Having decided to defer his scheduled strangulation, I bought some Wellness dog food today at Whole Foods for Ollie the Collie. The bag is labeled for the literate canine: “Please enjoy by October 21, 2011”.
18 thoughts on “Whole Foods selling kibble for literate border collies”
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A “strangulation?” Your Collie looks to be man’s best friend in your photos. Could you consider a new home if things are a challenge?
JJD – Tryin’ to avoid sadness….
“scheduled strangulation” ??
He must die for his crimes.
poor Ollie, but perhaps you have forgotten the sins of Samoyeds…… as a puppy, Muffin took out our couch- and when Charles yelled at her, she took out his Beethoven recordings. So now that you have Wellness kibble for Ollie, perhaps Philip needs a lovely bottle of wine and some good pate?
Phil, border collies are happiest when they have a job. The solution? Ollie needs a substitute lamb to herd. That’ll keep him occupied and out of trouble. I have a seven-year-old border collie in my life, name of Jane. She’s a shared dog, owned by my daughter. My daughter’s husband brought to their union an aged male cat, a wily little fellow named Ingmar whose trick is to ignore Jane. Jane is obsessed with keeping Ingmar in check. She thinks she’s doing so even when her watchful eye is unneeded, as when Ingmar is asleep. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job. The downside? She doesn’t have time to read the NYT anymore…. The upside? Not reading the NYT keeps her from getting dangerous new ideas….
Burton: I’ve tried to give him a simple job of fetching a tennis ball. His default behavior is to bring it back to within about 20′ and then stare at it, waiting for the tennis ball to move. Sometimes this fine example of the world’s smartest dog breed will drop the ball next to the stove, which is a Viking range purchased by the previous owner. The weight of the Viking has deformed the floor so that there is a significant depression there and, inevitably, the ball will roll under the stove. This starts the world’s smartest dog whining plaintively for a human to come and dig the ball out.
He is not at all motivated by food, so he has been very hard to train compared to my Samoyeds. When the Samoyeds didn’t obey, it was pretty obviously obstinance. With Ollie, however, I’m convinced that he simply doesn’t understand.
If I recall correctly, it took quite some time for the “tumblers” in Jane’s brain to click into correct alignment. As each year goes by, she gets more winning. I’m assuming Ollie gets at least one good walk a day & preferably two. Any “dog parks” nearby where he can run w/o a leash & practice herding other dogs? Stick with him & you’ll be glad you did.
you have a lovely area, get a few sheep and you and Ollie can both take up herding with LEDs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw Ollie will be brilliant at performance art!
as for not being motivated by food, you drink the wine, but offer the pate to Ollie…
This might help – I got this book in lieu of returning an 18-month-old Labrador Retreiver that was given to me as the puppy pick of a championship litter, most agressive male …
Up front, I liked that the recommended communication methods were distinct, kind & did not require me to engage in alien behavior. The dog responded with unforeseeable alacrity – as if I had suddenly started speaking his language. He turned out to be a great, memorable dog. As Burton suggests, the book says that working dogs are not capable of learning specific working behaviors until they are about two years old – any cooperation you see before that ~ state of maturity is mere puppy pleasing. 🙂
The Complete Dog Book (The History and Standard of Breeds Admitted to AKC Registration, and the Training, Feeding, Care and Handling of Pure-Bred Dogs) – Hardcover (1964) by American Kennel Club > 10 used from $1.45, plus editions & Kindle @ amazon.com
I am not a collie expert but I have noticed that many intelligent dogs start out kind of slow. Have you been to a class together? Does he get enough stimulation — toys, outdoor activities? Does he have a hobby? Work dogs need a hobby if they don’t have a full-time job. My ex-girlfriend’s carin terrier started out undisciplined and slow but after a training class and a hobby and twice daily walks, over a year he developed a pretty decent vocabulary for his breed. You could say “[dog’s name], go get [name of toy]!” where name of toy is any of 10 items. After the command, the dog would take two paces, stare at the ground for a couple of seconds, and then run to where ever it had stashed the item, grab it, bring it back to you and drop it at your feet and wag his tail. I think that the dog paused to try to figure out what you were saying, and not to try to remember where he stored the toy, or for dramatic effect. I think border collies have superior speech recognition capability.
Jay: He gets 1-3 hours of outdoor time every day, mostly walks in the woods (in warmer weather he gets to run behind a mountain bike; lately in the cold he has been chasing after cross-country skiers). I had some success training him on agility gear when he was 4 months old, but now that he has discovered that the yard also contains sticks he is not interested in anything else.
I’ve been wanting to take him to an agility class but they won’t let dogs in until they are a year old.
My border collie mix was a slow developer, too. It took forever just to house-break him. And I, too, wanted to strangle him after he ate a hole in my wall. In fact, I think I did, just a little bit. Numerous other such incidents followed. But he did mellow out after a couple of years. If you keep the faith Ollie might turn out to be a pretty good dog. Mine’s not bad, and after living with him these last 15 years the wife and kids (yep, I raised him with little ones, all advice to the contrary) will be heartbroken if he ever gets around to dying. I’m ready for a different breed, myself, after an appropriate period of grieving. Do you think a week is long enough?
gjm: House-breaking has been a horror with Ollie. Despite having been praised every time he relieves himself outdoors and told “no” every time he goes indoors, he doesn’t seem to have figured it out. The other day he was in the flight school office and lifted his leg to mark a chair leg. This is a 9-month-old dog. Alex had three accidents in the house and then was house-trained by age 3 months.
Remember that Samoyeds are a northern breed, and hence very easy to house-break (our breeder pointed out that they have an innate wish to never let a bear know where they live). Muffin required a weekend to learn our rules, and that was it. But working/herding dogs take longer, hence our vet has had us use a crate- and by 3 months Tamdhu understood the whole thing. There are superb dog classes nearby, perhaps some work with a private trainer would help? A group class so Ollie gets to be with other dogs? Olllie is sweet and clever, hang in there- he will be wonderful.
Save yourself some money, Phil, and get your dog food at Costco. I worked in the pet food industry for 9 years as a procurement agent (ingredient buyer) and I can assure you all “dry” pet food is based on ground wheat, corn, oats, rice, or soy.
When you see ingredients like lamb, chicken, fish, vegetables and even fruit, all that means is that the dry product is coated with a slurry containing these things, or ground up and mixed in. It’s usually composed of chicken necks & backs, lamb & beef gullets, spleens, kidneys & livers, rendered fish guts, and fruit and vegetable concentrations.
By law, all pet food in this country has to be fit for human consumption. So ignore the fancy labels and names, as well as the nutritional claims.
Oh, and the contaminated food from China a few years ago was the result of American pet food companies using contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein from China. These ingredients are purchased by the container load and sold to every pet food producer in the country.
Jim: Sounds like it is definitely better not to know the details! Don’t the ingredients have to be listed in order of weight or volume? The Wellness Super 5 Mix that I got at Whole Paycheck, for example, says “Deboned Chicken, Chicken Meal, Ground Barley, Ground Brown Rice, Tomato Pomace, Rye Flour, Canola Oil…”
Doesn’t that mean that quasi-real chicken must be the #1 ingredient by weight?
Yes, the ingredients are listed in order of weight. But the catch is that meats like beef, turkey and chicken are weighed before they are cooked. So you get water weight factored in as well.
After it’s cooked down, dehydrated and ground into meal it’s not the main ingredient any more.
Chicken meal is the same thing but with the bones & skin included. The bones are an excellent protein source. I’d bet that that is the main ingredient.
The Wellness is good food. I’m just saying that the Costco brand is basically the same thing.
I worked for Nine Lives, which also produced Tuffy’s brand dog food. Both were a subsidy of Star-Kist Foods.
At the time we maintained a “catery” that held a few dozen cats and dogs. The purpose was for food testing to find out what the animals liked best. Everyday, every cat or dog received a side by side choice of meals. Most animals preferred “wet” canned food over the dry.
When I owned dogs I gave them dry food with a couple of tablespoons of wet mixed in. They seemed to enjoy it.
Oh…the “catery” animals were rescued on a regular basis from the pound, given medical care, plenty of exercise and a never ending variety of food.