Training Session 1

My health and a number of other things going on (Shawnee in heat, Molly with a problematic toe injury, and a sick horse) have prevented me from getting to the training goal before today. I just did a short session with the girls--worked Shawnee while Molly was on mat then worked Molly while Shawnee held a stay (She isn't advanced enough to mat on anything like Molly is). I started with a few post-it targets on hand then quickly advanced to my knee. Once they did that a few times, I moved the target to the doorbell. No problem--they targetted it there. Molly did have her usual "are you sure I'm not supposed to retrieve this?" issues but Shawnee was easy going and confident.

Unfortunately they are not yet pushing hard enough or precisely enough to ring the bell, but I am sure we can work that out with time.

I'm very proud of them for remembering the yellow target when it has been so long since we last trained with it and we had done so few training sessions on it.

That Time of Year… Heat

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog. Molly has had an entire heat cycle. She did very well with her panties the entire time.Under the coffee table is one of her favorite places to lie down whether she's in heat or not.

Despite her season, Molly was able to work well and train well. DH and I are both very proud of how well she dealt with the entire thing. She is much better at cleaning up after herself than she was originally.

We had expected the girls to cycle together, but they didn't. Initially expecting Shawnee also to be in heat, I put panties on her as well. She had great deal of trouble adjusting to them at first, but soon figured it out. Here she is lounging in panties in one of her favorite spots,DH's chair.

Once we were certain she was not in heat we stopped using the panties.At this point, we have no idea when she will cycle and are surprised she has not done so yet, as she is now approaching one year old.

Molly's heat continued more than the usual three weeks. Just as we became seriously worried about his continuation, it stopped. Everyone is very relieved it is finished, because now the girls get to sleep in bed again.

In training news, I haven't done much of anything. The girls have had many play sessions in the pony pasture with DH and have continued improving with their stays and downs and name recognition.

Both have shown an ability to recall at more than 50 m in the fence. We hope soon to test this at the beach so we can give them on the road test results for the levels. Because of Molly’s season, it has been a long time since we have taken a trip to the beach.

Silly Puppy

Molly and Shawnee were playing. Suddenly Molly started barking, I guess she thought she heard something. Molly went out to the kitchen. Suddenly she was barking with the biggest bark she could summon out of her little puppy chest. The hair on her neck must've been standing 2 inches tall.

So of course I got up to see what the fuss was about. As I walked to the kitchen I saw a cushion had fallen off one of those straight chairs in the dining room. I picked it up, and Shawnee pulled back in fear. Apparently little girl was terrified of the cushion. I remained calm and waved it around for a while so finally she came to sniff it.

Just one more experience that a small puppy needs in the process of socialization.

On a side note, Molly has discovered that she doesn't trouble if she puts her nose under her panties to keep her parts clean. She and trying to lick her panties in the past which we have been discouraging, because then the pad doesn't stick. I find her creativity a bit humorous. She also can't help it is her nature to keep herself clean.

Molly in Panties

Molly is really showing us how much she's grown up with this round of
season. She stands perfectly still, when we put her panties on her. She
shows no sign of being distressed by wearing them either.

When it's time to go out for potty walk, she waits patiently while remove
the end steps forward when we take them down to the ground. When they come
in again, she waits patiently until you're ready to put them on her.

Both she and Shawnee are given treats that because Shawnee doesn't get in
the way when we mess with the panties.

Right now she is running around in her cute little pink Minnie mouse
panties.

Not Much

With the weather and Molly's heat, we haven't been up to much. I've also been suffering from some pretty nasty migraines.

We've worked on item recognition and on quieting her work with shoes, but nothing new. I am hesitant to push her hard while she is in heat--she can be so easily distracted by her hormones and I don't want to give her negative experiences.

I guess you can say that Molly is getting a very boring extended vacation. We won't take her for walks or to public places we might run into other dogs while she is in heat. There is no reason to risk an accidental breeding. I'm also unwilling to push public access while she is dripping.

She's had lots of time for playing with her Daddy and has gotten a large rawhide to chew. As usual, she's being difficult about eating. She does spend a lot of time with me and trying to take care of me. She knows I am not feeling well.

Molly Reports on Panties and a New Blog Award

Mommy and Daddy keep making me wear these things they call "panties." They won't let me in the living room without them. :-( The first time I had to wear them, I thought they invented some new tortur device, but now I'm sorta OK with them. But I'd rather be left in peace to lick myself clean. Since my blog has gotten so boring without pictures, Mommy insists that we must post panty pictures. I'm SO embarrassed! This is almost as bad as that potty picture she posted before. But at least she will let me pick which ones to share.


Here I am just after I got a treat. I dunno why Mommy had to take a picture when my tongue was stuck out, but she says it is very cute. At least I am wearing one of my cool western panties instead of the pink Minnie Mouse one.

You can also see my nice new dog tag. It doesn't dig into my chest like the old one did and it's purty.





Even though I am drippy and stuck in panties, I still have to do work. Here I am fetching Mommy's pants for her.

She also makes me fetch my mat and the fone a lot. It is fun to run around and find what she wants. Sometimes I have to give things to Daddy and he might not even be in the room! It's hard work to be an SD and it is SOO hot here.

To help me stay cool, Mommy made me ice cream again. This time she put peanut butter in it too. I lurve peanut butter!

But Daddy was busy in the other room so she told me to "leave it" and made me wait until Daddy came in to eat it.

I wasn't happy about waiting, but I did what Mommy said.


I got tired of waiting so lay down for a bit. But then Daddy finally came in and we all had ice cream. I ate mine really fast then Daddy let me lick the stick from his. I even made Mommy happy by keeping my ice cream on my mat.

We are honored to have gotten another blog award from our new friends, Desert Pups. Mommy read the rules of the award. It says we have to nominate 7 other blogs. As much as we like all our favorite blogs, we think it is a bit much to ask of our friends. We're honored to be chosen, but we de-kline to pass it on.

I hafta run now! Daddy has a BALL and is offering to play with me. It is finally cool enough to run around a little.

Heat Times Two

It is horribly hot here now. This is really limiting everyone's activity level. Molly spends much of her time lying in her fence in the shade or on a cool patch of floor. That's the one heat.

The second heat is Molly coming into season. Her heat started yesterday. She's intact for a number of reasons and we have no intention of changing that even though breeding is not in our immediate plans. This is great because it means we won't have to worry about her coming into heat at a less convenient time. Unfortunately it puts a bit of a stopper on training for a little while. I don't know how much I should try to teach her at this time. We also are pretty much stuck home--it is a very active vacation season, so there are tourists all over the place and many are not respecting the leash laws.

We don't want to risk a breeding, so we are very careful managing Molly right now. If she is out in the fence, we check on her regularly. She is on leash for all potty walks so there is no way she can run off. We're not taking her off the property on walks, because it would leave a drip trail that would attract males.

When she is in the living room, she has to wear panties so she doesn't leave those drips on things. I will try to get a picture later.

Molly Reports "It's Not Fair!"

It isn't fair. Mommy and Daddy went to a country music concert with a long drive and left me home by myself. Mommy wore a dress. They say it was really cool. Why couldn't I go too? I'd have been good and could have waited in the car.

But at least they took me to the beach for a little while before they went out. They made me go out in the water and swim. I didn't like that. But I said hi to another dog and got to sniff around and dig a little.

From Rebecca: Molly had to stay home because it was too hot for her to wait in the car and I didn't want to push to take her to a concert a place we didn't know. It was crowded and not a good place to be practicing public access.

Last Night's Pasture Pictures as Promised

Like Molly said, we had a lot of fun in the pasture last night and I took a lot of pictures. Here they come as promised.

During the course of our play session, we took advantage of the opportunity to test Molly on a couple Level 3 behaviors we knew she was ready to pass. I haven't quite finished training and testing the last few level 2 behaviors, but this stuff is ready and the weather was right, so we did it. As in the picture, Molly had to hold a sit stay for 30 seconds with one mild distraction and handlers 20 feet away. She actually can hold for 45 seconds or more on 1 cue instead of 2. Distractions are both DH playing with the ball and traffic on the road.

A passing down-stay requires a minute stay at 20 feet distance with distraction. She again succeeded with normally only one cue (on a few tests we did give a second if she started looking uneasy) and both ball play and traffic as distraction. We tested both behaviors multiple times. She just did so well, but really she doesn't find those behaviors to be a big deal.

The crouch is one of the identifying traits of a working border collie. Molly has a really good crouch and she uses it both for work in the BC sense and for playing. These two shots show her crouching for playing fetch. She focuses on the ball and on DH, who has the ball, and will slowly walk closer and closer to them, staying down in this position. Staying low makes the dog less likely to spook sheep, as does moving so very slowly. Another identifying trait is their "eye" but I'm not sure how to show that with pictures.

When DH throws the ball, Molly turns to chase it. I think her balance and athleticism are just amazing, especially when you consider that we don't play like this every day. She's focused, intense, and unbelievably fast with every throw.

One time the ball crossed a small section of temporary fence. The first time it did, she asked permission to go past it. From then on, she usually went under it. One time last night--just when I happened to be taking pictures--she jumped gracefully over to get the ball.

Once Molly has the ball, she runs back with it as quickly as she can to start the game over. She really loves to play.



Molly has gotten really good about letting us know when she needs a break. She just lies down before returning the ball until she feels ready to run again. We usually take these pauses as times to remind her to go get a drink, so we generally start saying "Water" at her. It often works--we tend to think it works if it needs to--and she will go drink from the nearest water source before play resumes. Last night we didn't want to keep going so called it quits after she started showing signs of needing breaks. The weather was nice and cool, so we'd actually had a long play and train before that.

Before we came in, I took Molly off-leash to potty. She is trained to potty on command, so it only took a moment. Because it is apparently a parent's duty to embarrass the child by taking potty pictures and showing them to as many people as possible, I did so. Sorry Mol, but just be glad I didn't go and take a video or film like some parents do! BTW, this potty behavior passes handling at Level 3.

After she was finished, I gave her a simple home command. Like the good girl that she is, she ran home and waited for me to come and let her in. Once I got there, she took a drink of water and we came in and called a night. She made the blog entry and everyone went to bed. That's that for yesterday.

Practicing with Distractions

We spent Sunday afternoon at DH's parents. They live in town and have a fenced yard. Molly loves to go there and is always eager to play in the yard. But this time she had to behave for a while until DH erected a fence around the newly planted vegetable garden. With him banging posts into the ground and messing with fencing and his parents puttering around, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for training with distractions. The neighboring properties also tend to be noisy, especially in good weather.

To start we focused on down stays and sit stays. The picture shows Molly in a sit stay. She's been making great progress at home with both and we'd even practiced sit stays this morning. Sit stays tend to be harder because it is more natural to go down for something that takes time. But she did great and was able to hold both types of stays while I walked to the other side of the yard and back no matter what other people were doing. She's a good girl and really is progressing fast in both service and obedience training.

Once the fence was up and everyone had worked so hard in the hot sun, it was time to relax and get a cool drink. Molly took part in the relaxation, too. She'd earned it.

Of course we then needed to practice retrieve because we couldn't leave cans in the lawn.

Now Molly is normally quite good at picking things up, but by this time the heat had gotten to her. She wasn't showing signs of real problems but her brain was not quite its usual self. She was a little unfocused. To make things more difficult, we had to repeat retrieve and give several times to get decent pictures. Fortunately Molly is a patient and hard working dog, even in hot weather. She got lots of treats and water was readily available.

To finish things off, DH had to water the seeds he sowed for his parents. Molly has always been weird about water, especially moving water like the hose. We speculate whether she had a bad experience before we got her. But with lots of encouragement and help, it finally clicked that it could be a game and she played with the water from the hose with DH and me and looked so happy doing it. That really cooled her down too. But we didn't get pictures because we didn't want to risk getting the camera wet. She barked a bit more than would be acceptable in town in the long run, but she'll learn with more playing here at home in the future. We're just glad she can finally see water as fun.