THE UPS AND DOWNS

Having a puppy is definitely a case of up and downs, successes and failures, steps forwards and steps backwards

Terra's housebreaking progress is a day to day thing. She is big enough now to master the back steps so she can go out into the yard, which she absolutely loves. One day she will be almost perfect, alerting at the back door so we can let her out, the next day she will have five accidental piddles in the house, the next day only one or two. The alerts are not yet steady; sometimes she seems to forget and just goes, other times she will whine at the door .. but you need be speedy, she waits until she is near bursting and there is no dallying in letting her out.

Leash training is coming along. Collette walks her to and from the park everyday and although not perfect of course, Terra is doing very well all things considered.

There is also a lot of progress being made in terms of the relationships between my two border collies. Outside, as you will see in the included video, Miss Hayley is much more accepting of the puppy and she is just beginning to actively engage her in play. It has been a few years since Hayley has wanted to wrestle with another dog, she is more the "let me herd them" kind of gal. But I can see that this will soon happen with Terra.

Another postitive sign is illustrated by the photo below. While Hayley is more adamant about keeping Terra "in her place" in the house, when they can lay quietly together, I take that as real progress.

The video shows Terra playing in her park and the two girls playing here in the yard, but it shows a couple of Terra adventures as well: The first is a brief sortie into the bathtub. When Miss Hayley was a pup, she would jump into the tub and stretch out inside it, but this was in the middle of summer, before central air. Terra is just being Terra, exploring her world

Then we have a puppy classic, an event we have seen with every dog we've owned: The old puppy in the mirror. Terra discovered this elusive, bratty puppy (Hey! She's copying me!) last night, in the mirror in our guest room. Very typical behaviour, curiosity, vocalising, and wandering into the other room to find out just where that puppy is ...

OK, so it's not original, but I dare you not to find it cute ...

Who's The Puppy In The Mirror? from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A BIG SISTER

There's nothing like a big sister, or maybe it's a substitute mom, at least in Terra's eyes. Miss Hayley, in the house, is still holding strong on establishing her position with the puppy, she generally ignores Terra and is quick to use a sharp bark or a feigned nip to tell her to back off.

Outside is a little different. In the park, Terra is showing a strong affinity for chasing the ball, which makes Hayley very happy. Hayley's idea of paradise is Dad kicks ball, dog/sheep chases ball, Hayley chases dog/sheep. So Hayley sort of forgets the dominance issues and actually engages the puppy.

No matter how much Hayley ignores Terra however, the puppy absolutely loves her. And definitely emulates the older dog. Terra is still having issues with sound sensitivty. To the point that she is beginning to regress her housebreaking progress. She was doing a nice job of indicating a need to pee/poo by going into the hall and staring at the front door. We would let her out and she would "do her business" The problem is, the street and the sounds coming from it. Terra is scared of sound, pretty much any sound. She is ok with cars driving by but doors, voices, horns, bangs, anything .. will scare her. I've seen her begin to poo, hear a sound, stop the action and run back up the door. We don't let her back in, in those occasions, we've kept her outside until she does something.

But the last couple of days, Terra has stopped indicating and we are finding more poo in the house, something we haven't been seeing for a couple of days. The only thing that convinces Terra to stay outside when it's noisy is by bringing Hayley out with her. And of course, if the big girl is there, the little girl wants to be there. But then Terra gets so distracted by Hayley, she doesn't do her business either.

So it is great to have a big sis, but it is bad to be anywhere there is noise. We are going to work at getting her into the backyard but those stairs are extremely steep and it is difficult for the puppy to get down there. Still, if the big dog goes ...

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

DOG OWNERS ARE PEOPLE TOO: A LOCAL CALL TO ARMS

I'm a dog owner. I'm a citizen of my city. Give me my rights.


Toronto city council, an organization that thought by banning legal gun clubs that have existed in this city for a hundred years would stop gangsters from shooting each other, has had yet another stroke of brilliance: Let's ban dogs, leashed or otherwise, from the most popular beaches in the city.

The whole thing has to do with Toronto wanting to acquire a "blue flag" designation of environmental cleanliness for its beaches. I have yet to determine if this designation really means much in the way of pollution but since its international, and people will read about us in the press, city council has a hard on because now the rest of the world, to paraphrase Sally Fields, will "like us, they really really like us" They have yet to study the issue if dogs on the beach, if dog feces, will affect them getting this blue flag, they will get to that study some day but in the mean time, with no clear evidence to support their thesis they are denying me, as a dog owner, my rights to use a public space.

It really is an amazing thing. Anyone who has ever been to the area in Toronto called The Beaches knows the popularity of this area to dog owners; on a weekend hundreds of dogs will amble along the beach. I know people who have moved there because it has always been known as a "dog friendly" area. And yes, there is an issue with people not picking up their dog shit, I've posted several times about that, but the fact is, all these people who go to the beach with their dog .. ARE CITIZENS OF THIS CITY AND DESERVE TO BE TREATED EQUALLY.

Sorry, I'm trying to shout from North York down to City Hall

Two years ago they started posting that dogs were no longer allowed on the beaches, even on a leash, outside of the two designated off leash areas, those being Balmy Beach and Kew Beach. Fair enough, I guess. Dogs had been allowed on leash in those areas before but since the two off leashes are pretty big, I was OK with what I thought was a compromise. And in the winter, dogs have always been allowed off leash on the beaches from the snow fence down to the water line. Now that is all gone.

I quite frankly don't buy the environmental concerns, mostly because it has yet to be proven. The city and the province can't seem to be able to come up with anything conclusive that proves that having dogs on the beaches is a hazard to any one's safety as it relates to the water. Everyone is pulling out the old "we have to think about the kids" argument which is bullshit in this instance. We are supposedly talking about water purity; to me, when they bring up child safety the agenda seems more oriented to safety, to dogs being out of control. Fair enough, I've blogged about that as well, there are too many owners in this town who do not have control over their dogs and we need to address that .. but be honest about it, don't hide it behind the environment.

So we have this dubious argument, that cannot be proven,and this action, of banning dogs from the beaches, that no one outside of this city seems to support. And that seems to be a good enough excuse to take away my rights, because that is really what we are talking about: my rights, the rights of every dog owner. These are PUBLIC lands, to be used by the PUBLIC in any legal fashion, and now I am being denied those rights. It is simply a case where our elected leaders are deciding who gets to use the beach. Yes, you can say I can still use the beach, just don't bring my dog ... well, that is why we go there. We don't go there to swim, the lake is usually too cold and its been dirty a long time, and not just from e coli, but from general pollution. We don't play volleyball and we don't lay around getting skin cancer .. we go to play with Miss Hayley. Isn't that my right? We've always followed the rules .. pick up the poop, keep her on leash in the on leash areas, monitor and control her behaviour in the off leash, avoid heavy traffic areas .. because the rules made sense. This does not make sense.

I want to keep this post brief and to the point. Here it is: Dog owners are being denied rights they once held and I think it is unfair. Surely, city council should wait until they have completed the study that will tell me what, if any impact, having dogs on the beach will have on the Blue Flag label. And surely, they should have waited until more people in this city have had their say; this is just not an issue for the Beaches neighbourhood, it is an issue for all dog owners in the city, many of whom travel some significant distances just to enjoy the beach.

This is a call to arms. If you are in the GTA contact your local councillor and ask him/her how they can deny certain citizens of this city the right to enjoy a public space. Contact Councillor Paula Fletcher, chair of the parks committee who defends this action; ask her how an elected official can so blithely deny rights to thousands and thousands of city residents. If you are not in the GTA contact the provincial gov't and your local councillor, this is not just a Toronto issue. While in Parry Sound a bylaw officer told me that dogs were not allowed on the beach for this very issue .. so you and your dog, or your friends who have dogs, are being denied enjoyment of public spaces to indulge an unproven political whim.

This strikes me as very arbitrary and that is very scary. Think about it; the politicians who are supposed to represent YOU are now denying ME the use of PUBLIC space that I PAY for because it MAY have some kind of detrimental effect on .. um .. something ...

I'm pissed off. I want you to be pissed off too. Miss Hayley is not pissed off. But look at this video and you will understand, that if she can again go back to that beach, she will just be very sad.

THE LIFE OF A GYPSY

Any regular readers of this blog will know all about our beloved border collie Hayley. Well, Miss Hayley was not our own four legged companion, she had a quieter, yet equally significant companion, our cat Gypsy.




It is unfortunate that I have been remiss in giving Gypsy his due on this forum; last night, at age 22 (or so) Gypsy passed away. It was not a shock, he has been ill for a week or so and we knew his string was running out. I think it was a good passing, he was laying on his heating pad, made a little chirping kind of sound and just went.

It is always sad, when you lose a pet. Collette and I lost our first dog, Gigs, over a decade ago, Gypsy was still a young cat then. Both deaths were hard but Gigs was over 13, Gypsy was 22, and that is just the natural order of things.

Gypsy came to us in his own, unusual way. It was at the first house Collette and I lived in here, on our own, and it was late in the fall, towards the end of October. Leaves were down and it was getting cool. Collette was out in the yard, just finishing up some garden/yard work when she heard this small, plaintive sound; she looked in her herb garden and there it was, this tiny, minuscule black kitten. Baby, I mean, just hatched. His eyes had probably just opened and were this dark cobalt blue. There were a lot of feral cats in that area and this was clearly one. Collette saw no sign of other kittens or of mama. Her instinct was to wait to see if mama would come back but it was getting dark and it was getting cold so, being Collette, she brought the kitten into the house ...

We had a dog at that time, our first dog, Gigs. He was a few years old at the time and we were totally dedicated to him and had no intention of getting a cat. I don't describe myself as cat person but I've had a few over the years. Collette grew up with a cat, it was still alive when we first met but we were, and are, dog people.

Still, here was Collette with this tiny, newly born, venerable kitten. She didn't want to leave the cat out in the cold, so her first thought was to bring the cat inside ... Now, let's stop our program here to learn something about our beloved Collette; if she brings a stray into the house, it's going to stay in the house. Forever. That's how we got Gigs, our friend Karen dropped him into our bed one morning and we had him for about 13 years. Hell, that's how Collette got me, she took me home one night and 25 years later, I still haven't left ...

So, in other words, Collette decided to keep the cat. But she just had to convince me to go along with it. She knew she had two points in her favour. One, was the fact that Gypsy was entirely black. I've only owned black cats. The second point was my essential frugalness; Collette and our friend Michele went out right away and loaded up on kitty supplies; food, litter, litter box, collar, etc. Her rationale was that if she had already invested in the cat, I would accept him. As usual, she was right.



He was such a young kitten, so recently abandoned, Collette had to feed him formula from a doll's bottle and she had to teach him how to defecate, by ..er .. stimulating him. He was so small that when we took to our vet to have him checked him over, Dr Bell only charged us half the normal visit rate as he was "only half a cat"

Gypsy was a feral cat and for the first several years of his life, he was an outdoor cat. And a murderer. One morning I was in the bathroom, you know, solving that pesky cold fusion problem, when in walks Gypsy, a freshly slain bird in his jaws. "Here you go boss, you pluck him, I'll fire up the BBQ" He was an awesome mouser. But one thing you need to know about domestic cats who get their dinner out of a can: They don't kill for food. The kill for fun. Gypsy liked to break one of their back legs so they couldn't run away. When he got bored with playing with them but if there was still life in them, he would drop the poor abused rodent in my shoe, so he could find it later. Yeh, I learned to shake out my sneakers before putting them on. Eventually Gypsy became a civilized indoor cat, basically learning that he was small, pampered and no competition for the real wild beasts of the neighbourhood; like most males he got tired of prowling around all night and discovered the bliss of kicking back on the couch with a cold beer ... um, ok, I may be projecting here just a bit ..


Although Gypsy did lose a lot of his feral heritage, it did take him a while to warm up to people As in, someone who had been to our house three or four years into his life, finally seeing him and saying "I didn't know you had a cat" I told someone he was in the witness protection program from all those mouse murders.


Once he matured and calmed down a bit, he got along pretty well with Gigs; generally they ignored each other but on more than one occasion I found them curled up, sleeping, sharing the same chair. Yes, there was the famous incident when Gypsy was still a kitten, he went for one of the dog's treats and Gigs taught him that was a very bad, bad thing .. Gypsy bore the scar from that to the day he died, but other than that, it was domestic bliss. But Gigs passed on, Gypsy enjoyed a few months of solitary bliss .. and along comes a new puppy. A border collie puppy. A I-really-need-to-herd-something-but-I-don't-know-what-Hey-you'll-do puppy... Leave it to say, Gypsy spent a good year sleeping on top of the console TV, out of herding range. But eventually, these two worked out their boundaries as well. We kept attributing Gypsy's long life to an attempt to outlive a second dog ...


Well, he didn't quite make it, but boy he made a run at it. We will miss him but, as we ponder getting a new border collie pup, it is unlikely that we will ever get another cat. Of course, I've said that before ...







Happy hunting, buddy.

TORONTO WINTER CITY

A short blog with a longish video at the end. The last two weeks Toronto has been having its version of a winter festival, called Winter City. Quebec City Carnival it ain't but it's something. This weekend there were a few events happening in Nathan Phillips Square, in front of City Hall. Among them was a performance by a Dutch Theatre troupe who calls themselves Close Act.

We'd been having a week or two of temps in the -25 C range but this weekend it went up to + 9 so it seemed a good idea to go down there. Unfortunately Collette was not feeling well and decided to stay home. Which means no lovely pictures to accompany this post.

At any rate, it was a mild night, the square was packed and I enjoyed myself. The troupe used dance, music, costumes and some imaginative human powered contraptions to tell a little underwater fantasy. Its a love story, really, unrequited love, about a fisherman and a mermaid .. or a horny sailing risking all for some tail. That may be my interpretation.

I tried to scope myself out a bit of elevation from which to shoot, on one side of the square. I didn't realize that the entire square was going to be the "stage" with performers and sets moving about, presenting multiple points of action... which is whiny cameraman speak for "I really picked a stupid place from which to shoot" Still, I think the video will give you some idea of what the show was like.

The video is one of the longest I've post here, over twenty minutes, but that is edited down from a 60 minute performance. An hour of some cool staging, interesting music and some athletically gifted performers .. for free. You can't complain. Well, you could, but that would be a way Canadian thing to do.

So here's the video, and you can consider it me capturing an exotic theatrical street performance .. or a pretty average night in downtown Toronto.


Toronto Winter City Festival from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.