watching them doing their agility too, it's great fun to watch, they are always so keen and eager and sooooo fast, especially when they jump on that table! lol!

I just love the way g.s.d.'s "sing" to you when it's time for their walk, and I really don't think there is any other dog that can match that strange "singing" they do.

Thanks Helena, have never seen a BC as small as her so glad there are some out there. Maybe she is 100% BC after all

Cassie doesn't sing like GSD's do but she talks to you, more woo, woo, woo and growly like, very funny! Almost like a little human! She lets you know what she wants that's for sure. We had some stranger in the lakes say 'oh, aggressive dog' because Cassie was doing her spinning and barking at the cars thing! Couldn't believe it, she's the least aggressive dog I've ever met, just boisterous and still a pup! Confident is a better word! Needless to say, I set this woman straight!

What i like so much about collies is the diversity in size/colour/shape, they vary so much in size, how tall is she? she looks full BC to me, there are lots of dinky BC's around she is beautiful!

I alway thought she was full BC Gems but I really have never seen one so tiny! Will have to measure her for height but she was 11kgs at 1 year (Sepember). She certainly acts all BC

Unfortunately, owing to a computer glitch, I don't have all the measurements I took of Kali and Snorri when they were growing up (I had it all on a zipdisk, which now reads as "faulty"), so can't say anything reliable about their sizes, other than that Orkney BCs tend to be a good bit smaller than their mainland counterparts. For an Orkney BC boy, My Kali is quite a big lad, but when put next to a mainland one, he looks quite small, and my vet advises keeping him at about 20 kg, whereas the weight chart for "standard" BCs shows a weight of 25 kg. However, having the backs of your knees hammered by a 20 kg BC covered in wet sand feels much the same as having them hammered by a wet, sandy 25 kg BC - you still end up flat on your face!

As for the shaking thing, that's the action Kali uses to kill rats - a quick shake (breaks the rat's neck) and a fast crunch to finish the job. I don't like him killing rats (not that I have a great deal of sympathy for the local rats, who are numerous and BIG) - but they carry lepto, and I could do quite well without that. He seemed quite surprised when I threw the dead rat away; perhaps he thought I ought to take it home and cook it?

After 11 years, he still hasn't learned that cats have sharp bits on them, and I still have to stop him from chasing them - on the few occasions he has had a head-to-head confrontation with a cat, he has always come off worst, but he's either too sure of himself or he's too stupid to learn from his experiences - and, from other observations, I don't think he's stupid!

On the other hand, Snorri has only come face-to-face with a cat once. He took one look at it and dived right back into the car to hide behind "Daddy". He isn't the bravest dog on the block, and I hate to think what might have happened to him if he'd gone to work on a farm ( a lot of farmers won't "carry passengers"). Oh, I should have mentioned it - he's frightened of sheep, as well.

His pet fears are:

Sheep
Cows
Cats
Vacuum cleaners
Plastic bags
Moths
Beetles
His own reflection

Not a great CV for a potential farm dog!

However, Kali doesn't think there's anything he can't handle (except the hoover), so I have to keep him out of potential trouble! Daft beggar!

Snorri

Here's a picture of Cassie and hew new found friend, Sally, who herds her all the time when she's playing with her ball on the green! She's very small, but is a collie!



Isn't she cute! She sits there like that all the time, waiting for me to throw the ball so that she can herd her!

LOL@Snorri. Cassie doesn't like Cows either but that's the only dislike in common with your two. She's about 17" shoulder height (she wasn't happy about being measured LOL) and about 11kgs. She also doesn't know what cats are, thinks they're other dogs I think! Wants to investigate and usually gets hissed at for her nosiness LOL So have none of you BC owners had the spinning barking trying to chase cars thing? Most bizarre but have been told it's a BC trait (one we could do without) and do your BC's bounce when they bark? and I mean all four feet off the ground with every bark!
LOL@Helena, she's lovely and is small also!! The herding thing is so funny, usually birds on the beach with us!

Snorri your dogs sound great

Cassie's friend is so cute! She looks tiny!

Brandie hates cats! But when she cornered one she just stood there
She has finally stopped running a mile when I get the hoover out. And she has stopped trying to eat it, which followed the running away phase

She tries to eat any bugs that fly about - flies, moths, wasps, crane flies
Does anyone else's dog do that? One's that buzz drive her crazy! But she doesn't notice butterflies

I've never seen a collie doing that with cars All the collies round here seem quite laid back.
Except for one who comes hurtling towards us, stops, then goes racing back the other way!

Snorri, I've never heard of a herding dog that is scared of sheep before Bless him Your 2 sound great and a compliment to each others personalities!If you know what I mean

Helen, that pic is sooo cute, the BC sounds way cute I bet it's lovely to see

Laid Back Border Collie Brandiesnap...what's one of them

LOL


I only see them for a few minutes. I'm sure they're little monsters really

Not too bad really unless you mind toys bouncing off the side of your head at every opportunity. It's like living with a shotputter!

Yes, that Sally is well cute isn't she. To add to their list of friends up on the green now, we have a 14 week old bearded collie, who Georgie adores and lets it lay down in front of him pawing at his head whilst he's chewing his ball on the ground. Then today, we met a 4 month old border collie puppy up there which I thought was the same one as that one the other day, so yelled over to the owner when it came running over to us, "it's ok, we've met" but actually we hadn't coz this was yet another one! My dogs were too knackered to play with it coz we had already done our bike ride up on the top track and I was only cleaning them up underneath on the long grass (which is very handy!) so it only said a little "hello" and did a few quick laps around us and ran back to Mum! I will take my camera tomorrow and hopefully get some pics of all 3 of these collies I now have running around on the green, you will love them, especially the 14 week old she is a real picture.

I've heard the rep that BCs have for chasing cars, too, as well as some horrendous stories of the consequences - so I trained both boys to lie down on the verge when a car approaches - it helps!

One day, when Kali was young, we were doing some "stay/come" training. Kali had heard the car coming, but I hadn't (windy weather). He was doing his "stay", I called him, and he disobeyed. Once I realized why he had, I was really glad that the "down" for cars had taken precedence over the recall. I reckon it saved his life on one occasion (another story, though). Obviously, he had weighed up the situation and decided that staying down was the better option - and that's what I call clever!

Snorri

We just can't seem to stop this behaviour no matter what we do. Luckily, it's when she's on the lead. Just have to wait for her to stop before carrying on with the walk. She's never off the lead when we're anywhere near cars for fear of her running at them. I really don't know what she'd do but certainly don't want to find out. Tried clicker training, whistle etc. she pays attention for a while but then doesn't bother anymore. I'm hoping she'll grow out of it The thing is when she's knackered she's the most well behaved little dog. If people were to watch us going out on a walk and coming back from it, they'd think it was a different dog. She's like Jekyl and Hyde

What a clever dog your Kali is Snorri, that story is amazing!

There is a quiet road which runs alongside our village green, and Cassie and I had just got on the green and I was about to throw her ball, but I turned around only to see she had spotted a dog across the other side of the road and her head was only inches away from a speeding white van's front wheel! I just yelled out in my loudest sharpest voice "wait", and that dog stopped dead in her tracks at the side of the front wheel. My heart went in my mouth and the white van man must have needed a change of underpants when he got home too, as he had braked sooooo hard to avoid hitting her! I can see it all now, I will never forget that, and when I say inches I really do mean inches, her ear fur had touched the actual wheel! Why am I so stupid sometimes, I was short of time and didn't bother to put her on the lead coming from the car onto the green, and I hadn't seen that other dog either!

One of my previous dogs had a brilliant "down" command which she would obey anywhere, anytime, and I really think if you can train this command in your dog, it is the best possible training technique you could possibly instill in them, as Snorri said, it saved Kali's life. I might consider trying to teach my two this command now, although they are quite old, it might be well worth it.

Thanks Helena for that story. Will have to try and instill it in Cassie, although at 1 year old, she's at that stubborn teenage stage. Usually have to tell her 3 or 4 times before she does it!

Well, I wasn't going to bore you all with this story, but.........

One day, a visitor left the garden gate open (a gilt-edged invitation to a BC!), and sure enough, Kali had to go out of it.

We spent over 6 hours out looking for him, and we met a lot of people who said they'd seen him "a few minutes ago" (and always in the opposite direction!). We also met someone who asked what a Border Collie was

We only knew the area to look in because we met the postie in the pub - he knows Kali and had realized that the little blighter was AWOL!

Anyway, it got very late, and we were wondering what to do next, when His Lordship crawled out of a field, under the fence. Immediately, he put on his "Oops, I'm in trouble now!" look, and started looking for an escape route. He was on the opposite side of the road from us, and we were in the car.

Kali seemed to have decided that a quick dash down the road was the easiest way of avoiding getting his bum warmed, but there was a car coming at about 70 mph (suicidal on a narrow country lane!), so he just surrendered to fate and stayed put, in his "down" position, till the careering vehicle had passed. He stayed until I got out of the car, and put his lead on him. TBH, I didn't know whether to hug him or hit him (I was pretty distraught), so, after checking him over, he got both! A big hug and a small smack.

If he hadn't had the sense to go "down" and stay there, he'd have been squashed by the oncoming car - his good sense was a significant contribution to his getting only a very small smack (just enough to let him know he wasn't the flavour of the day!).

So, IMO, the "down" command is an important one to teach - Border Collies are remarkably quick, and, with traffic about, anything you can do to slow the little tykes down a bit has to be good!

Snorri

Thanks Snorri for that! Guess what I'm doing on the weekend then?

Great stories Your dogs are very clever!

I am working on Brandie doing emergency sit and down at the moment, so hopefully she will get as good as that eventually.
I hope I never have a scary emergency to use them in though :?

You've given me some motivation to work harder now