Emma at 5 weeks

Will at 5 weeks

Our household has changed forever. Two weeks ago (December 22, 2008) my husband and I adopted two eight week old border collie puppies. In the two short weeks that we have shared our home with these two adorable and fluffy babies, we have both gone through our ups and downs. We’ve questionned our sanity and asked ourselves ‘what were we thinking’? Border collies (again)? TWO of them? Didn’t we learn our lesson with the first one we raised? We lost our dear, sweet Tobie after 14 and a half years of love, fun and companionship. I think we forgot about the first few demanding months, even years, of constant attention and training.

Again, I ask, what were we thinking? We are but two humans, and we should be at least four to handle just one pup, I am starting to think. Today is a particularly bad day for me. I have just spent my second day alone at home with the pups, and even though I was out for most of the morning doing my volunteer work, I think it’s hit home that this will be my life for the next few weeks or months. Puppies, puppies and more puppies. I am feeling the frustration of not being sure how to continue the training with these dear little beings.I need some training now. The Puppy Kindergarten classes can’t start soon enough. We have registered for classes that start next week, but I feel like I should be in them right now to ease my mind and give me a little instruction on how to proceed. We have mastered (more or less) sit, down and stand. Now we need some manners on the leash, and to know how to stop the incessant chewing on every little twig or stick or leaf that pops up through the snow.

Puppies and Personality

Let me introduce our new little loved ones, Will and Emma. Will is our bold and brash little boy border collie. He weighed 12 and a half pounds when we first brought him home, and has already grown to a hefty 15 pounds. He has the cutest, most endearing expression on his face, especially when he first wakes up. He is slow to wake fully, and loves to cuddle and roll around on the floor while he awakens. He is more of a chaser, and wants to bark at or chase anything that moves around him. This makes it quite difficult to wipe up his messes in his pen, but we are working on it. We are really concerned about getting this under control, since we don’t want to allow any obsessive compulsive behavior that we had with our Tobie.

Emma is our sweet and wiry little baby girl puppy. She is noticably smaller than her brother and weighed just 10 pounds when we first got her, and is now a feather-weight 12 pounds. She has more black on her face, and we nick-named her Emma LaPew when my sister claimed she looked like a skunk! She is trying not to live up to her name-sake, but what we found when we woke up this morning might confirm that the name fits her well! Emma loves to run and hide in small places. She has what we think is more of a herding instinct than her brother Will has. Rather than wanting to chase everything she sees, she runs around it, keeping her eye on the moving object, usually one of us. She is much more sensitive to sounds and loud noises than Will. This morning when we were outside waiting for the designated ‘duty’, the neighbor pulled out of her driveway, and honked her horn to say good-by, and startled poor little Emma almost our of her skin! I am not looking forward to the spring that will bring it’s booming thunder and lightening. We will have to deal with that when it comes.

Like Will, she is marked with the traditional black and white colors of the border collie, with a white ring around her neckline, while Will has more of a big white patch on the back of his neck. Their mother had a lot of tan on her face, but there is no indication of this on either of them, at least not yet. We were told by the breeder that both parents must have tan genes to pass on to the pups, and the father was just black and white, so unless he carries the gene, we will not see any tan on our pups.