Melisa and I love our dogs and it has been a hard and painful year for us with the losses of so many of our dogs. Although we still grieve for the ones that have gone, we still have four of the border collies that emigrated with us from Scotland. They are all almost 13 now and we know we will not have them for too many more years. Melisa had been thinking about, and looking for, a new pup but hadn’t found the right one yet, but in the search we came across Rick. I wanted another male dog to be “my” dog. That’s always a bit of an ‘in joke’ as the dogs almost invariably end up being Melisa’s dogs!
Rick is a year old border collie who had been returned to the breeder because of issues in his first home. He is a very energetic and highly strung dog, almost a caricature of the perceived worst traits of border collies, and we think he may have been abused in his first home.
Still, here he is now with us, as we try to iron out some of his worst behavioural issues. I have no doubt that he has a fundamentally good heart and he just craves love and attention, but needs some training and a bit of discipline. He needs a lot of activity and exercise at the moment but, on occasion, he’ll lay down and almost approach the laid back status of our Scottish collies then, twenty milliseconds later, he’s off again.
He, as you can see, is a gold and white collie, a colour pattern that we have never had before in any of our previous nine borders.
Rick has already wormed his way into my heart, but he really needs to be on his best
behaviour with Melisa. He really tries hard to get the older dogs to play with him – mostly, they ignore him (or try to) – but surprisingly the one that does seem to be tempted into responding is Chloe, Melisa’s deaf therapy dog. I continually try to get some photos of them playing but, Rick is just a constant blur, and Chloe hates camera flashes so she tends to disappear under the piano whenever the camera appears.
Rick. my dog.
