Five Wonderful Dogs...

Seems only fair to give a quick introduction to the pack.

Pooh Bear (Sheena)

Sheena (a.k.a. Pooh Bear)

Pooh Bear was my first dog, a German Shepard mix. Sweet, lovable, somewhat aloof, and very gentle. An altogether wonderful choice for a first dog. She was the only dog who didn't bark incessantly at the humane society kennel. She simply waited with dignity to be noticed. Regrettably, few pictures of Pooh Bear remain, and they don't do her justice.

I have two particularly fond memories of Pooh Bear. The first is of her wandering across the street to greet an 12 month old child, giving the child a dainty lick on the lips, and then standing calmly as the child, having laughed and fallen down, used Sheena to pull back up. The second is of Sheena teaching Natasha (below) by example how to behave. More on that below.

Sheena was the first dog I trained. When we got to Philadelphia, I taught her to stop at intersections, which she did reliably.

We lost Sheena to cancer on Thansgiving day in 1999. Afterwards, my wife decreed that we would only get dogs she could lift.

Natasha

Natasha

Natasha was a one year old Rottweiler who had been systematically beaten and starved by her first owner. A cat rescue group intervened to get her taken away, and nursed her back to help with IV nutrients, but since they didn't really do dog rescue, they needed to place her quickly. I volunteered, and did a marathon drive from Philadelphia to Connecticut. She was terrified of men, and it took almost an hour before she would let me touch her. When the time came several hours later to leave, she was panicked and tried to chew her way out of my Explorer. Because of her early malnourishment, she never filled out properly.
At first she would pee submissively if you happened to look frustrated when you turned her way. Nobody had taught her anything that she knew she could do right. The most striking memory I have of those days is the day she learned to "sit" on command. It wasn't just that she knew how to sit. It was that she knew she knew how to sit. It was the first thing anybody had ever bothered to teach her, she knew she had it, and she knew that she could reliably be praised for that. From that point on, if she wasn't sure what to do, she sat. And she looked so proud doing it.

I was lucky to have Pooh Bear on hand at the time, because Natasha learned a lot from Pooh Bear. The thing about a dog that knows nothing is that when they get a chance they learn very quickly. Quickly enough that you can see the process happen before your eyes (which was amazing and wonderful). Natasha quickly decided that Pooh Bear knew what to do, so immitating Pooh Bear was safe. She did that assiduously. Because of her anxiety and fear, working with Natasha forced me to re-examine everything I had previously done as a handler. At the time it was heart-breaking, but it was also wonderful.

Natasha was good with Chinese puzzle crates. When I went to work, I would crate her in one of those wire crates that can be broken down for travel. Within 48 hours, she had worked out how to break down the crate all by herself. From the inside. In seven seconds (yes, I timed it). Some tie ties fixed that, but it was really impressive. Rotties are smart dogs when they are motivated.

By the end, she could be trusted to run at the dog park, but remained prone to fear-biting when strangers came to the house. We loved her, but she certainly wasn't a dog who could transition into a normal home.

We lost Natasha to bone cancer in 2003.

Morgan

Morgan

Natasha spent months keening after Pooh Bear died. Breaking the "can't lift" rule, we adopted another Rottie. Morgan came to us as a two year old; a certified child therapy dog who lost her home due to the idiocies of liability insurance. Contrary to what you may have heard, there is no credible data anywhere that Rottweilers bite people any more than any other dog. They are big, they are striking, they photograph well (I mean, look at her!), so they make the papers. Unless, of course, you remove from the sample pool those dogs who have been used illegally in dog fighting or as bait (that is: dogs we know have been abused). Guess which breed looks really good after you do that?

When we brought our son home from the hospital, Morgan looked at the infant carrier with an expression that clearly read "Cool! Did you get one for you too?" She would "boof" at us if we didn't respond to the baby fast enough for her liking. She was always gentle, and always at his side. She only growled at someone once, and her judgement was dead-on.

Morgan was a true master of strategic stupidity. If there was a way to pretend she hadn't heard, or just lie passively on the couch and wait, that would get her what she wanted, she did it. The running joke was she was the world's only Blonde Rottweiler.

We lost Morgan to an aggressively mutating form of MRSA in 2008. My son, who had never known a house without her, was devestated. With Morgan gone, we were back to no dogs in the house. By this point, I'ld had two dogs for most of the previous 20 years, and it seemed pretty quiet...

Trevor

Trevor

Trevor is a Border Collie mix (probably Springer Spaniel) from the Carolinas. 60lbs of perpetual motion machine. We adopted him several months after Morgan passed. I had been interested in Border Collies for a very long time, and this seemed like a good time to make the move. My son caught the bug from me. BC's will herd small children unless the handler is very good. I'ld lived with BCs before, but they weren't mine, so we ended up going the mixed-breed route. Thus: Trevor.

Trevor has limited herding drive, but loves to chase balls, people, children, other dogs, falling snow, and so forth. As a handler, I haven't done him justice yet. He came as my job situation was shifting, and too many things were allowed to get in the way. I'll be fixing that over the next several months. We'll be seeing a lot of Trevor, so I won't say much more about him here.

Faith

Faith

Faith is a five year old pure-bred Border Collie. She joined our household just last week, and has been trying to teach the cat how to be herded since she arrived. Faith comes from the Vancouver area, and my son and I took a weekend adventure trip up to Vancouver with Trevor to pick her up. In addition to being a BC, Faith is deaf, which makes the second time that I've had to re-examine and re-learn all of my handling skills. Which is wonderful. Faith is also very well trained. As BCs go (heck, as any dog goes), she's easy. Once again, we'll be seeing a lot of Faith, so I won't say much more here.

Mud Larks

Faith's fosterer (Sheena, a.k.a. Food Lady of Three Woofs and a Woo) warned us that Faith is perhaps the muddiest Border Collie she has ever encountered. Then she saw Faith and Trevor side by side, and conceded that perhaps we might already be familiar with the problem. Trevor and Faith had just spend two hours running around with Piper, Dexter, Woo, and Tweed. At one point, Trevor actually lay down in a mud puddle. Trevor also spent some time trying to wrangle the llamas at casa de food lady. Llamas apparently have razor-sharp hooves, and can be deadly when provoked. Faith and Dexter herded him back.

"Oops!"

My son was determined not to be outdone, however. After working to determine just how deep this particular mud puddle was (about six inches), and nearly losing a shoe to the suction, he looked at me, plopped down flat on his bum, smiled, and said very matter-of-factly: "oops". Then he decided to test his skills at face painting. We were driving my wife's car, and needless to say, I owe my wife a car wash...

Snickers

Which brings me to the outlier of the family: Snickers. Snickers really doesn't see what all the excitement is about these useless four-legged bits of ambulatory biomass-in-waiting. Snickers came to us without front claws, and his first reaction to Morgan went something like this:

It's big (whap). And it's stupid (whap). What's it for?

Morgan has been known laughingly as "the big stupid" ever since. When Trevor arrived, Snickers had this to say:

But we just got rid of the big stupid. And now we're getting a little big stupid?

I think Trevor knows this, since he has been trying to get Snickers to play (whap!) unrelentingly for the last four years. But Snickers seems to have met his match in Faith. She's deaf, and he's blind. He can't see her staring him down, and she can't hear him whining about how stupid he things dogs are in general and Faith is in particular.