Disc Dog Fun

Though my dogs' main passion is herding, they also like to run and catch flying discs!
Each of them has it's own style, but they are all very keen on the discs and they get wild when they see me coming with the discs.

Jai has a good eye and is a great catcher, and he loves to run around carrying his trophee.
Suki is a real jumper, I had to be very careful to not throw too high when she was younger: she would jump for it even when she was 4-5 months old! Even now I'm still not throwing too high because they still aren't a year old yet! And Yoshi is... well, she is Yoshi: determined and accurately as in everything she does.

Throwing discs is a great way to keep your dogs (and yourself!) in good shape, so they stay fit even when you can't take them for walks every day. And I think they enjoy it more then walking or running on a treadmill...


Jai, Yoshi and Suki having fun Disc Dogging:

Just be careful with dogs who are a bit too keen, they can mistake your fingers for a disc!

Let me introduce the gang, part 2

How about the rest of the gang? You've seen Yoshi already in my post about mole trouble, but there's also Jai and Suki. These 3 pups are all from Jessie's litter, and I bet you're wondering why I've kept 3 pups. Well, that wasn't my intention to begin with...

Initially, I wanted one bitch pup out of Jessie, and my choice was easily made: it had to be Suki. In Suki I saw so much of Jessie that she was my first choice, but my daughter however was convinced that it was Yoshi who had to stay with us. After a while we decided to keep them both, because neither of us was prepared to give in: we loved our favorite too much!

Suki

Yoshi

And then one of our pups, Jai, came back to us. I started to search for a new home for him, but my husband fell in love with this little guy and wanted to keep him. And so Jai stayed with us!

So this is the gang now. Or is it?


Oops, no!

There is also Falco, our Border Colllie x Rescue dog. We adopted him at 3y old, same age as Jessie:

Mole trouble

Since we moved here in 2003, we had moles. Flosje, our oldest cat, even brought me a mole once. She was much younger then, and I wish she'd caught some more! Because now, I'm really starting to hate those animals. This week, there must been added 10 giant mole heaps at least! I tried those noise making devices, and they help if they keep on doing what they're supposed to do. But after a while, the batteries go empty faster and faster, until you can't replace them quick enough to scare the mole away. I've had two devices like that, but the moles are still pestering me!

Some of the dogs smell it, and start digging in the heaps, but the most skilled digger of all is Yoshi! I think she can even hear the mole moving under her, because sometimes she suddenly looks at the ground and starts following a trail when there's nothing to see. Then she'll start digging at random, with great determination, like she's after something moving under there... But most of the time she digs in the heaps, and she wants to get down there real fast. I still hope she'll catch the mole soon!

Stuiker Trial 27 May 2012

This video of Jessie & me is taken by Carola Van Tilburg. I am very happy she did this for me, because it's really handy to look at your dog and see what she's doing and how she responds to your commands. You can clearly see what mistakes you make yourself, because it's never the fault of the dog if things go wrong, the dog only wants to work sheep and please his handler! I saw a few things that surprised me, and I will work on them to improve my handling and to give Jessie more confidence. But I'm also very pleased by the way she works sheep, and it's a pleasure to watch her without the stress of the moment, when you're standing there on the field.

This is what is called Class 1 trialling, more or less comparable with Nursery Class in the UK. I didn't shed the sheep here, just stopped them and grabbed a horn. The next week however (I have no video of that, sorry to say) I was able to shed for the first time in a trial! Bad luck my time was up then and we couldn't pen, because Jessie is actually good at that. She is a bit reluctant to come in at shedding though, and it certainly doesn't help when I think I'm helping to shed the sheep but I'm actually blocking them... But hey, I think I will get the hang of it with more practice for me, a lot more practice!

Let me introduce the gang:

Jessie is my first border collie. She was born on the 27th of July 2005, and I picked her because she seemed to be the calmest puppy of the litter. Boy, did I have the wrong impression! She's been always full of life, eager to work and very keen on herding animals. It all started with the chickens, she loved to herd them. So I started to go to sheep herding classes with her, and that's when it al began...

After I struggled for five years to learn the mysterious art of herding sheep, I decided to have me a new pup. All I had learned from and with Jessie, including the lots of mistakes I had made, I could try to do better with this new one, so I thought. Since I had requests for pups of Jessie herself from a few people, I finally found the perfect mate for her in the International Supreme Champion 2009: Dewi Tweed, owned by Richard Millichap. And so she had a litter in July 2011, but more about that later.


End of April 2011, when Jessie had mated with Tweed, I still didn't notice anything about her being pregnant. So I thought she was empty and I wouldn't get a pup out of her. By chance, I saw a very interesting litter on Facebook: there were still a few pups available, sired by Dutch Champion Jim, owned by Serge van der Zweep. I went to have a look, but didn't choose the one I was going for. Instead I chose the one with the blue eye, the one I certainly wasn't going to take! And so Floyd came to join us, and he is the most lovely and sweetest boy you've ever seen :)

More about the others later!