koalathebear

Thanks. Even if by some fluke he passes silver, we'll make him redo it because we think silver's actually got lots of skills that we think he should try to master better before he attempts gold. He did well with the 'weaving' today so that made OH very happy. I was squinting across the field to catch a glimpse of you guys and didn't see you and assumed that it was because wet grass + wet doggy belly + wet stitches = not good. 6pm??? What time will you have to leave work to get home, get dog and get to class? For me, I'll have to leave work early on the Thursday ... I can't believe that you're not going to take Satch through Silver assessment. :D Is he coming back next term? Oh gosh ... what will you do about toileting?? Niques: That's hilarious! I take it you stand with knees bent whenever James is running around you? Max#1: The competition sounds fascinating. I'm hoping to see a flyball contest in Canberra soon if OH isn't too dogged out ... He is understanding and tolerant of things dogly but doesn't share my level of enthusiasm for things dogly :D It's been a pretty rainy day today and just a few minutes ago it was bucketing down while OH was outside with Hoover after dinner trying to get him to 'eliminate'. Both came back inside very drenched. It was a nice and lazy Sunday though. I fell asleep on the sofa in the lounge while OH played Rockband and the two doggies were sleeping in their dog beds. Then later, while Elbie gnawed on an antler, Hoover decided to use Elbie as a head-rest. You can see from that it can't have been a very comfy pillow!!!

I'm so happy! Ferdinand (video ) has been adopted. Apparently he has gone to a lovely family with a bereaved shepherd, who started to perk up within 20 minutes of meeting Ferd. Kate says that the video helped them to want to meet him. Also, they think he's extremely handsome! Woohoo Also ... before we got Hoover, I used to get so stressed/guilty when I had to dump Elbie in the yard on his own for long periods of time or after dark. These days he's totally fine so when dad got rushed to emergency yesterday, we just put the dogs in the yard and they were totally fine for as long as they needed to be alone. Dad's stable for now and back home but I can tell you that having Hoover there to keep Elbie company is a ridiculously huge load off of my mind when I'm already stressed!

I did wonder about this whenever I read about people carrying their dogs around ... Hoover was 10kg at 3 months and a wriggling chunky monkey ... I had assumed people put them in baby carriers or something

Both my dogs still have wonky ears - see below as they do their Yoda impersonations. Elbie's just on 9 months and I think his ears are going to be permanently wonky. Hoover's leftright ear has started to 'rise' so I'm hoping the right ear will follow suit soon. Dog colours are doing my head in with red/chocolate/cream etc meaning different things depending on whether you're talking about a BC or a Kelpie. I went back and re-examined Hoover and discovered that some of his fur is genuinely red but with some parts of him that seem red, if you brush the fur aside, the fur at the roots is actually white although you can't see those hairs unless you use your fingers. Also, his Kelpie butt isn't white like I thought it was, but actually a very pale cream/tan colour. Janba - where did you find a photo of Bantry Girl? I couldn't find one and was very curious to see the 'Great Grandmother' of Australian Kelpies and Border Collies. Out of random curiosity I decided to go and see how the Australian Kelpie and Border Collie were described in Chinese. Australian Kelpie over here had the name transliterated to: 澳大利亚卡尔比犬 which is pronounced Ào​dà​lì​yà​ Kǎ​'ěr bǐ quǎn. So the Chinese have translated it to be Australian Ka Er Bi Dog / Australian Kelpie Dog. I guess 'ka er bi' was the closest they could get to something that sounds like 'Kelpie'. For Border Collie on the other hand, they have translated the name rather than transliterating the sound. Border Collie is 边境牧羊犬 which is pronounced biān​jìng​ mù​yáng quǎn which literally means frontier/border raise sheep/shepherd dog. For the Kelpie, they also say this: 性情： 性格敏感，敏锐，工作效率极高，是很敬业的犬。对主人发出的信号反应迅速，即使是在远处也会积极回应。它们可以日夜工作，白天放牧，晚上看守。 Nature and Temperament: Sensitive disposition, very sharp/acute/keen, extremely high work efficiency, a dog that is 'extremely respectful towards work' . Responds very quickly to its masters signals, even from extremely far distances, it is able to respond very energetically. They are able to work day and night, by day they graze and at night they watch over.

We still haven't seen any turtles and lizards! We haven't a hope of getting our 'homework' done We are also intending to go to the herding trials to see what's what - I'd offer you a lift but our backseat is filled with monsters (to be exact!) Are you bringing both of yours?

I'm not sure what it was! We have ointment for him and they didn't seem worried about it but gosh green goop looks gross. I'm glad Miss Roo's stitches are out. Good luck with the tummy bug ... poor thing. Elbie threw up some froth in his crate this morning which was a bit worrying... OH occasionally worries that he has bloat or something but he seems pretty healthy apart from the occasional throwing up of things he shouldn't have eaten to start with :p How do you take a dog's pulse??? * We got back from obedience this morning. Apparently Elbie did well and did his first ever proper stand for pats - although he Failed Miserably at the controlled greeting. Lunge! While there's no way he's going to pass silver, we'd like him to do ok in the assessment. :D He also did the recall well - OH dropped the leash, walked a distance away and called him and Elbie came! Elbie's neighbour refused to budge, then took two steps towards her handler and then bolted off somewhere else to eat grass ... Oh dear. Hoover was again unable to join the class so we just sat on the edge of the grounds - Hoover on his little mat and I fed him his breakfast while he got 'socialised'. Lots of pats, lots of big scary, lunging, barking dogs - Hoover remained unfussed. He only lunged twice and always came back when called and spent most of the time working for treats or chilled out on his mat. The dog accessory store owner (owns a golden retriever) said that Hoover had a 'strange and funny face'. Then Elbie's classmate (whippet named Shelly) and her owner came up and her owner said: "We've come to meet Hoover, your OH says he has dopey eyes." Here's my dopey-eyed dog on his little mat today. His leftright ear is definitely On The Rise. Close-up of dopey eyes Elbie and Tuffie After class, Elbie and Hoover played in the offlead area and ran around with a Shiba Inu and a large lab named Champ. All had fun, although Hoover tried humping Nugget the Shiba Inu The shiba's owner started calling Hoover the little homo OH and I were mortified at the bad manners of our dog.

Any photos of this lemon border collie?

Nooooo I'm sure it's just that in a high distraction environment, Mars is just very distracted and takes familiar things and people for granted... In any case, HH is always very happy to help so I hope she gave you time and suggestions for what to do. Remember, when we had our consult way back when, she told me that Elbie didn't respect me at all I felt so bad at the time but he's improved heaps. Also, OH wanted to apologise for dashing off after class without saying anything - Hoover was at the vet's and was supposed to have been collected at 10.45am and from what I can gather, class didn't finish until 10.55! ;) He says he hit every single red light on the way to try to retrieve Hoover before the vet closed their doors. :D ETA: Also - OH does not want to do the snake training thing at all - especially the bit that involves yelling and running I'm very bemused about the fact that it's supposed to be easy for us to find a turtle to train on??? ;)

:D That is hilarious. They certainly aren't trying to make it easy, are they given that there are red Kelpies and there ARE blue Kelpies. I have to say though, even though people keep telling me that Hoover is brown/chocolate/liver - in the sun, his fur has a definite red sheen to it. Also, do you know what a "red cloud Kelpie" is precisely? I thought it was a red and tan Kelpie but now I'm wondering if it's restricted to mostly red with a white chest.

My puppy's so tough .. He's got ink .. No, not the strange dot dot dot Canberra 'tattoo in the ear post-desexing' one, but this one. No, he's not a member of a gang ... not unless you count registration with the Working Kelpie Council :D

Yay you! Yay Pepper! ;) That's awesome! You never know which tricks are going to be the ones that take ages - and then suddenly they click! So happy for you re the shake! I'll wait for the video! As for training sessions, don't worry - we all have those days. Don't forget Elbie spent most of the class before sin-binned in the car. I think HH might have even forgotten about him. As for tricks that Hoover just cannot do right now - I can't make him 'beg' and worse ... he won't chase a ball! ;)

What a sad but lovely story. Spot, a great Dane mix, waits every day for her owner to come driving down a road in Lone Oak, Texas, after work. Her owner was killed by a drunk driver five months ago. Video is .

wizzle: good to see you back but sorry to hear you've been poorly. I hope things improve soon and you're able to be up and about again. aussielover: what is a hotspot? I keep hearing about them and all I can imagine is a pimple from hell or something. Having a second dog around is nice because the two tucker each other out - except when you have to intervene because one of them keeps stepping on the other dog's head minxy: kyojin is very cute and so is the signature. I particularly love the expression on his face in the middle picture. Are akita puppies particularly vocal? Hoover is an incredibly quiet dog but when he wants to play or get your attention, he gives these very cute and demanding little barks. betsy: will swap you the rain for the heat we're having here. We don't have a/c in this house, just fans so I'm melting a little. I just have a little Sony point and shoot but OH likes photography so he has a DSLR and his photos of the monsters are always clearer. Niques: Hoover's ok ... the vet couldn't find an ulcer or anything. We just have ointment to put on his eye twice a day but he seems cheerful and as untroubled as usual. He was very happy to be collected from the vet's and wee'd all the way from the back out into the reception area :D * OH says Elbie did his first suburban off-leash recall in an unfenced area this morning ... It was a bit nerve-wracking apparently but it went well.

wizzle (via facebook) says:

Unrelated to colour. I was just watching the trials on the WKC website and noticed that Chris Stapleton's dog 'Boss' has floppy ears Show standards say that ears should be pricked but I noticed that the working line standard does, too! ETA: Then again, apparently (according to wikipedia : I also revisited the Colour page on the Origin of the Kelpie Page on the WKC website and it says the following: Lucky red and tan is an extremely common colour among the working lines so I wasn't looked upon too frownfully ...

Yes! I suppose that for some of the more remote locations, the Maccas is like a landmark or something. The van was on time but we seemed to be waiting forever ...! We felt like goofy, expectant parents standing in the carpark of the Vet hospital like that The driver didn't seem to want to say goodbye to Hoover, kept patting him and cuddling him

Thank goodness it's Hoover and not Elbie. Hoover will stand still while we apply medicine to his head, peer into his eyes, generally manhandle him ... Elbie's like a blur of black and out the door whenever medication is in the neighbourhood.

4kelpies: Head is definitely spinning. The colour descriptions are so confusing. Remember this thread? I didn't know it would be so hard to describe Hoover's colour! Red/brown/chocolate/liver/tri-colour etc. I call him my little Golden Gaytime because of his browns, pale golds and white :p No wonder! It's sad that Kelpies aren't more well-known overseas ... although I know that Kelpies can even herd reindeer Santa, his reindeer and his Australian Kelpie? Spinifex was one of the studs I was looking at when I was looking for Hoover. This is so lame but I was a bit wary of the fact that: 1. their website was hosted at Fortune Cities 2. they were advertising a litter of puppies born on 20th August 1998 I know that breeders shouldn't be judged by their website, I mean the breeder that Hoover's from not only doesn't have a website but doesn't really know how to use email well. She had to drive into town for some young guy to help her attach photos Some of the photos we received weren't even of Hoover and his parents but his grandparents!!! Spinifex website does have a good discussion of colours, though. Lab_Rat: The book IS very expensive but I am such a dork and just bought a stack of Kelpie merchandise from here. Among other things, I bought a "Got Kelpie?" mug and magnet, a t-shirt with "Australian Kelpie: Owned" etc. My OH is going to hurt himself if he rolls his eyes at me anymore. Kelpie_Kisses: Although I know very little about showing, I am very relieved that people are still showing two tones/coloured Kelpies... Kelpies come in such a range of colours and unless there are good sound reasons for breeding out certain colours, I love the idea that a conforming Kelpie can still have all of the different colours that I associate with a 'traditional Kelpie'.

Thank you! And thank you so much for your suggestion about talking to Barbara Cooper. She is so nice and I had two VERY long chats with her when we were looking for Hoover. She was extremely frank in her suggestions and really took the time to talk me through various breeders. She steered us towards the smaller breeders who were more personal and conscientious. I talked to breeders recommended here on DOL (they ended up all being show breeders), I talked to a lot of the breeders that Barbara recommended and we ended up going with a small breeder in Kempsey, a lady whose dog had delivered a litter of 3 Red/Tan 3 Red/Tan & 3 Black/Tan. You can see more photos of Hoover here and also of his littermates. She was the most warm of all the breeders. She spoke of all her dogs with great affection, described them to me so beautifully and she had a smile in her voice when she spoke of Hoover. She went through Elbie's website in great detail, knew about Elbie and so recommended Hoover on the basis of his personality. He really is the most lovely, delightful and chilled little dog. We did have some reservations about getting a puppy that was already 3 months old (see this thread) but Hoover's just such a beautiful, zen little thing - playful, loves cuddles but can be very calm and placid. He's also very smart, so he's every thing a well-bred working Kelpie should be. Sure you don't want to get back into owning Kelpies? Kelpies get such bad bad press sometimes, but given our two - Kelpie x and Kelpie, I really don't see any bad qualities in them. They're such smart, loving, funny dogs that keep us laughing and on our toes all the time. Even their occasional naughtiness is usually on the funny side rather than anything serious.

Poor Hoover's been dropped off at the vet this morning. I need to wait for delivery of an oven and OH has the car so Hoover was dropped off at teh vet's to be picked up later this morning. He has thick green discharge coming out of his eyes. His eyes are not red at all and he has not been rubbing at them either - but every few hours, it's a kind of thick, ropey discharge. Over the phone the vet said it might be an infection so bring him in today and not Monday. I did a search of DOL and it sounds like it's probably conjunctivitis, but then shouldn't the eye be red and irritated, too? I was just saying in another thread, that like Elbie, the very early days of Hoover's puppyhood make me feel like we're living at the vet's surgery Elbie hasn't seen the vet since he was last vaccinated for heartworm and he's been healthy since he was a wee puppy, but in the early days there were all sorts of 'little' annoyances including ringworm. Hoover's still being medicated for his demodex mites although new fur is starting to grow back on the bald patches - but now he has this eye thing.

I was supposed to be Hoover-sitting this morning as I waited for our new stove and oven to be delivered - with the usual specificity, the delivery time was stated as: "sometime on Saturday morning". OH was going to go to class with Elbie but then we've noticed over the last two days that poor Hoover's had goop in his eyes. The vet checked him out earlier in the week and said that if he was rubbing at it, we should bring him back in. He hasn't been rubbing at it but gosh that's a lot of green goop in the poor dog's eyes that we keep extricating. Because after OH went to class I'd be carless and couldn't drop off Hoover, they said that OH could just drop off Hoover and they'd examine him when they had a moment and then we could pick him up at 10.45 am. "Sorry he'll in a cage all that time, though." It's ok because he's a very chilled dog and is totally happy to be crated but he just looked very doleful this morning as we were putting his car harness on and he was looking up at us with his puppy dog eyes, left ear up, right ear dropping down ... I was going to make the appointment for Monday but the vet's said that anything to do with the eyes is urgent and he might have an infection. We went through this with Elbie when he was a very young pup - seemed like he was constantly at the vet's in his early days. These days he's healthy as a horse so let's hope Hoover follows suit. Niques: Someone else was remarking about us leaving the bags of food on the ground of the kitchen like that i.e. how is it that the dogs don't rip them open. The roo tails are excellent - we bought them frozen from the organic butchers at the markets and they were surprisingly meaty when thawed out. I have to admit, non-Aussies are a bit horrified that our national animal is fed as food to our dogs .. I got a message asking me: "pardon my cluelessness, but... Are those actually kangaroo tails? Are kangaroos so common that kangaroo meat can be sold as a dog treat?" wait until I tell them about kangaroo culling in Canberra ... Are there many snakes in your area? I worry about them, too. at first I thought that we were in a safe area but at Dog School, they've just put up signs warning us that snakes have been sighted in the area I know Elbie - he'd go and nose at the damned thing. KumaAkita: I know what you mean ... travel for work is never fun if you're just going there, working and then back - seeing nothing but workplace/hotel . One adjustment I'm making right now to public service travel is that if I have to travel, I'll only be able to go there and then back - no extensions so that I can 'see' stuff. My old work was so good about that sort of thing. We had conferences in Monaco and Cannes from Thursday - Friday morning and then were were allowed to extend and stay over the weekend so that we could go sight-seeing. We only had to pay half price for hotels etc so I was able to travel around Paris and Nice. Those days are well and truly gone ...

Jillybean ... I am in love Soooo beautiful. Does this mean that you are still breeding coloured Kelpies? Because of my posts I actually get quite a lot of messages asking about coloured Kelpies so I'd love to be able to refer people to you if you breed two tone Kelpies. Right now, I've just been able to refer them to working breeders which is fine but there are a whole set of challenges when trying to get a pet from a working line breeder ... I had a lot of bad luck when looking for two tone show Kelpies. All breeders I contact only bred solid coloured dogs. Sally is beautiful - do you have more photos you could share? I could look at Kelpies all day ... Good on you for flying the coloured Kelpie flag in the show ring.

Thanks! We love our little monsters. And no worries for going off-topic. I've sent you a PM about it. Hope you can have a little Kelpie puppy, too soon!!!

giraffez isn't a breeder - she's getting a puppy as a pet from a breeder ... giraffez: to answer your question - we didn't pick our puppy. We just described our existing dog in a lot of detail and what we were after and she picked out Hoover for us. To be honest, it's safest. There are sooooooooooo many conflicting recommendations about choosing the dog and unless you're very experienced - you won't know what you're supposed to be looking for People were telling us we should bring our dog along to see if it got along with the new pup but there's a thread in the breeders' forum where a lot of breeders say that they'd let prospective owners bring a dog and meet a tiny puppy over their dead body. Some people will say if the dog is too bold then that's bad, if it's too shy, that's bad as it might have weak nerves blah blah blah. Some say see the dog alone in a field, some say see the dog with other dogs .. I was much happier to leave it to the more experienced breeder to make the assessment for us because she had been with and watched the litter for so long and knew their personalities.

I held out for a long time and it used to irritate the hell out of me but then I discovered that there were people I did want to keep in touch with but might not necessarily have enough to say to them to justify emailing them ... So FB lets me leave one line comments for photos and status updates. I still do email though ...