Bathing The Dog

We have a river at the bottom of our garden which is lovely but I was a little concerned that Toby would be a swimmer and constantly in there. But actually he doesn't like water much at the moment. Although he did come trotting up the garden one day soaked through so I guessed he must have fallen in. Luckily I wasn't there to panic and have to rescue him and he managed to get out all on his own.

Then yesterday once again his fur appeared to be wet but I didn't take too much notice at first. He did seem to stay wet for quite some time and I did vaguely wonder why, but when I walked out into the kitchen I slipped up. Closer examination of what I thought was spots on water on the kitchen floor turned out to be oil. Then I saw the plastic box that had held the oil from the wok for frying. It had been on top of the cooker and now was obviously all over Toby and the floor.

He smelled of chips too. So there was nothing else for it, we were going to have to give him a bath. We put a few inches of water into the bath and plonked him in. But as soon as he moved I realised that the bottom of the bath was very slippery for him, so his legs went in every direction knocking things down and splashing everything. He managed to get a strawberry bath bomb that was sitting on the side down into the water and that started fizzing which caused some distress as I shouted to Jas to put a towel in the bottom of the bath to give him some grip. That done he seemed to settle down enough for me to wash him off before he jumped into my arms soaking me from head to toe.

I think he may still be a little oily but I'd done the best I could and of course he had to do that shaking thing and cover not only me but the entire bathroom in splashes. First bath done ...

The New Lead

Well after the biting the lead incident, I had to put another lead on Toby. (see previous post) The only one I had was more of a rope lead which I hadn't used previously as it has a plastic knob near the end where the handle is created which gets stuck under doors as he rushes past.

Since he'd already destroyed the other lead with no knobs, I was forced to use this one. And getting the knob stuck under doors didn't seem to phase him at all; he just learned how to swing his rear end as he went through a door to keep the lead away. But one afternoon as I was trying to talk to a client on the phone, he got his lead caught under his cage. He tried to pull it out by walking away, but took the cage with him. Then he tried walking round the cage which meant the cage started to whiz round in a circle. Whooo ho - Toby thinks this is a fine game, how fast can you make a cage spin with your lead stuck under it. I'm trying very hard to carry out a telephone conversation with a prospective client and the background noise sounded like I had a construction team in my office.

Off to buy him a new lead with no knobs on it - what material is indestructible?

Toby's Training

I've read lots of articles online about dog training and one thing's for sure - its not the dog who gets the training its the owners!

Two weeks after Toby arrived I was getting to the end of my tether. He was totally and utterly hyper active. He didn't stop for breath until he was forced to. The arrive of a cage from a friend was a welcome relief as at least it meant even if he was still going strong when we were flagging and collapsing we could put him into his cage for a rest ... for us.

The worst thing was the jumping up and biting - he wanted us to play and he wasn't going to take no for an answer. My clothes were in rags, I had nip bites all over and Jasmin was getting very wary of him. So in desperation I decided we either had to find a trainer or he would have to go.

I called around and found a lovely lady called Patsy. When she answered the phone I just said help! and she laughed. She came around and showed us how to time out Toby. It smacks of Supernanny tactics but does seem to work. She told us to leave Toby's lead on even whilst in the house so we could grab him quickly rather than trying to get to his collar - this is just a temporary measure for a couple of weeks. Then time him out when doing something he shouldn't by placing him on the other side of a door for 10 seconds whilst we hold the lead onthe other side. This isn't meant as instruction for training so please don't try it without full supervision as there is more to it than I've written here.

Anyway this was working quite well and the nipping and jumping was subsiding. One morning when he was particularly excited, I had to time him out 4 or 5 times. The last time I was stood on one side of the door and Toby was on the other, I didn't hear the normal whine or movement but continued for the count of 10 holding the lead. Opened the door and Toby was no where to be seen.

He'd bitten through the lead and taken off. In 10 seconds he'd gone through the lead and left me standing there holding the end of the lead behind a closed door.

Where did he come from

We were told about Toby by my brother "someone has a puppy they can't manage and are looking for a good home". Since it was nearly two years since our beloved Jessie died, an Alsation/Lab cross, we had decided that we would start looking for a suitable replacement although I was of the opinion that no dog could ever replace Jessie.

Anyway, we went along to meet the lovely couple who were Toby's owners. He's a cross breed as well but the only part they were sure about was the Border Collie bit - the rest was/is a mystery. He seemed like a joyful little fellow and although he was just under 16 weeks, he was sitting to command and we thought he seemed very intelligent. At the time this was considered a benefit... read on....

Since my daughter was getting married the following weekend we arranged to come back after the wedding as it would be all to hectic to bring a new housemate into the chaos of a wedding. So the following week, we went back to see Toby again. He was packed and ready to go. I was a little surprised and said to his owners "you haven't changed your mind then?" "Oh no, " she said, "we've shed a few tears to see him go but we won't change our minds". She also wouldn't accept any money for him or the expenses they shelled out.

Now anyone who has experience of border collie puppies will now be smiling I'm sure. No money, bags already packed ... the alarm bells should be ringing.

But no we were delighted and off we went with our new baby.

Since he had been living in a retirement flat for the last couple of months, our long garden with lots of overgrown bushes must have seemed like heaven to him. He bounced around and sniffed every blade of grass thoroughly loving it.

The first thing that disappeared was a packet of cigarettes ... where did I put them ... I searched and searched and the next morning found them in the garden chewed. Fortunately all of them were still there so I decided Toby hadn't actually ingested any. Lesson No. 1 - make sure any harmful items are well out of his reach.