Seven Months

Seven months have passed already. Where did they go to?

Dawn, Ellie's original foster-carer, came for the day over the Christmas period. We've stayed in contact with her since we adopted Ellie, sometimes swapping several e-mails in a week, and I know she frequently visits Ellie's blog to see how she's doing and to catch up on her progress. Ellie seemed very happy indeed to see Dawn again, as she hadn't seen her since the Autumn show, earlier in the year. She was happier still when Dawn came loaded with gifts!

Dawn and I took Ellie for a walk in the local field, which gave Dawn an opportunity to test her new camera. Here are a few pics from that day.

We've had to change her food to the Burns Active mix, as she just wasn't putting on enough weight using the standard mix. The "Active" is intended for dogs that have a more active lifestyle, as Ellie does. While she doesn't spend the day chasing sheep, she does do an awful lot of training, walking, and playing each day.

She will begin her formal training classes on January 08, if memory serves me well, and at that time Jan is also becoming a volunteer with the training group. This will give Ellie access to many more dogs and experiences.

We're eagerly awaiting the days of longer daylight. It seems, in these shorts daylight hour days, that we're forever getting up to walk the dog. Not that we'd ever mind walking the dog, but it can make for testing times when you try to schedule other things into your day too.

Ellie now trains much more for play and much less for food. I don't think that she has become any less interested in food, just more interested in play, particularly with tennis balls. It actually makes the training sessions more fun and more random so I'm pleased.

We've also started putting her videos on YouTube. I think they're great for seeing things from a different perspective and for correcting mistakes. You can see her latest video, where she retrieves the post from the doormat, below.



Again, we find ourselves waiting for the terrible period where legend has it that all dogs rip up the house, spit on your shoes, and steal the car. As yet, I have to say, she shows absolutely no signs of rebellion. None whatsoever. I like to believe it's because we ensure that she is never bored and never has too much unspent energy to burn getting into mischief. However, who knows, she may just be luring us into a false sense of security. Personally, I just don't see it happening with her.

If 2007 has been the year where we've introduced her to various training practises, then 2008 is intended to be the year where we start to drill-down and fine tune many of them. She wil walk to heel, for example, but she will often go out wide. We need to start correcting that.

We're still passionate about entering her into local shows, but not until we feel that she is ready. Her time will come.

We are also going to start giving her more freedom as of January 01. We're going to start leaving the bedroom door open at night. I suspect that, despite that, she'll still stay on our bed with us. But we trust her enough now to allow her to venture forth a little.

Her training mission for January is to retrieve the television remote control from a distance of at least two metres away, and return it to the hand.

Ellie TV - Day One

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, grab your popcorn and your front-row seats. Ellie is now a movie star. :)

This video was taken a day after getting the new camera and so I wasn't at all accustomed to working with it. Add to that, the fact that I was alone with Ellie and so I couldn't zoom in at all, and it was a windy day, oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, a bloody aircraft flew over.

However, it does show Ellie doing some very loose standard training. I wasn't too strict as, to be honest, I wasn't even sure that I had the camera positioned well enough anyway.

Enjoy...

Six Months

It's incredible to believe that Ellie is already six months old today. That means that we have had her for some 14 weeks total, as we got her at 12 weeks of age.

It's a bizarre feeling. It feels that we have owned her for years in the sense that she's now such an integral part of the family. Yet, she seems to have grown so fast too. In that sense, it seems like we've had her about six weeks.

She has now finished this season of her formal training classes. They will resume early in the new year. At the end of the current season, we are proud to report that Ellie won a prize for maintaining the longest "stay". Not bad for being the youngest dog in the class too.

Physically, after last month's apparent growing season, she seems to have slowed down again. She still looks quite puppy in her features to me. Though I think that is partly because she has short hair, and so her legs look really long.

A few weeks back, we ceased to feed her food from the bowl. She now earns her food throughout the day. We measure out her daiy ration in the morning, and then carry some with us all day long. This enables us to train her at purely random times, and be sure that we're not over-feeding her with treats.

It also means that she is far more attentive to us, as we are the source of food, literally. I maintain that, in terms of her training, it is the best thing we have done. It's brought her progress on in leaps and bounds.

Our early concerns about her behaviour around other dogs are now gone. She is perfectly fine with others - to a point. She is perfectly happy to ignore other dogs, and that is her preference in fact. However, some dogs don't allow her to do that, and they constantly try to get her attention. She will tolerate this for a few minutes. If they persist however, she will give out a cautionary nip. But it's certainly nothing that causes me concern. If the other dog behaves well, then it's not an issue.

During these darker days, we've had to cut her walks down to twice a day, or else she wouldn't get enough rest between walks, and nor would we. It's really muddy on the farm fields but does she care? Does she hell. She's happy as a pig in er, a pig-pen.

She loves to chase her favourite tennis-ball across the fields and get as dirty as possible. She walks the fields off-leash and has never once given us cause for concern. In fact, her recall is one of her strongest skills, along with her loose-leash walking.

We asked for a dog that would never get bored of walking or training, and that is most certainly what we go. A round of applause to Dawn, the initial foster-carer for Ellie, for perfectly matching dog to family.

Her list of skills is now at the following: (All are over 75% successful.)

Sit
Down
Heel
Front (Come and sit in front of legs.)
In (Come and sit next to left leg.)
Finish (Walk around back of legs and sit next to left leg.)
Leave
Up (Climb on table, etc.)
Off (Jump off table, etc.)
Kiss (Lick face)
Shake (Shake paw)
Go to bed (Goes to lay on own bed.)
Shut the door (Closes the living room door.)
"In Your Tin" (Goes into crate.)
Spin (Chases tail in clock-wise direction.)
Get the post (Fetches mail from doormat and brings to hand.)
Watch (Looks in face)
Stay

She is currently learning to stand on all four paws without moving. That is taking some doing, but as always, we'll get there. None of her behaviours are to competitive obedience standard yet, but damn, considering she has been with us for just 14 weeks, she is good - damned good! She still needs the hand-signal for most behaviours, but this will improve as she gets older. She's certainly doing better than we had anticipated at this stage.

Two weeks ago, we tested her on Sue Ailsby's levels - level one - and she passed with flying colours. We're now working towards level two.

In addition to her behaviours, she has learned to bath well and accept the blow-dryer. She has perfect door manners when going for walks, will stand perfectly to be stroked, have her paws checked, and her ears, eyes, and teeth checked, and doesn't try to force herself through doors before us. Better still, she has yet to chew a single thing that doesn't belong to her. We keep waiting for this infamous Border Collie bad-behaviour that so many websites and books refer to, but so far, we're just not seeing it - at all. Of course, there's still plenty of time...

Personality wise, Ellie is an extremely loving dog, and I mean extremely. She absolutely loves to cuddle in and fall to sleep on me, and to be honest with you, we love it too. She will jump on the sofa with me each evening for a brush, but always falls asleep once the brush goes over the back of her neck.

She's still quite timid, but this is improving as each week passes. So far, she's not as zany as I've seen some Border Collies. She's quite placid, takes her time, and rarely gets over-excited - unless she's playing with her favourite tennis ball. But even then, the second we say "that's it", she instantly calms as she knows that indicates the end of play.

The older she gets, the more indepedent she gets. There are several times that she will just go place herself in her crate during the day or during the evening. She doesn't seem to insist on following us from room to room either.

All in all, we don't have a single thing to complain about with Ellie, and here's hoping that the next six months are every bit as good as the first.