SPLISH SPLASH

Just a short post and a video at the end of it. Terra is almost four months now, weighs 24 pounds and is slowly taking over the entire universe .. if she learns how to purchase kibble on her own, we may be in trouble. I don't want to be superfluous to this dog.

As we go on and she is getting older, Terra is discovering more and more and having more new experiences. As we are getting into the warm weather, it became time for us to open our doggie pool .. well, not exclusively a doogie pool, on occasion it has been used my many semi intoxicated drunk people to cool their feet in, at my birthday party. Miss Hayley was not impressed. Of course, now she has to share her pool with the puppy ...

Terra took to the pool like .. well, like a border collie to water.




Now, Miss Hayley loves her pool and of course she loves the Beaches and of course she loves the beach at Springhaven Lodge .. but all that water is good for playing in, not swimming. Will Terra like to swim? We'll have to wait and see.

But she sure liked the pool. As she walked around it, she created ripples and of course she had to try herding the ripples ...





and when she discovered that the water was coming out of the hose, she tried to take that right out of the pool ..




I am border collie, I shall control you ..

At one point Collette took the hose out of the water and was spraying it and Terra decided it was great fun to catch the water, even leaping in the air to do so. So yes, the pool is a big hit.





Here's the video, Terra at the beach and with her trusty lifeguard, Miss Hayley.

Pool Girl from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE TERRA TERRORS AND THE BLISS OF NAP TIME

The good news is, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie pup .. the bad news is, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie pup.

Terra is making great progress; her house training is pretty solid, we have had no poops in the house since the second day, really, and only a couple of piddle accidents. She has learned to go into the hallway and look at the door, and when we let her out, she goes right down the stairs and "does her business" She doesn't bark as a warning, but neither does Hayley. Miss Hayley just comes up to you gives you a mild version of the border collie eye then you ask "Do you want to go ..." and she flies to the back door before you can finish the sentence.

On her own, Terra has been immediately peeing when she gets down the stairs. Hayley went out with her once and did a sniff around first, and Terra totally emulated that behaviour. Terra simply loves Hayley but so far the old girl is remaining aloof; she will occasionally give a little snarled lip display but has not made any contact. We feel this is a kind of karma; when we got Hayley as a rambunctious pup, she terrorized our cat Gypsy. Now the karma is on the other paw.

Mostly, Miss Hayley is being extremely aloof to the puppy, as you will see in the little video at the bottom of this post.

As I stated, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie puppy .... which means there are times her little brains leave her head, and she gets possessed by the Puppy Demon from Hell; her body is clearly being controlled by a Red Bull infused 12 year old gamer in the sky. We call these times Terra Terrors and it is just best to keep your feet off the floor and keep anything other than designated toys, away from those little jaws. By anything, I mean tissues, books, shoes, slippers, bags of dog food (with dog food still in it), shopping bags, picture frames, water bowls, socks, underwear ... Hmm, if border collies are so smart and since Terra seems fascinated with the dirty laundry, maybe we should show her where the washing machine is ...

In light of this, we have found a new kind of Paradise, a blissful, enlightened state of Existence that transports us to Nirvana. We call this state of being ... Nap time.

Like most puppies, Terra will just suddenly crash, right out of a Terra Terror, as if a switch has been flipped, and the power suddenly goes off. Oh where oh where is this switch and can I operate it by remote control?

Collette and I have become like parents of human babies; we are beginning to schedule activities around Terra's nap times. Besides here little power naps, she tends to take a long nap, two or three hours, around noon. When she goes for this nap, or goes for her night time sleep, she trundles herself off the bedroom, all by herself. She has a bed in there but generally she ends up passing out on whatever laundry I have laying about on the floor. She has done this almost since the beginning; everyone always remarks, from Gigs to Miss Hayley to Terra, that we have some strange voodoo that encourages our dogs to "go to bed" I can't really explain it, but we certainly always seem to get animals who just love to go to bed.

Terra's sleeping habits brings to mind the many things she has in common with Miss Hayley, things that we had assumed were unique to the old girl. They both love to sleep with their heads jammed into things, like between a couch cushion and the back of the couch, or with their heads hanging off the edge. They are both sound sensitive; Hayley to this day is not happy with thunder or fireworks but has it mostly under control. Terra is very sound sensitive, when outside, people speaking down the street will send her scurrying up the stairs to the front door. We are not letting her in at these times, and if the noise has stopped her from "doing her business" we insist that she remain out there till the job is done.

Terra is doing very well in the dog park. If dogs come running up and barking at her, she will seek shelter between the legs of a human. Once the dog calms down she will come out and greet him, so we are happy with that. Yesterday at the park a large Husky was very interested in little Terra. At one point he tried to grab her by the scruff as if to pick her up and I was very surprised to see my eight week old puppy turn and give him a little nip to back him off. So I would say her socialization is coming along.

American gov't issues terrorist alerts, by some colour code I still can't understand. But be on the look out for the the T-alert ... for the Terra Terrors.

That Kind of Girl from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

INTRODUCING .... TERRA

Yes, here she is, the latest member of our family, Terra, as of this posting an eight week female border collie. Picked up this morning from a lovely family in Chatham, Ontario, which is about a three hour drive from here. There is a little video at the bottom of this post that chronicles the journey.

Collette and I have been talking about getting another border for years, but the timing never seemed right. When Gypsy passed it opened the door a bit, in his last couple of years it didn't seem fair to bring a rambunctious border collie puppy into the house. Then we took Hayley to her new vet, Dr Mike, and he gave her a totally clean bill of heath, nothing that surprised us, but it was good to have confirmation.

Now, we know that it may take a while for these two to get along but Hayley, as a rule, likes other dogs and as long as we help her maintain her status, we think they should do fine. I have heard many stories of older dogs matched with puppies and thriving with the new arrival. If Terra shows any tendency at all to chase a ball, and doesn't mind being herded, then Hayley will be ecstatic. Of course, Terra is a herding dog as well, so we'll have to see how that goes.

When I picked Terra up, there were two females left, almost identical in markings (again, reference the video) but it was her personality that stood out; when she was being ignored, she made her presence known with a series of persistent yips and knew that this was our dog.

She has already had many adventures; a three hour car ride back to Toronto, a whirlwind visit to Collette's school to meet her new mom, a brief visit to our local dog park, and trying to entice the older border collie to play with her.

I'm going to keep this post short, ending it with the video but obviously, there will be many posts to come ... and don't really ask me why she's called Terra or why we decided on this particular spelling, but Collette thought that it may have something to do with holy terra ....

Introducing Terra from Victor Kellar on Vimeo