Tearaway Tia

Today David, my son, and I took my Mother's ashes and buried them in my father's grave.  It has taken this long for the Vicar to be able to give us the necessary time.  Still it is done now and he was very pleasant and said a prayer and a few words of comittal for us.  We had lunch together, David and I without the Vicar!!

I took three of the dogs with us so that Mike did not have to worry about them, especially Tia.   She has turned out to be the collie from hell in some ways and a complete angel in others.   As David said it will take a while to make up for the first eight months.

With her devil's hat on today she managed to wedge herself between the dog cage and the side of the carry boy (the cover for the pick up rear of our Nissan Navara).  This would not have been too much of a problem except that I had opened the window.  Luckily her body was wedged but I was going through Wincanton when her barking seemed to get louder and I saw in the wing mirror that her head was out of the window and she was barking frantically at any pedestrian that she saw.   Luckily I managed to pull into a private car park and firmly shut the window.   She continued to bark on and off for most of the journey but luckily the noise was deadened with the window shut.  We have ventilation in the roof so the dogs still had plenty of air.   Thankfully neither of the other two dogs joined Tia in her barking - in fact they just looked really bored with her.

Her greatest crime so far has been chasing cats and alpacas.   The cats who used to live in harmony with the dogs and take over the best beds and even try to pinch their food sometimes, now rarely come into the back garden and definitely not into the house.   Still Maddy, our lurcher, was a real worry with them at first so we do not totally write off the possibility that the cats will get used to Tia and she will not chase them eventually.

I took her for a walk yesterday on her own and let her off the lead when we had passed Alario, our male alpaca who is kept in a paddock on his own.  Big mistake.   She doubled back and went into the next paddock which had its gate open.   She chased him up and down the fence line, would not come back, and I could not catch her.   Annoyingly Alaria kept running up and down even when Tia became stationery so this wound her up even more and prevented me from getting near her.    I went back to the house and got Mike to come out in the hope that we could corner her but no chance.   Eventually I think she exhausted herself and lay down for a moment and allowed me to catch her.   By this time Alario was dribbling with stress and was very very upset.

She has the strongest chase instinct that I have ever seen, although she is not really as interested in chasing toys or a ball, so  I am just hoping that it can be chanelled and she can become a herding dog or at least that I can teach her an instant down and/recall which over rides the chasing.   Teaching her agility might help in the long run but in the short run she needs some basic obedience.

Still waiting for Holly to give birth but no sign so far.  

Shearing this weekend, and the weather forecast is good so we are hoping that we don't have to get them all in over night as they cannot be shorn if their fleece is wet.