Almost 8 months

Ceana is Almost 8 months now, it is amazing how quick she grew. She has weighed 31lbs for the past 2 months. We will see if she grows anymore. She is now the size of Biscut, the only other Border Collie in the neighboorhood whom we frequently meet on walks. Walking on the leash has gotten better, but not perfect. We must play ball all the time. "Stay" clicked perfectly today. She kind of got it before but today she would go back and sit, ready to show me she could do it again as soon as she recieved a treat... that's my girl (What is funny is she would go and sit in the same spot so I knew she wanted to do it again) Ceana loves to Dance with me and be silly whenever we put on music. Cottage cheese(low fat) has also become the treat of choice when she does an excellent job. Unfortunetly "here" has stopped being effective. She gets into her work mode and we are having trouble breaking her out of it. We are going to have to start from scratch. We are trying to add "All Done" to her vocab, but it is proving difficult. Here are some lovely pics of Ceana and the Blizzard... the neighboors called her snow dog of the north hehehe. That sign is 8 feet high, and yes that is Chris and Ceana with the Car.

6&1/2

Ceana had her first snow around this time. She finally jumps and catches frisbees in stead of just timing and catching. She has also learned to catch a lob ball instead of the line drives she learned in October. She also brings the balls and Frisbees to us Yeah! The best thing I have noticed around this time is all of the words she has picked up. My favorite that she learned is squirrel. We can send her into a barking frenzy just at its mention if we look out a window. At this age she really enjoyed peaking at us from the top of the stairs. She would whine until we noticed her and then give us that goofy tongue out smile.

Ceana changing over time

5-6 months

She looks so funny in this goofy stage! At about 5 and 6 months Ceana has entered her terrible two's! All of a sudden Miss Ceana is growling and challenging authority. Naughty little girl actually bit me the first time Chris went out of town... it never happened again though. She is very sneaky when she tries to test you. She will snuggle up close to you and then lift her lip and growl. When she does this we lay her down and put a hand on her snout and say no.. once she submits we ignore her for ten minutes and everything is fine. She does this about once a day though. At this age Ceana had all the basic tricks mastered except role over ( she doesn't like to be rolled over unless she does it on her own that brat) She has also created her own version of a kennel. Instead of sleeping on the bed, she crawls under the bed and sleeps or goes away for some alone time. Sometimes she wants someone in the room with her so she will stick her nose out under the bed skirt and whine until you come in and then she army crawls out of sight and sleeps.

Ceana's first hike was quite the success. I believe she was about 4&1/2 months when we went on it. She loved to help Chris rock climb and follow an older dog that was leaping from boulder to boulder. Ceana did not leap, she did bark and watch. I made a huge mistake that day by letting her pull the leash as we walked the steep incline. After to Ceana would think pulling was her job on walks. At this age she became very good at digging holes and she removed a pesky rose bush in our back yard. She also was picking up the frisbee after it had fallen on the ground and running around with it. She does not quite bring it back yet... but almost there. Hooray Ceana had also learned to whine at the door when she has to go! Number two seemed easier for her to predict as peeing accidents still happened every once and a while. Ceana also learned the ever important shake and high five. This quickly turned into you cheer and her paw is in the air to meet your hand so you better be ready. Golf balls seem to be the toy of choice for this age, although anything Eeyore is always a good time for her.

In this picture Little Miss Ceana is about three months old. Potty became a little easier to deal with as time spread out between bathroom breaks drastically. At her first sleep over however she had a sneaky accident. Ceana had to go in the middle of the night so she flipped over her dog bed, peed on it , and then flipped it back over so no one would know. Clever thought, but she did not get away with it... but how could anyone stay mad at that face. At thi sage Ceana mastered sit in a matter of 10 minutes. Lay down was on its way, although it looked a little bit like pounce. Her favorite treat at this age is Old mother hubbard puppy bones. Ceana also strated to "play" frisbee at 3 months. Chris and I taught her that when we throw the frisbee she runs over to it and touches it. So far so good, she thinks it is fun.

Update

We have been really busy and unable to update our site...... but to day I will do my best to do so. I just need to post the pictures and the thoughts that go with them :)

Best Toy to Date

I have been racking my brain trying to find a good toy to keep Ceana thinking. Low and behold the toy that would drive her mind crazy is a cat toy. Ceana barked and whined at the ball. She carried the toy to different parts of the room first lodging it in corners against walls, and then placing it on different surfaces. Yet to her hilarious dismay, she could not get the ball. Ceana even went and brought another one of her golf balls upstairs to place it next to the toy with the trapped ball to use as possibly some sort of puppy frame of reference. After 35 minutes of barking and fraustration I finally took the ball out of the toy.

My two favorite pictures

Ceana Chris and I went for a walk this morning that she enjoyed very much. I need to keep her away from cars though, yesterday at 8 weeks old she thought they were scary and today since she turned a big nine weeks she wants to chase them. This first picture is of her and Chris after the walk.

The first picture is after her discovery of the hose as I watered my rose bush... I am not sure if it is alive but I will keep trying. I think I am going to have to frame this one.

First vet visit

Our vet for our cats is the same for Ceana. Our vet also has a border collie and so we have really lucked out since we will have someone who truly understands the breed. At her first appointment Ceana wieghed 6lbs and 10 oz. She recieved a parvo and distemper innoculation and did not cry at all! Being the runt and from her current size the vet thinks she is not going to be very big at all. Ceana may be an exceptionally tiny border collie, whom the vets office decided was the cutest patient of the day.
Ceana's vet will be giving her two more parvo shots in addition to her 6 weeks shot to insure her health. Her vet is the wounderful Animal House Vetrinary Clinic in Louisville, Colorado. I have been going to them with Paulie for four years now and they were wounderful when we lost his brother Silvio. I highly reccomend them to anyone in the front range area of Colorado.

Desructo-Pup

Ceana must be kept busy or she transform into her alter ego destructo-pup, which I believe needs no explanation. When she is bored she decides to throw a party and uses toilet paper as her main form of decoration. We have however come up with ways to keep her busy in week one.

Ceana learned to walk on a leash
She loves the neighbors kids
meeting new people
She has learned her name officially!
She takes no seriously
She sleeps all through the night! - the best of all-

Cats and puppies... yikes

Chris and I have two cats. Paulie is four. When I got Paulie I also had his brother Silvio. Unfortunetly for all of us Silvio was not healthy and died under tragic circumstances we think relating two his stomach just before his second birthday. Paulie would cry and cry because he was lonely so after meeting many cats I brought home a little spotted orange fluff ball with purple eyes and named him Tony. Paulie observed Tony for two days before playing with him and taking him under his wing. Since then the two have had their dominance struggle and Paulie has had to put on weight to compete with the heftier lap lepoard-tabby mix that is now two year old tony. Now we have brought Ceana into the mix.
Ceana wants nothing more than to play with the cats and has tried everything in her power to do so. She has bowed and barked and sniffed, she has even layed down in submission The cats will not play. Tony will not hurt Ceana, he hisses to tellher no and generally trys to stay clear of her. He likes to watch her play from the stairs and is confused why anyone would play with a rope.
Paulie on the other hand ran into some problems with the new puppy. He was ok with her when I was home, but as soon as I went back to work and Chris was alone with the menagrie he tried to hurt Ceana. I was pretty pissed and so was Chris which lead to Paulie running away. He came back 30 hours later, hungry , dirty and with a better disposition. Hopefully things will work out better from here.

Sleeping Arangements

Ok we are horrible people, the dog has been sleeping on the bed at night with us. The dog bed we bought has almost been rendered useless, even the cats are not using it. We have started a generally frowned upon habit, but I like having her in the bed. I will not even mind her there when she is grown. I have always enjoyed the cats there and I really enjoy the dog. Hopefully we will not regret this later on.

Potty training:

Wow, this is going to be harder than we thought. On her first Day I let Ceana out every three hours and we had no accidents. I thought we were as good as gold.... nope I was just lucky enough to get her timing down. Since then we have resorted to a delicate routine. Ceana is let out back every three hours where we say "go potty" everytime. Either Chris or I sit outside with her and she is not allowed in until she goes. As she goes we try and give her as many good praises as possible. When she goes in the house we are also telling her no and then promptly taking her outside. All of the literature that we have read has told us that she can't actually "hold" anything yet, so we are trying to balance not having too high of expectations with letting her know that going in the house in unexceptable and not letting it become habit forming.

First week

Ceana's first week:
Before bringing home Ceana we picked up some toys for her to play with. We bought a roap, a squeeky fox and some bones. Within fifteen minutes of being in her new house she had the rope in her mouth and was playing tug of war. She also slept with her fox for her first few naps. We learned quickly that the fow was to big for her to squeek so we bought a smaller bird toy as well as picked up a frisbee to firmiliarize her with it.
We quickly learned that when playing with our border collie we needed to distinguish to her what were her toys and what weren't. Though she wants to play with the remote she quickly learned that she was not supose to. We placed teh remote on the couch out of sight and out of mind...we thought. Ceana made a came out of picking up the remote and then "putting it away" on the couch. She also made it clear that playing would not only be with toys. She wanted one on one action with just Chris and I. She began chasing her frisbee in the house as well as the ball. She caught onto fetch her first day.
For the first three days Ceana would cry a little when she saw her reflection, most likely missing her brothers and sisters that she so loved playing with. Because of this we decided that Chris and I needed to increase the one on one play that we did with our puppy. For those first days I stayed home with Ceana as well, never leaving her by herself. This was quite a daughnting task since she nedds constant attention! I was lucky to get a shower in. Ceana would cry if I was not within her view so I brought her into the bathroom when she was tired and i could get ready. The next two days Chris stayed home with her non stop. During these first five days we took her various places in the car so she could learn that no matter where she went she would always come back to our house. We did this to try and aleiviate any fears she had about what was permanent. The hardest thing about the car is that she wants to sit on our shoulders, We are trying to teach her that she cannot do that since a thirty pound hairy parrot is not what we signed up for.

Welcome home Ceana!

Bringing home Baby:
I have been searching the internet high and low to get detailed information on what to expect with our new border collie puppy Ceana (kee-nah) Un fortunetly I have not been able to find all of the info I need. So, for future reference of anyone who is interested, as well as for mine and Christopher's own personal intrest, I am starting this bolg of our trials and tribulations with our new pup Ceana. Hopefully this will shed some light onto her training habits and on border collie pups in general. Here is a little back ground upon how we stumbled on our new little one:

Christopher has wanted a Border Collie puppy for a long time. We have been reaserching the breed and searching on the internet for a pup for about three months now. About a month ago I came across an advertisement in the paper. The pups in the advertisement were not pure bred, but the woman I talked to recomened me to her firend who did have pure bread borders. That is where we met Holly.

Holly has a farm out in bennet with her female companion tri - black border as well as a few other dogs. This was Ceana's mom, McKenzie. Ceana's father belongs to the original woman I spoke with and he is a red and white border. He is a strong worker and actually lost an eye to an accident while working with horses. Both dogs were on the smaller side and wheighed around 25-35 lbs. Ceana was the runt of her mother's first litter. We aranged a meeting with the pups and parents when the pups were 5 weeks. Both parents were incredably sweet and Ceana's mother yearned to be a lap dog. She was incredibly sweet while we were around her pups and they played with us and their mom and dad. Ceana stayed backand watched the situation for a while before she approached Christopher and I. After a fifteen minutes or so however she hopped in my lap and began playing. At five weeks the puppies all came when they were called and had very nice temperments. Ceana in particular was Holly's daughter's favorite and recieved special attention from the little girl, making her ideal for getting along with other children. At 3 days prior to 8 weeks we picked up Ceana and took her home with us to begin her new life.