Pebbles picked up her first UKC points at the NETXAEDA show on Halloween weekend, and will be back out in December, hopefully.

Things are pretty busy around here- we’re getting ready for the Aussie Nationals, where I’ll be vending, and not much is going on…. more updates soon.

About 5:30, I heard Kaylee’s “ZOMGWHEE” bark from the backyard. We’re in the middle of a cool front, and it’s really lovely and brisk outside and she’s been reluctant to come in all day, so I’ve let her hang out on the porch. I went outside to check on her, and she’d cornered a squirrel in the three pieces of firewood leaning up against the wall of the house on the patio, waiting to be brought in once it cools off enough for fires. I’m not quite sure how it ended up on the ground- it may have fallen out of the tree, Kaylee may have pulled it down, or it may have just been stupid and on the ground in the yard for no good reason and gotten cornered.

I dragged the colliemonster inside (she was NOT leaving her squirrel.) and by the time I got back, it’d scampered back up the tree. What a day….

We didn’t work for long- we just did a little bit of heeling, focusing on a slightly forged position and a lot of enthusiasm, and then some work on sit stays while I worked with Lizzie- it was really nice to see her having FUN working for a change. She’s not a dog who lives to work like Wings was- she works for her food and because I make it fun. (It’s one of the things I find interesting about her and Pebbles- Pebbles comes up and tries to intiate training sessions- Kaylee waits for me to initiate them, and she’s happy enough to participate for a reasonable amount of reinforcement, but Pebbles finds just the attention alone reinforcing enough to want to do more- more on this in another musing post, which will probably end up on the training blog instead of this one.)

Not a big post. Just a ‘this is what we did today.’

Carting as a sport is mostly associated with the larger European breeds that included carting as part of their historical duties- Bernese Mountain Dogs, Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs, Saint Bernards, and Bouviers. Newfoundlands, Lagatto Romanos, and Rotties also historically did some cart pulling as part of their historical work. But any dog can do it (although small dogs are pretty limited in what they can pull), and there’s a lot of historical dog artwork and photos showing dogs of all breed pulling small carts and wagons. A lot of these feature collies- not terribly surprising, given the popularity of collies as a family pet in the late 19th and early 20th century, when a lot of these illustrations and photos were made! (It’s a little bit like how the ‘generic family pet’ in today’s advertisements is pretty likely to be a lab or a golden.)

Figures for what a dog can pull safely in a cart vary. Unlike weight pull, where the dog is only hauling a load a very short distance (30′, if I recall correctly.) and can safely pull 25 times their weight or greater (Toby the Strong, a Chinese Crested, routinely pulls 133x his body weight of 14 pounds!), carting dogs are pulling the weight over greater distances, stopping and starting, turning, and for a greater period of time. The figures I have read assume between 40% of their own body weight (which seems very low to me) and 2-3x their body weight, depending on conditioning and conformation. Kaylee is 50-odd pounds in lean condition. I’d really like to put more muscle tone on her, and as part of my recovery from surgery and plan for getting more fit myself, I’m hoping to improve her conditioning as well as my own. So a lightweight cart with a bag of dog food, or garden supplies- or groceries- isn’t at all out of the question. And I’d really like to advertise Dogstar Academy’s versatile dog philosophy (and add carting classes in the future once I’m more experienced myself) by walking in one of the christmas parades with a dog-drawn cart/float.

In my previous experience, we didn’t use a cart with traces- I used an x-back harness and a gangline, more like a dog sled or bikejoring is set up. I’m not sure if I want to change this- there are some real advantages to a cart with traces, but from a training stand point, the gangline is an awful lot easier to teach and condition. I’ve had Kaylee assist with pulling my dolly at dog shows in a makeshift setup this way, and it worked pretty well other than some steering issues.

Time to experiment and go train!

Some breeders have focused on eyes as such a paramount goal that they neglect other traits. Type can’t replace health or temperament. But for me, at least some of the appeal of collies is their beauty. I don’t care for collies who resemble tall shelties (not that shelties aren’t cute, but to me, collies are beautiful, not just cute- and collies have an elegance and a regal air that I don’t see in shelties.) or sighthoundy, over-fine smooths. And some of the prominent breeders who advertise most heavily for normal eyes have linebred heavily on a few famous dogs with well-documented temperament problems- primarily fearfulness. To me, this is a much bigger sin than a dog with a mild vision impairment. A fearful collie with no drive is not a collie I want to bring into this world. A dog isn’t their eyes, any more than they are their hips, their titles, their performance record, or their ability to work. The vast majority of collies will have one job- that of being a best friend. Poor temperament disqualifies them from that MUCH before any health problem does. But nothing is more heartbreaking than a dog who dies young – and this is one of the reasons that people continue to put CEA lower in their priorities- it is almost never progressive or fatal. (Dogs with the most severe grade of CEA, detached retinas, are at some risk of internal hemorrhage if they recieve a blow to the head, and it’s apparently greater than that of dogs with normal eyes. Other than this grade of CEA though, CEA isn’t fatal or linked to a shorter life.)  One of the most difficult aspects of breeding is balancing all these traits and keeping them in balance for generation after generation.

My goal is to breed for the best eyes I can manage in dogs that fit my vision of correct temperament and breed type. This means breeding affected dogs only to non-affected dogs (ideally non-carriers, but those are so few and far between that this is a difficult task), regardless of the difficulty.  Only when I’ve achieved a normal-eyed, non-carrier bitch (which is unlikely to happen for at least 4-6 more years) can I be less selective about CEA status in stud dogs. This means selecting for normal-eyed puppies from the resultant litters before any other criteria, but with the knowledge that a normal-eyed bitch, even a carrier, can be used with a wider variety of stud dogs and that improvement is a process, not just a goal.

This will be a rough/smooth breeding, and although I’m still debating stud dogs, the primary purpose of this litter will be working ability, drive and normal eyes. Pebbles is mild CRC and although in all likelihood, we’ll be breeding to a CEA carrier, we hope to have at least a few normal-eyed puppies to choose from to stay here at Cloudix.

Kaylee is doing well and while I hope to hit a few CPE trials with her this fall and actually get her out in the rally ring, it’s probably not going to happen unless I can find an alternate handler, since I’m having surgery later this month for a back problem.