Guest Blog

Greetings, Gentledogs!

I am Tansy. My flock-mate Pippin asked me to contribute to the blog. I am a humble sheep dog, and am uncertain as to what to tell you. When our people are gone, Pippin tells of tales from the dogblog world - all your lives are so interesting and exotic to us! Opy and Charlie in Australia, watching Beverly Hills 90210! The Army of Four holding up walls in Kansas! Charlie Kelley-Church dealing with snow in New Mexico! Chester a fellow BC in Singapore! Isabella the beautiful Florida poodle who may go to Singapore!

I could speak to you of my simple life - my runs in the park with young Hamish, my tummy rubs on the bed, toast crusts at breakfast, an almond at an unexpected time, relaxing on the couch while listening to Yundi Li's Chopin CD. Or I could speak of my duties as senior bark officer of our flock - difficult work, but very rewarding as well.

At this moment, however, I must nap.

Until later, I remain yours sincerely,
Tansy Cakes.

Puppy party (Guest Blog)

Hi everydog, it's me, Kyzer. Pippin said it was o.k. if I borrowed the computer to tell you about my week-end (Pippin also said to tell our people that she'd like a special week-end sometime too, but I haven't done it yet.)

I got to go on a long car ride and meet up with all my brothers and sisters plus my mommy and daddy and all their people. We had a puppy party!!

Besides the nine of us, our half-brother, Whisk, and half-sister, Badger, (my dad was a busy fellow last summer--but it was all planned of course) and a friend of Millie and Royal's named Mel were there too. There were also some non-Border Collie dogs around. They were a lot smaller than me, but older, so I was sure to lick their faces and tell them I wouldn't do anything bad.

The people tried to get pictures of all of us, but as you can imagine with 10 puppies, it was pretty hard. We got one picture with all of us littermates and Mel--you can see it on the left there. We all look pretty similar but our people can still tell us apart.

I have the most black on my face; my brother Royal has one almost completely black leg plus a "split face"; Gus is a tri-color and has curly hair like our mommy; Maddie has a wide blaze and looks the most like our daddy; Bracken has a lot of speckles on his blaze and his ears stand up already; Emma is tiny, jowly and tri-colored; Millie has a crooked blaze and has a cool black mask. So, see, we're all a little different.

Our personalities are different, too. I think I'm the most contemplative and if I were a human kid, I'd be the one sitting in the corner reading a book while all the other kids ran around like crazies. I'd also be the one who wanted to tag around with the teen-agers rather than play Chutes and Ladders with the kids.

It was a whole lot of fun. One of the people baked a doggie cake made with chicken and carrots and we all got a piece, plus some "Frosty Paws" which is doggie ice cream. It was yummy for the tummy.

We got to play and play. I said hi to my mommy but she seems to like my brother Royal the best of all. She lives with him still, so she knows him best. I wasn't a pest or anything and she wasn't mean to me, but I could just tell that she didn't really want to play. That's o.k. I have my own pack now and they play with me all the time. That's just part of growing up to be a dog.

Daddy was even less interested in me than mommy. He's a pretty big dog with strong muscles, and now we know where I get my size (I'm by far the biggest of my brothers and sisters). He seems like a nice dog and he didn't gruff at anydog.

I know he's a good worker--that's why he got picked to be my daddy. I want to be a good worker, too, just like him and my mommy.

Well, I guess that's about it from the puppy party. I also got to go to the sheep herding lesson on Saturday, but that's really more a story for Pippin, Hamish, Tansy or Rafe to tell. They actually worked the sheep; I just slept in my crate in the car and poked around in the snow. I'm too little to do much with the sheep. I also hung out with Royal and Millie, but they know each other a LOT better than they know me, so they mostly played together and I snuffled around. Plus, as I said up there, I mostly just like to play with the boyz in my pack. I mean if you can play with big dogs, why stoop down to puppies?