Extreme Home Take Over: Border Collie Edition

A.K.A. How I was held hostage for three days by three BCs, A.K.A. The reason we have just one dog.

Because I am a kind and loving, dutiful daughter (ha!), I somewhat unwittingly agreed to board Mother Dearest's dogs for the weekend so that the parents might actually take a regular person vacation (e.g. NOT just go to an agility show).  After all, why wouldn't I? I know and love those girls.  True, I know they are um, spirited and uh, vocal at times, but I have always been able to handle them with no problems. Well. Things change.

My mistake was probably the idea of having them sleepover at my house instead of puppy-sitting at their home. It wasn't so much a sleepover as a home invasion. And me without a panic room.

Sad = Quiet

It started out ok. White Dog was sad and stared longingly at the front door wishing her mom would come rescue her.   Black Dog and BIG Black Dog (Lacey!) enjoyed sniffing about quietly.  

This would not last long.

The boyfriend came home.

Turns out, Black Dog thinks that the boyfriend is evil incarnate.  If he moved, she tried to bark him into oblivion. Each bark was the dog equivalent of that part from The Exorcist where the Priest is trying to banish the demon and is yelling "the power of Christ compels ye!!!" Ugh.  Cheese bites helped, but she kept forgetting about the cheese bites when he moved from room to room. 

 

Demons don't give cheese bites... or DO they??

Eventually she got used to him in a few parts of the house, so as long as he didn't leave the living room or kitchen, he was fine.  Sure made using the bathroom hard though...

 Just when we tamed one bit of crazy dog, another popped up.  By Day 2, White Dog was feeling less sad. Downright happy even. And when White Dog feels happy, you are going to hear about it. A lot. (This is the vocal part I mentioned.)  If I stood up, she barked. If I walked towards the stairs, she barked. If I said "don't bark" she barked. Blinking- you better believe she barked. Don't even ask what happened when the other dogs barked.  The only way to stave off the barks was to shove a large muffling toy in her mouth. Unfortunately, the large toy was also a squeaky.  Sigh!

White Dog Containment Unit

I think the girls were also on a vacation. From manners and general domesticity.  I mean, White Dog "forgot" how to sit, stay, and how to not bite her sisters.  She also attempted to commandeer every plate of food in the house. It was so bad that she was placed in the lockdown unit of solitary confinement so that we might attempt to eat some of our meals (though half probably was stolen off the plates by BIG Black Dog anyways...).

But they were pretty cute when they weren't being loud, naughty, eating, biting machines. White and Black Dog had cute morning romps of play time which were darling. Unless they were actually fighting? In that case, not quite as darling.

Oh wait, definitely playing. The Fun Police only shows up to kill the good times. And Black Dog thought that boyfriend was possessed...  

Moral of the story? I need a panic room if we are going to do this again. And...Border Collies are nuts. But if we had Basset Hounds, we might not know that there were demons possessing us and that squeaky red balls NEVER STOP SQUEAKING!

In other news THE Dog (who by the way was a very good hostess) is on a diet. I think recently she has been getting more people food than dog food and it shows. So no more sweets! (Dog says Well, good thing Candy Corn is corn and not a sweet... what?? It's not?? NOOOoooo!)
In honor of the season, we are doing the old reliable Pumpkin Diet. Orange in, orange out. Ew. But she likes it and by coupling this with extra mega walks she looks less like the aforementioned Basset Hound and more like a Border Collie.

Wait, you're NOT supposed to get the pie-ready type? Dang.

She is only mildly starving. Can you spot the massive drool bubble forming on her lip?

T-minus 5 seconds til the drool starts to flood the couch and my pants leg.

 ALSO I did the unthinkable (for me). We've been working blind crosses (ugh, dark side, dark side! Help me Obi-Wan!) off of the Aframe. This is to combat our problem of me throwing her stride off when I crossed in front, resulting in missed zones. She is responding well so far, as long as I don't look back at her, and if I cross at the next obstacle, not at the base of the Aframe. She missed wildly the first time but was pretty good after that- she got at least a paw in and always picked up on the right obstacle after. The side changes aren't throwing her at all. Next step is to pick her speed up to normal again, since she hesitates slightly still and we need her going full board to really get down into the zone. I  think I like it, even though it feels wrong. But maybe, like Darth Vader, it will end up good. 

LOTS of practices, including a fun match, this week. We actually get to show in a few weeks (going all the way to Kansas) in USDAA so we'd better step up training to make the drive worth it.  The last time we went to Lawrence it was The Dog's worst show EVER so I'm thinking we couldn't do any worse (really, so bad), but I want to ensure we don't have a repeat. But if we do, at least then I will know that the show itself is cursed and its not our fault.

Time to go vacuum now. White Dog left miniature White Dogs all over the place...