I’m pretty sure he’s just humoring me.
Squashed
A blog of politics, law, religion, and the tricky spots where they collide.
Posts tagged Border Collie:
In light of recent events in Colorado, Beckett would like to remind outdoorsey dog owners to invest in a pair of friggin’ dog boots. Cut or sore paws are about the most predictable canine trail injuries, not an unforseen cataclysm that should necessitate abandoning your dog on a 14,000 foot peak.
We just did 60 miles with Beckett in notoriously tough paw-country last week. He only wound up needing boots on two days (Mount Washington was actually far worse), but we spent several weeks in advance of the hike teaching him that boots and/or disposable booties were ok to wear. You don’t want to pull that stuff on your dog for the first time on the trail.
Had a great hike-and-lunch date today. Preliminary testing suggests that Beckett’s new dog shoes do a great job of staying on. Not sure yet how they’ll perform on rock scrambles, but I’m liking knowing we will have something more durable than the disposable booties on hand if we run into some rough terrain in the Winds.
He’s wearing a harness because he dragged me up that mountain. The dog-assist was great on the way up, but a bit rough on the knees on the way down.
Just hanging out on a Sunday.
After ascending about a vertical mile to get to the top of Mt. Washington, Beckett’s feet started hurting him. Climbing up Tuckerman’s ravine involved a lot of him jumping from rock to rock with his dog pack on. We put some booties on, which helped with the sore paws.
Today, he’s sleeping a lot.
It would help to have a photographer to get the effect right. Beckett needs some hand signals to get the sit, wait, come, jump sequence right. One hand for the toy and one for the camera leaves a lot of ambiguity in what I’m asking him to do.
What sort of dog likes pillows that much? How did he even figure out how to use pillows?
Yesterday: a good day.
A funny thing happened a midnight
I had planned to be asleep at midnight. New Year’s Eve plans fell through when I got mixed up on what part of the country I needed to be in—so yesterday’s primary events were frantic packing, driving ten hours, shivering while the house heated back up to “inhabited”, and crawling into bed. The border collie, Beckett, who has finally gotten used to travel—but missed his run in all this, handled it fairly well and settled in to sleep on a blanket dropped on the dining room floor.
Until midnight. At exactly midnight, Beckett started barking loudly—generally freaking out.
He does this occasionally. The primary thesis is that his ears are better than ours are (by a lot) and that he heard New Year revelry and disapproved. We live close enough to a highway that he sometimes gets upset by traffic accidents.
I prefer the alternate explanation. Beckett is sensitive to mortality and sought to chase off the New Year. Border collies are famous for getting sheep to behave in an orderly manner. With Beckett, it’s a similar thing, but instead of sheep, it’s death.
So, this is Christmas.
Edit: Sometimes intelligence in dogs can be measured by a willingness to put up with stupid things to get it over with quickly.
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