My latest guest star: Tibor the Border Collie (or "How I Became a Seeing-Eye Human")

The great and mighty Tibor looks so much better in photo 3, lovely smiley face

 

Oh goodness, the shelter pic is heartbreaking! Our rescue came from Romania, must have been similar to that

 

Another lucky pup.

 

Good work Emily and Tibor can you please work on your aim! xx

 

You can sure say that again!

 

Sounds like his aim was perfect to me. Just sayin

 

Oh Tibor! What are you going to do to beat that on your passagiata tonight? You've got a reputation to maintain, you know...

 

Oh gosh, be still my heart. As a former doggie mum of two Border Collies, I'm loving this thread! Tibor is gorgeous. BC's are so smart...I'm sure that he will get the hang of what you are asking him to do pretty quickly. Good for you for thinking of the possible scenario of the familiar walking spot being easier than new ones. That makes sense to me!

 

Short answer: bloody liquid poo and trying to eat (then falling in love with) my friend's chihuahua.

On the bright side, the six walks we had to do during the day because of his tummy problems meant he was more tired and for the first time did not even make his leaky tire sound protests from his crate. He slept through until 5:30am (my usual getting up time) and then I let him out of his crate and on the bed for a cuddle/snooze until 7:30.

Despite the dodgy poo and having his home invaded last night by a cheeky Chihuahua, he seems to be more relaxed today. Maybe he's settling in, or maybe- like me - he's happy it's the weekend!

Oh, and I told him he needs to poo on the other shoe soon. Now the one he pooed on is much cleaner than the other one.

 

OK, you are now officially my go-to BC expert - please stick around and help enlighten me to Tibor's mysterious ways!

Speaking of which - he follows me constantly in the house with his nose right in the back of my knee. I was thinking this was due to the "blind" factor more than the BC factor, but maybe it's just a BC thing? If the latter, are there some games/activities he might like to get the herding ya-yas out of his system?

 

You were lucky with the poo - I had you in sandals!

 

I would say the nose on the knee is more of his lack of sight and needing an "anchor" than a BC thing. As for getting the herding ya-yas out, good luck. You will never get rid of it entirely but basically BCs are born to work so if you don't provide them with some job they will make one for themselves, and since herding is what they are born to do they will default to that. Tibor will love to work for you, so any kind of tricks or behaviours you want to teach him he will lap up. My default boredom buster for my BCs was tug games and throw/catch games, both in the house and out. Endless balls were thrown, caught and delivered during evening TV times and on walks I always had a frisbee with me. Of course with Tibor being blind those games will be more difficult. I would try any kind of clicker training...there must be info out there on the interweb about games for blind dogs? If you can find some that burn off physical energy and mental energy those would be ideal. Sniffer training would probably be great!
I just had a quick look online and found this...check out the link embedded about Chica the Border Collie who has no eyes...and stories about blind BCs who can still herd...the farmer uses more whistles to direct the dog but he can still do it! The sky's the limit, I say.
http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=38797

 

Thank you so much for the advice - and that link is interesting reading!

He is actually remarkably calm in the house and when I'm working is happy to just lay down next to me. He still drives me round the bend on walks, but considering that today is only one week that he has been with me, I'm very impressed by how quickly he's learning. I'm a little slower to learn the "guide human" role - today as I let him walk straight into the back of motorcycle (doh!). No liver treats for me!

 

Hey, that would have been easier to clean!

 

I like your outlook on this

 

Ha ha...you'll get the hang of it, I'm sure. I thought the advice about putting scent markers around the house for dangerous corners and stairs was good, too!

 

Can you find a hard rubber ball with a bell in it? The sound might help him retrieve. My two have whistling rubber rockets, but the whistling sound only really works well if you can throw them hard enough (whichI can't!) and doesn't last long anyway if the dogs mouth the toys when playing.

I'm sure Tibor will make the other shoe match soon!

 

Like this?
https://www.pets-pantry.com/index.p...MI5M-A26iM1QIVI7HtCh0-5AGOEAQYASABEgIWpvD_BwE

I think they sell them on ebay too

 

That's a good idea, thanks!

I have a squeaky toy for him, but he is afraid of it when it squeaks. I think he thinks it's something dying, poor guy! He has the same problem (or maybe "symptom" is a better term) of many rescues, in that he does not know how to play or what to do with toys. He's just never had that experience. I will try with the bell ball, though. The more he relaxes, the more boisterous he is getting, so I need to find an outlet for that. Still, comparatively speaking, for a BC mix he seems quite calm. Thankfully!

 

And just a little general update on the Great and Mighty Tibor, who has now been with me for a week and a day.

On early morning and late night walks, he's actually doing much better. Mid-day walks are more challenging as he is distracted by all the people, cars and bikes. For those walks, I need to keep to the tried and true pathways or he's still a mass of pulling, stopping and spinning behaviours. I think he just gets sensory overload and panics a bit. In those cases, I stop him, we wait for few seconds, I try to "hit his re-set button" and then continue on. It can be slow going.

But today we went out at 7am and on a Sunday at that hour, the old town where I live is dead empty. He trotted along by my side at a good clip for the majority of the time, getting LOTS of praise for that! I think he now understands that he has a "potty" command and that when he gets it, he can sniff and wee and scratch all he likes, but otherwise when we are walking, he has a job to do: walk. When he gets in synch with that idea, he has a wonderful happy look on his face, like he's thinking, "I'm doing my job and I'm sooooo good at it!"

He still tries to mark and wee, but I'm getting better at seeing the signs of when he's tempted and telling him "Let's go!" (walk/no sniff command). Yes, he still has a go at the weeing, but I'm also seeing him more often correct himself at the command and bring his head back up and speed up his pace again. I'm really proud of him for figuring that out!

I've also noticed that he is great at understanding human language. My first dog, Duncan, was an absolute star at that, so it's nice to work with another dog with similar linguistic prowess after all these years. He picked up "potty", "dinner", "step", "walk", "let's go" all super quickly.

Also, for all his frenzied marking, this dog's nose just does not function very well, poor thing. I can put his Kong stuffed with liverwurst in his crate and he STILL will root around for a good 15 seconds before he finds it. How is that even possible? Even I can smell that thing from a mile away!

The upside to this is that we can walk right past another dog on the street and unless that dog barks, Tibor has no idea there is a dog nearby. As he's dog-reactive, this is a plus. The flip side is that yesterday he started barking his fool head off at a man who had one of those watch fob metal key chain things dangling off his jeans. Tibor heard him walk by and thought it was the sound of dog tags/leash jingling. Oops.

It's been an interesting first week...we'll see what adventures in poo, wee and running into bike tires are in store next!