This little lady just joined our pack today. She belonged to a local cattle farmer who uses his Border collies to herd the cattle. Joon wasn’t “enough dog” for the job, apparently, and they sought a home where she could be active, understood – and have a job. Joon’s a year old, sweet as can be, and has lived outdoors all her life.

All of our dogs live in the house. Our house is far too large for Ken and me, but of course we’ve filled it up with all our junk, which is scattered from here to there… and in the spaces, and on all the couches and chairs are THE DOGS. Joon is in a crate. Poor kid.

I started this blog months ago and just let it hang, since I had nothing earthshaking to impart. Well, Joon has inspired me to get this thing going, so already I’m grateful to her.

I hope to use this blog as a training diary, since I’m the world’s worst documenter of anything. Not sure how this will work, but stay with me. Everyone wants to know what I’ve done with my two BCs that are now competing in agility.

Our #1 BC, Jolt, was one of those rare “add a frisbee and stir” BCs that turn on to agility immediately and teach their lucky handler how to do the job. So everything I know about handling a Border collie (and lots of other dogs) I owe to him. What a grand teacher!

Jig, in the sad #2 place, is a budding agility dog. He came to us at 7 months of age, had lived in a boarding kennel his whole life, and had no idea how to learn, how to play with humans, and just wanted to run away and play with his ball. He taught me a lot about how to train a dog. He’s now 2 1/2 years old, and still has a long way to go but he’s well motivated to work with me and loves his agility.

How could I possibly feel equal to taking on a new “project” – a one-year-older with no house training, no play training (“we don’t let them play with balls because we want all their ‘fun’ to come from working with the cows,” I was told. Well, that didn’t work.) I dunno. But she’s cute, and friendly, and mighty thin. She’s hungry. So I know we can motivate her. Let’s see how this works.