The Story of Puff

It's been a while since I updated The Dog Geek, I've been very busy working as a full-time shepherd on a sheep ranch with Zip and Godzilla, and now I've added a third stockdog to my little family. Zip's sister had babies in October, and I helped deliver the litter and raise the pups. This was a big litter, nine puppies, ranging in size from half a pound to a whole pound at birth. When they were a week old, the smallest baby got very dehydrated and required some extra fluids and care to keep her going. We weren't entirely sure that she was going to make it for several days.

Once she was thriving again, little Puff turned out to be quite a scrappy little puppy. As soon as the pups were big enough to play and wrestle, she would tackle the others and steal their toys. Her favorite toy was a tiny squeaky stuffed duck.

Puff is now 16 weeks old, still petite, and unstoppable. She is the first baby puppy I've raised since Brisbane, and she's almost as bitey and wild as a cattledog puppy. So much biting! Godzilla is the only one of the big dogs that will play with her.

I have lots of plans for Puff, she will be introduced to sheep when she is old enough. Someday I hope

to compete in the big herding trial in Meeker, Colorado. For now, I just hope her ears will stand up. They were perfect little tulip ears for a couple of weeks. Just when I fell in love with the tulips, they stood up! Two days later, they tipped over. She's probably going to have flying nun ears like Zip.

I am trying to make more time for blogging in my busy schedule of shepherding and trialing. In the meantime, we are getting plenty of use out of our Kong Binkies, Puppy Kongs, and assorted other chew toys. So many chew toys.

This is Zip

This is Zip. Her dad is Batman, possibly the best dog ever. Brisbane hated intact males, except Batman. Everybody loves Batman.

Batman's owner is my boss out at the sheep ranch. She breeds really amazing working border collies. Zip was originally placed as a puppy in a home that didn't work out. Though her owner had signed a contract agreeing to return her to her breeder if things didn't work out, she was sold or loaned to someone else for a while. At some point she jumped or fell out of the back of a pickup truck, and was quite possibly running loose for as long as a month before someone else found her and located her breeder. The person that found her originally wanted to keep her because, lets be honest, Zip is a fabulous dog. After a while they changed their mind, and Zip finally landed safely back with her breeder after two years of weirdness.

That's the cool thing about good breeders. It's tough to be totally anti-breeder when you know that the dogs they produce don't end up burdening the shelter system. I've known breeders to take back their dogs after a decade, to fly across the country or drive nonstop for days to retrieve them. A lot of rescues work the same way, but I suspect they adopted the concept from the most responsible of dog breeders.

Ears stand up for sheep and tennis balls.

Zip came back to the ranch not long after I quit doggy daycare in favor of sheep. I needed a dog that could move stock in close quarters without biting them, and Zip needed a job to do. For a while she lived at the ranch, and then she started escaping in her off hours. I lost Brisbane a little over a month ago, and never had the heart to pare down my dog setup. Everything, from the crates in the bedroom to the car full of agility gear, was still set up for two dogs.

So Zip has come home with me. When she's not herding sheep, she gets to chase tennis balls and sleep on the bed, and join me and the crew for all our adventures. Like Sis, she'll do anything for a tennis ball. Zip LOOOOOVES toys. She's still trying to figure out what to do with all of them. I am rapidly learning the difference between random-bred dogs, and dogs produced through very careful and deliberate breeding. Zip is amazing, her parents and siblings and aunts and uncles are all amazing. I now have a border collie, I've gone to the light side. (Cattledogs are undoubtedly the dark side.)