How To Beat Your Border Collie

Before I got my Border Collie folks warned me about all sorts of 'neurotic' behaviors that some Border Collie can display. Bet is thankfully free of any of these annoying neurotic behaviors, except running in circles or back in forth in front of our pens.
If allowed she will kill hours that way. It's not good for her and it is really hard on the sandy ground in front of the pens, so we'd like to see it stop, but short of locking her in the house all the time have not found a way to make that happen.

Then yesterday while I was doing water buckets I noticed a bunch of activity up by the puppy pen.

Mark had been to town earlier in the day and mentioned he had some 'supplies' to pick up. I didn't realize he meant supplies to 'beat' my Border Collie with!! LOL

With the Tramplings supervising, he dug, raked, placed patio blocks, and shoveled. 

Luckily, it passed 'Trampling approval'....

...not so much 'Border Collie approval'...

In fact, she is downright annoyed...

While I shoveled the yard today, she tried running on the patio blocks, gave that up and just poked around the yard like a regular....well.....dog!!

She says her life is ruined.

I think she is being alittle over dramatic.

She Never Listens To Me

I tried to tell her about the hummingbirds, and their beady little eyes and sharp pokey pokey beaks...

But she never listens to me... nooooo!  Don't feed them, I told her, but nooooo, she kept feeding them, encouraging them.

It was only a matter of time...

- Bet

I Should Have Listened to Bet.

For the last year Bet has been trying to convince me that hummingbirds were evil and scary creatures. I refused to be convinced and continued to try to attract them to the yard. Our success has been marginal until this year.

Now the little critters are eating me out of house and home. If I let the feeder run dry, they hover in front of the window staring into the house with their beady little eyes.

I'm beginning to fear for my life. I wonder when they head south?? Hopefully before the weather really cools off and training picks up. I don't know if I can manage running dogs and keeping the hummingbirds fed.

I'm sorry Bet, I should have listened to you.

I Have A Confession To Make

Over the years the blog has been filled with images of folks scootering our trails with their dogs and my dogs.

Family...

 Friends...

 and slightly crazy handlers....

But never has there been an image of me on the scooter. That is because I've never gone on a run on it!! Seriously!!
Well, that isn't entirely accurate, there was that one time.....I lasted about 100 feet and then flew (in very spectacular fashion, if I do say so myself) over the handlebars. I have a good number of excuses for that incident, I won't bore you all with them....suffice to say that was the end of my scootering.

Over the years, no one has really challenged me on that - and if they did I had several well honed excuses as to why I wasn't scootering with them.

A couple days back we dragged my lovely Pawtrekker scooter out of the garage so Kathryn could take Bean and Dasher out.

She had a great time. Everyone always does.

This morning after running, feeding and shoveling after the Tramplings that darn scooter was staring at me as I walked back to the house.
Next thing I knew I had harnesses on Jinx and Bingo and was on the scooter headed out of the yard.

There are no pictures - I likely wouldn't have gone out if anyone had been around to photograph it - but the girls will tell you there were no crashes or even near crashes. We had a blast!! And of course, after the first downhill I was whistling them up on all subsequent downhills!!

I wonder if Charge and Q are up for a run on the scooter tomorrow!!!

=)
Karen

Kathryn

I often get asked if I stay in touch with my previous handlers that have worked at the kennel. The answer is a definite 'yes'. Some I am in touch with more then others, but I mostly keep in touch with all of them. All of them pretty much have a standing invite to come out to the kennel and visit - this past week our '07 - '08 handler Kathryn, her husband Pete, and their 2 dogs (Bean - who is from here - and Nokomis) took us up on that invite.

I had spent the night at their place in Detroit (as other handlers - like Helen and Richard will tell you having me show up on your doorstep is one of the hazards of having worked here at the kennel!) while I was in the area a few years back, but this was the first time Kathryn had been back to visit us.

We had a great time catching up and playing with the dogs!

Dasher teaching Bean to be a 'sled dog'.

Kathryn, Bean and the Dasher Dog

Pete and Bean

Kathryn and Pete's Nokomis

NorthWapiti's Jelly Bean (aka Mr. Bean, Bean, Beanie Baby....)

The 'real' Bean!!

Come back anytime guys!!!

Karen

Making A Break For It...

Do you think they like their morning run?????

Let Me Out!!!!

Most of you have seen our cabin in past blogs. It is a cute little place used by handlers in the winter and guests to the kennel in the summer.

It has hosted folks from around the world - the UK, Sweden, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, America, Canada and a few other places I'm sure I'm missing.

One thing you may not know about it though is that all sorts of visitors to the cabin have also been locked in it. See the latch on it works well for one person, but not so well when 2 people are sharing the cabin.

It locks from both the inside and the outside - and if it is latched from the inside, it can't be opened from the outside and vise versa.

The first person to be locked in there was Kelly Berg. She and friend Tara were visiting the kennel. When Tara came up to the house to check emails one morning, she latched the door behind her, locking Kelly in. After checking her emails Tara got a puzzled look on her face and said there was an email from Kelly's Mom telling her to let Kelly out of the cabin!! It turns out Kelly's cell phone worked in the cabin (not all do) but she couldn't remember the phone number of the house, so she called home and asked her Mom to email Tara!!
Very clever.

Since then ...
...Mark was locked in the cabin by our handler Kathryn when he went in do some work on one of the heaters for her.
...Mike Ellis got locked in the cabin by his wife (he took the screen off the window and crawled out).
...One of our British visitors (but for the life of me I can remember which one - I *think* it was Barry) got locked in this winter.
....and this morning Kathryn (yes, the same one that locked Mark in the cabin), who is visiting the kennel with her husband Pete, was up feeding her dogs when the horn on her car started going off. What the heck??
Turns out she locked Pete in the cabin. His phone didn't work but he had the keys to his car, so used the horn button to alert Kathryn to his situation!! Very clever!!!

 I suppose we should do something about the latch...but honestly it is now providing Mark and I with a fair amount of amusement.
Maybe I'll just get our wonderful cartoonist friend to cartoon a "I was trapped in the NorthWapiti Cabin" logo that we will put on t-shirts and hand out when someone gets locked in!!

=)
Karen