Holly is mentioned in our current dogs page, she a bit different from our other dogs as we didn’t have her as a puppy therefore we haven’t done the basic training and socialising that we would normally do with our pupppies at a young age.
A huge number of dogs are rehomed or rescued every year and they can be challenging so we thought it would be a good idea to put Holly’s ongoing story on the website so that you can follow her progress.
As far as we have been able to find out Holly had been through about four different homes, all people who had tried to train her for sheepdog work but hadn’t been successful. Considering her ISDS registration shows she was born 23/01/08 that is a lot of homes. She hadn’t been taught to sit or recall but had been trained to circle a group of penned sheep but could not be let off of a long line as she would just chase them. Her most recent owner was a farmer had bought her to work a flock of 300 sheep but soon realised that wasn’t going to happen. She was living in an out building and had to be kept on a chain to stop her running off. He had only had her 10 days but as she was not any good to him he was looking for someone to take her off his hands. We were not planning to take on a dog like her but she looked so unhappy we could not leave her there.
Holly just after we got her home
Week 1
Holly seemed very reluctant to sit and we thought she may have a back problem but as she started to trust us we discovered she was really badly matted around her back legs so we set about cutting the mats out. That was no easy job as they were full of mud and muck and really close to the skin. She then had 2 baths and looked better but was painfully thin. She took to Claire straight away but was very wary of Mike and Strangers
Week2
We washed her again and finally got the last of the dirt out of her coat. We gave her time to settle in and learn to trust us. She soon learnt that if she came to Claire she always got a treat and a cuddle. She was still wary of Mike and strangers but was starting to get on well with Glenda and Sara. She was also starting to get on with our other dogs but not with visiting dogs and we have a lot of those. She had been sleeping in a stable but she is now sharing a kennel with Emmie or Ty and is sometimes coming in the house and sleeping in cage.
Week 3
We started training the sit and down, she’s very food orientated so this wasn’t too hard but not as easy as an 8 week old pup. She also started coming to Mike for attention. He had been ignoring her up to now but was quick to give her a treat and some attention. The reason she was kept on a chain has also become apparent, she can easily Jump a 4 foot gate and wriggle through small gaps. We haven't tried her on the sheep yet and don't intend to, but she hasn't chased them when she has escaped or is out walking. She has tried rounding up the Horses and we are discouraging that. Basic training is going reasonably well but she can be quite dominant and we can see she wouldn't be easy to force to do anything but she responds well to rewards particularly food. That would not be very helpful working sheep of course but is useful for basic training and starting agility.
Week 4
Holly has been acting a bit strange and training has gone backwards. She is in season, so she has to be kept away from Ty and Jet and she is either in a Kennel with Emmie or the Cage in the House. That is the reason we started training her to go in a cage and has proved very useful. We cage train all or our dogs it is so handy if they have to be isolated or when going to competitions. We can take her for walks with the other dogs without any problems but cannot let her run loose. Training has taken a backseat for a while. We still do little bits with her but she soon looses concentration and we do not push it. Her condition has improved, and has a bit of shine to her coat. She looks a bit odd where we have trimmed her coat.
We took her to the vet for a jab and checkup, she was fine with all the staff but a large Labrador tried to harass her and her response was a bit a sharper than we expected, we soon got her to lie down and be quiet but we will have to keep working on the dog socialisation. Her weight was under 12 Kilos and the vet thinks she should be around 15 to 16 and we think she has put on weight since we had her, so she must have been very undernourished.
Week 5
Holly's temperament has settled a bit now although her season hasn’t finished. It will be interesting to see what she is like in a month or so as her season started about 3 weeks after we got her so she barely had time to settle in to her new home before her hormones started to change. She follows Claire everywhere and will jump anything to get to her. She loves cuddles and sits with her head on Claire’s lap when she is working on the computer. Her agility training has started and she learnt how to do the equipment very quickly.
She has a very strong herding instinct and if you run with her she will circle the jumps and equipment. We think this has a lot to do with the fact that herding was the first thing she was trained and shows how important it is to teach basic training before anything else.
Socialising her is the hardest thing to do, we’ve lost a couple of weeks because of the season. When she is off the lead she can sort out any differences with other dogs herself and is now fine with all our dogs. She has also met Helens dogs’ Taz and Daisy this way.
The problem is that she hasn’t been taught how to behave properly on the lead. Claire took her in to a lesson with a couple of puppies this week and found that the best way to teach her how to behave was to make her lie down when she barked at the puppies and when she behaved well to play with her and give her treats. Claire had to be firm with her when she behaved badly but more importantly make it clear to her when she was good. By the end of the session she could sit near the pups and not join in when they started barking.
We sent of her International Sheep Dog Society registration for change of owner and got it back very quickly we have now sent off the paper work to register her as a Border Collie with the Kennel Club. We have never done this before so it will be interesting to see how long it takes and if there are any problems.
Holly just after a trim and a bath
Week 6
Holly’s Kennel Club registration has arrived a lot quicker than we expected and her registered name is Diamond Eve. Eve is her ISDS registered name and the rules are that the ISDS name must be included in the KC registered name . We are now starting her agility training in earnest and we are very pleased with the results . She is naturally athletic and a quick learner. Teaching her the weaves was exceptionally impressive. We have a good system for teaching them but even so she is learning something that is not a natural behaviour very quickly. She has a lot of herding habits though and will circle equipment and other dogs.
We brought the sheep in this week for routine maintenance and to see how she would behave we let her follow on the lead while Ty did the work. She was interested but not excessively excited. It was different when they were penned in the barn. The ewes were facing up to her and she looked like she wanted to get in a grip them (bite and hold) a serious vice. We will keep her away from the sheep now until we are happier with her general training.
Our biggest challenge is her behaviour with other dogs, she has a habit of snapping at their heels when off the lead which upsets them and we are worried that she could hurt to them. When she is on the lead she will pull to get to dogs and sometimes display aggressive behaviour towards them. The best way to deal with this would be to use a stooge dog to teach her good manners, but all of the dogs we have tried so far are too polite so we need to find another way this tackle this problem.
She doesn’t do it so much with our dogs and is learning to behave well with Helens dogs Daisy and Taz. So we are thinking of gradually introducing her to suitable dogs in a controlled way.
Taz and Holly learning to behave.Taz is a Kelpie with a similar background to Holly and she had a lot of the same problems but is now much better behaved. It has taken Helen a year of patient work so it looks like it will be a long job with Holly.
We started Holly weaving with channel weaves with nets on the sides to build her confidence.
We then moved to weaving with 4 poles with nets on which she understood straight away and was soon going in at angles and from a distance to earn a reward and now does it just for fun. Look how far away Claire is.
We then moved on to V weaves and she understood straight away, We find V weaves encourage a one paw push (or swimming) which we think is more efficient. Claire is closer than usual here to help with the picture.
We started Holly on a low A frame but soon built up the height.
We are teaching a 2 on 2 off stop we think she would be a flyer if we tried a running contact.
Here is a link to some film of Holly 's early training http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGemr9RlbOg
Week 7
Its been a terrible week for Holly she has been very ill. She had a very high temperature and was anemic. We were very worried that it was pyrometra following her season. The tests, scans and xrays did not confirm it but did not completely rule it out either. The vet says it is very unusual for bitchs this young to get pyrometra and she may have had an undrlying illness for some time. She is on anti-biotics and is slightly better on Saturday night.
Monday Bank Holiday
Holly seems a bit better and is now eating but she gets tired very easily and has lost a lot of weight.
Wednesday 27th May
Holly is a bit better, she is eating and shows interest in playing with the other dogs. We are still keeping her quiet until after she goes to the vets tomorrow for a checkup.
Thursday
Tests were done again and showed Holly does have Pyrometra, she has now been spayed. The vet thinks she has had an infection for some time probably from before we had her an it explains a lot of the problems with her health and behaviour. When we think back to how filthy she was when be brought her home you can see how she could have picked it up lying in the dirt in a famr yard.
Friday
Holly is very ill again she is dehydrated, not eating and her temperature is too low. She has had some intravenus painkiller, vitamins and antibiotics. If she is not eating and drinking by tomorrow morning she is going back into the vet and will be on a drip. Not a good option as she bit through it after the operation.
Saturday
Holly is a bit better she is eating and drinking frequent small amounts and didn't have to go into the vets.
Sunday
Holly is a lot better she is eating and drinking and is quite lively, we have to keep her quiet but it is looking a lot more positive.
Monday
Holly is improving she was back to the vets today and has had the dressing removed. She is now on iron tablets as well as the vitamins and antibiotics. She now weighs under 10 Kilos about 2/3 what she should be but is eating well and drinking loads.
She looks very streamlined with her weight loss and where so much fur has been trimmed off.
Wednesday
Holly is a lot better she is eating and drinking really well. The dressing has come off Sue Yeo our vet is a brilliant surgeon the wound is so clean and neat and is healing fast.
Monday
Holly has been driving us mad, she thinks she is fully recovered and is eager to get back to playing and long walks, but she has been for a checkup today and the vet says she has to stay quiet for another week. That is going to be interesting.
Tonight Holly stole an apple out of the fruit bowl on the dining table and was playing with it, we will have to find a way of doing something with her without straining her tummy muscles.
Friday
Holly is loads better now thank heavens we can start some proper exercise and training with her next week she a coiled spring ready to go.
Sunday
Holly is bouncing she is having short spells of exercise as she gets tired quickly but we are looking forward to starting training with her.
Sunday 21st June
Holly seems completely recoverd now and playing with the other dogs. She had been in a cage in the house all the time she has been ill, so we could keep an eye on her and know what she is doing, and how she was. She is now back out in a kennel with Ty. She settled back in very well with no problems. Her initial training has picked up like nothing has happened. It will be difficult not to push on too quickly.
28th June
We have been doing more training with Holly and we will have to get some pictures and film. She shows signs of brilliance she has just as much drive and speed as Ty, but is more compact and can turn better, she also has a terriffic jump, she does tend to circle and will go around jumps sometimes. We still have to reinforce stopping on contacts and will have to to for a long time.
On a couple of nights Claire tried bringing her into a class for the first time, we are very pleased but she does have a very strong desire to chase the working dogs. We are working on that by getting her focused on a toy or Claire when the other dogs are running.
We did some sequences and short combinations with the other dogs there and she was fine so that is looking quite hopeful.
5th July
We are making steady progress with Holly. She has settled in and now gets on well with all the family. She is still underweight and it is difficult to build her up but she seems well enough. Her basic training is still a challenge she is recalling well which is the most important thing, and she will sit and wait but she doesn't understand walking on a lead.
She is getting a lot better with other people and dogs and we have gradually introduced her into classes with other dogs.
12th July
Holly has not been off the farm much since we have had her except for trips to the vet. So on Tuesday we took her her to sheepdog training with Ty. We were anticipating problems but in the event she was much better than we expected. She was not particularly bothered about meeting a new group of dogs, and although she was pulling to get to the sheep when the other dogs were working them especially Ty we managed to get her to settle down. From her reaction she has been trained to the whistle. Her basic training is coming on at the same steady pace but her agility is improving constantly. This weekend we used her in our agility instructors course as a example of a dog new to training and she was brilliant, she was not at all bothered by having an audience and demonstrated all the points we wanted to make perfectly.
27th July
Holly is building up her stamina and has worked in a few agility classes as well as on her own we must get some video of her to show how well she is doing.
August 10th
Holly's training is very slow. On the agility side and when she is on her own it is coming on well but the socialisation side is not going so well. She can be quite aggressive with new dogs and some people. We had hoped to get her out and about a bit more but think we have to be a lot more confident about her basic control at home first. Still she is better with dogs and people she knows and we are gradually introducing her to suitable new dogs and people. Wether she will be able to cope with the atmosphere at an agility show is another matter. It took Helen a year with Taz and it looks like it will be at least that long with Holly if at all.
August 17th
Claire decided we had to try taking Holly of the farm. So she took her into Clevedon, she travelled well which is a relief, and she was reasonably behaved walking on a lead not pulling to much. She was a bit worried when passing a couple of men. Claire was confident enough to take her past the childrens play area and we are really pleased that she did not go into chase mode with the children running around.
Unfortunatley dogs are still a problem, as soon as she sees one she pulls and wants to herd and chase them, we know she will nip them from behind and that could turn into a fight. So a lot more work is need there. It is interesting to speculate how this happened we suspect she had been kept in a run with other dogs and practised her sheepdog training on them. This could be why her sheepdog training failed she learnt to many bad habits. Also she must have been kept with collies because she has such a strong reaction with every new breed of dog she comes across.
August 31st
We were doing a demo at the South Gloucester County Show and decided to take Holly to socialise. We are very pleased with the work we were able to do with her. We had to keep her on a long line for safety as it was clear she was going to fly after anything moving. But after a while were doing some really good recalls with her even with distractions all around. She got tired quite quickly so it is clear it will be a long time before she is fully recovered from her illness.
20th September
We did a demonstration just up the road from us today so we took Holly along. It was at a festival on the sea front. We did some recall from chase work with her well the other dogs were working which went well and we walked her all round the show with Emmy and she was really good in the crowds. We couldn’t risk taking her off the lead because there were a lot of children and other dogs around that were not with us. We are really pleased with her progress but we will probably never be able to trust her 100%. She normally keeps her focus while she is working but as soon as she has finished she looks for another dog to chase so Claire has decided to teach her too jump in to her arms at the end of a run so that she has got control of her straight away.
28th September
Getting weight back on her after being ill has been really hard work. We kept giving her chicken for a few weeks after she was ill as she was so under weight however we wanted to wean her off of it so that she wouldn’t become a fussy eater. This went ok and she will now eat at least one meal a day, we hoped this would increase but she seemed to be eating less and less and not putting on much weight. We tried adding meat to her food and this would work for a couple of days and then she would stop eating it. We were getting worried so weighed her and she was 13Kilos, this is still not very much at all.
We were then recommended natural yogurt and when we thought about it it made sense, when she was ill she had the strongest antibiotics and painkillers possible and this couldn’t have done her digestive system much good. So for about 3 weeks now we have been giving her natural yogurt with some meat and her csj, reduced the meal sizes so that she regularly eats 2 meals a day and its working, her coat looks much better and she’s putting on weight.
Training
We wanted to do a 2 on 2 off contact this worked well if there has someone there with a treat. However when we were sure that she understood what was being asked of her we started to remove the person at the end so that she would stop on her own and then would quickly get a reward this was going ok but we started to get the feeling that no reward was better than running for her so stopping wasn’t something she enjoyed doing no matter how much fun we tried to make it. (ty and emmy love to stop and they love their toys and treats so much).
We decided to see if her stride was short enough to do a running contact so put the dog walk down low with the hoops on the end to encourage her to look down and run. Claire ran her over it a few times giving her a good reward at the end letting her know it was ok to run. She got the contact every time within her stride. The next day we took the stopwatch out to see how fast it was 1.7 sec and getting the contact every time. (that is about as fast as they can do it) one of the problems with this is turning sharply off of the contact so we tried this, again a 1.7 sec dog walk and a tight turn after. As we aren’t going to be competing her for a while we have lots of time to train this and get it consistent. We will keep you updated as to how it goes.
Weaving was going really well before holly was ill but as we have got her back into training they have been quite slow. We think that just before she showed signs of being ill weaving may have been uncomfortable for her but being a high drive collie she didn’t show it, this may be why she isn’t as confident. We decided it was best to leave the weaves for a while until she is a 100% fit, we have now just started training her again on wide channel weaves and will build them up really slowly over the winter.
There is some film of Holly training at the end of September on the this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBCaGF1C8k4
5th October
Holly has improved quite a lot. We can now train her in the menege of the lead with one of our dogs training at the same time. She looks at the other dog and shows intent to chase but if she make any move towards the other dog Claire moves away in the opposite direction. Mike stop's working the other dog and just stands still then Holly realises it is better to stay and have fun doing her own exercises and getting her treats. The next stage will be try it with other dogs she know's and then strange dogs. After a lot of patient encouragement she is starting to play with toys and is even retrieving.
Holly 13th October
Holly’s training has come on really well in the last couple of weeks. We’ve been working her at the same time as Jet. This works well as she doesn’t find Jet very exciting so isn’t too keen to chase him, this gives Claire the opportunity to move her training forward and get her to concentrate on her work at the same time as another dog is working. The next step in this process was to have different dogs working at the same time as her. Helens dogs are ideal for this as Holly’s knows them so is not aggressive towards them but isn’t complacent with them either. We started by working Holly at the opposite end of the arena to Taz, she was a bit distracted but didn’t run off, this was a surprise. If she had chased Helen would have told Taz to lie down so that the chase wasn’t successful and Claire would have run away and called Holly giving her a big reward when she came back. When Helen worked Daisy Holly was getting tired so Claire let her rest to see what she would do. For a couple of minutes Holly just lay there and watched. When she did get up Claire walked away, before Holly decided to chase Daisy she looked back to check where Claire was, saw her walking away and followed completely forgetting about Daisy.
We are amazed at this sudden breakthrough and competing next year now seems like a realistic goal. It’s great to see that our methods are working so quickly with consistent training.
Training
The running contacts are going really well. We have now been training them for about 4 weeks and are now adding a jump before and after the contacts and she is still consistently getting them.
Although Holly has put on weight and is now looking really good she’s not as strong as we would like so she isn’t doing full height jumps and we are working her on weaves quite far apart. Hopefully she will get stronger over time from going for walks and doing her agility training at lower heights. We don’t want to push her and risk an injury after all she’s been through already.
27th October
More good progress has been made with Holly. Caroline from all about sheepdogs visite us was very impressed with Holly particularly her agility. We also took a couple of the ponies for a hack on Rowborrow Common and took Holly and Jet. It is a half hour drive with a horse trailer on the back of the land rover. Jet is a good calming influence on her and she was really well behaved. Claire and Bekki rode to begin with and Helen and Sara also had a go. I tagged along walking with the dogs Jet was fine off the lead all the time but Holly pulled really hard so I tied her to my waist and we cani x'd for 20 minutes. She then stopped pulling and gradually started just walking along side me. After another 20 minutes I let her off the lead and she was fine just trotting along with Jet and the ponies I just put back on the lead to get her back to the land rover she had a drink, jumped in the back with Jet curled up and went to sleep. We are so pleased with how things are going now.
8th Nov
Training Holly is progressing several paces. Her agility is brilliant, stunning, amazing. Her basic training is steady. Her socialisation is painfully slow. Two steps forward one step back. We are introducing her new dogs one at time being very selective and that is going ok but is going to take forever. If we do not get a breakthrough we may have to come up with another plan. We have been taking all the dogs up onto the Mendip Hills for walks to improve their fitness. Holly is now able to complete most of the walk free running. She interfaces with our dogs perfectly and will always come back when called. But she just gets too excited when she comes across new dogs.
We will have a rethink on what we are doing and see if there is anything else we can do.
29th November
We’ve had lots of people asking about Holly recently as we haven’t updated her blog for a while, we didn’t realise how long it had been.
She’s had a really busy few weeks, she’s finally back to full fitness thanks to the walks up on the Mendips. It’s taken such a long time but it’s so nice to see her looking really healthy and having lots of energy. She also had her first massage from Rachael a couple of weeks ago; we wanted to see how she would be with another person as she can still be nervous sometimes. She absolutely loved it she was chilled out straight away, we couldn’t believe it, we thought it would take ages for her to settle in to it but she surprised us all. She spent the rest of the day asleep in the house. She has got much more confident with Becky and Helen, she was let in to the house a few weeks ago when Becki was sat on the sofa and she flew in and jumped straight on Becky’s lap.
Her socialisation wasn’t going very well at the start of the month, she seemed to be getting worse not better. Claire took her outside one Saturday when there was a small group to try and socialise her. She wouldn’t settle in the arena with the other dogs because she was so excited and wanted to chase so Claire took her out in to the training paddock and did lots of recalls. She is much better when she is working she just hates watching other dogs having fun. Claire then did some agility in the paddock with her which went really well, she was really focused and was then tired so she settled and watched the other dogs from the paddock. Claire was encouraged by this so took her back in to the school, she was quite good so Claire sat on the see saw with holly lying on the floor. This went well until a dog walked past quite close and holly tried to chase it and while trying to pull away managed to scratch Claire straight across her face leaving 4 red lines which were very painful. Lesson learnt: don’t sit down when trying to train an excitable collie.
Claire then realised that holly needed to learn how to behave on the lead properly away from other dogs and also have a bit more respect for her handler. One of the hardest parts of this is that holly is so tough she doesn’t respond to a low voice or even a check with the lead like emmy or ty would. It really feels like you could do anything to her and she just wouldn’t care. Because of this we looked for things that she would care about which we could take away if she did something we didn’t want. She is really attached to Claire so it worked well to have someone else holding her so Claire could walk away then holly would worry more about Claire than other dogs. We now need to step up a level so that Claire can handle her on her own.
Claire took her out when there was a lesson on again with the aim of getting her to walk properly on the lead and focus on Claire. She did this walking around the paddock and every time holly went ahead of her stopping, waiting for holly to reach the end of the lead then calling her back, re- positioning her and carrying on. 45 minutes later and Holly was walking nicely on the lead on both the left and right side. She stopped a few times close to the dogs that were in the arena and when holly started barking at them she did some more lead work, this seemed to be punishment enough and holly soon settled when she was allowed to watch the other dogs(she obviously finds it really boring). Claire did the same again last weekend and by Sunday lunchtime was stood right next to where the dogs were working and she was really settled. Maybe we will get back in to the arena next week.
Her agility is amazing her running contacts are coming on really well, she really understands them which is great news. We also had a huge breakthrough with her weaves, we had just been doing 6 weaves with 2 nets and concentrating on proofing them and getting her confident with her entries and not even trying them without nets. One day Claire was doing some contact and jumping work with her but she kept running to a set of 12 weaves which were up and trying to do them so Claire took her over and asked her to do them. She had a good go at them and just missed out a couple in the middle so Claire praised her for trying but didn’t give her a treat and tried again, this time she did 12 weaves perfectly. She did them a couple of more times really nicely. She’s not 100% on them yet so we’re still doing lots of work with the nets to get her confident.
Her handling on courses is improving and she is really challenging Claire with her speed and agility but she is so much fun and loves to please. We’re feeling really motivated to do everything we can to get her competing next year so she can prove how good she is.
