First Week at the Veterinary Center

I've just survived my first week as a veterinary assistant! I've learned a lot and at the moment I'm quite overwhelmed. I've seen puppies and kittens so cute I almost wanted to steal them. I've seen people receive wonderful news about puppies to be born, and people who just learned that their pet is beyond rescue. I've seen old dogs in surprisingly good health and young dogs with surprisingly bad health. I've met happy dogs, affectionate dogs, scared dogs, angry dogs, calm dogs, sad dogs and stressed dogs. I've seen hope turn into despair and back to hope again. I've seen happiness and heartbreak. I've seen life and death. I've really learned a lot.. But do you know what the best part is? When I wake up in the morning, I look forward to going to work! I believe I finally found MY place in this universe. Now I'm home.

Border Collie

Border Collie (Zingo), in the forest.

The smartest dog breed in the world, the Border Collie was originally bred to herd sheep and originates in the border area between Scotland and England. There is today a lot of controversy around the breed, about whether it should be bred for working ability or in accordance to a breed standard. In many parts of the world there are double registries for this reason and in some countries, dogs that are merited as show dogs get excluded from the working registry. Also it is common that dogs that are of the working type (and registered as such) can be registered as pure bred border collies in the show registry as well, but no the other way around. The supporters of the working type wants this dog to stay a functional herding dog, and not become a degraded show dog, like many other working breeds have become (i.e. the German shepherd and many others).  

Border Collie (Micke) showing a trick where he does push ups :)

There are almost no limits to what you can teach a Border Collie, it is a very easily motivated dog. Sometimes it seems that your praise is enough for it to do as you say. Harsh methods is not good to use with these gentle dogs. They will still try their best to please you, but if the dog feels you are angry it will try to calm you down by moving slowly or not at all. If you don't understand why, I recommend you pick up a book on dog behavior and language.
The Border Collie have a natural will to please the owner and since they are also very intelligent they will try to solve problems themselves. That also means that if you do not give your Border Collie a meaningful "occupation", it will start looking for a job on its own. A under-stimulated Border Collie is likely to start "herding" everything from the neighborhood kids to the cars on the street.

Border collie (Mist) during obedience training. Here the dog has done the task correctly and is rewarded with a toy.

The Border Collie should get a long walk (at least 1 hour) every day, but it also needs mental stimulation. This can be provided by simply teaching the dog tricks, training obedience (which really is a long series of tricks), agility, fly ball, freestyle, heel-work to music, or better yet, taking the dog to herding training if you have the possibility. Like any other breed, you will find that not all Border Collies are good at what they are bred for, but when you see a dog realizing its purpose it is a genuine joy! All dogs like feeling like they are "useful", just like we do. Give your dog a "job", even if the job consists of doing tricks or getting the newspaper, it will be forever grateful and a lot more balanced. 

Being the smartest breed, the border collie is often seen in different dog competitions, here obedience.

Appearance

Since the Border Collie mostly is bred for their herding ability, there is a wide variety of appearances. The coat can be everything from long as in the Rough Collie, to short as in the smooth collie. Colors can be white-black, tricolor (with either black or brown) and blue-merle. There are other colors too, but they are very unusual, such as blue, lilac, red-merle, brindle, and "Australian red"/gold. Border Collies may also have single-colour coats. The weight also varies from less than 10 kg to almost 30 kg. Ears can be erect, semi-erect or fully dropped. Eye color either brown or blue, or one of each or even two colors in one single eye.

The coat colors of border collies varies; here we see a black and white border collie male (Elvis), with "freckles", brown eyes, semi-long fur and semi-erect ears.

Health

The border collie, like other collies (Smooth and Rough Collies) and some other related and unrelated breeds (Shetland Sheepdogs, Australian Shepherds, Lancashire Heelers and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers) suffers from an eye disease called Collie eye anomaly. It is less common in the Border Collie than in the other collie breeds, but animals used in breeding should still be checked. The disease can cause blindness and there is no treatment. It can be diagnosed by ophthalamoscopy (aka fundoscopy) as early as when the dog is just 6-7 weeks old.

There are two other genetic diseases of concern in the breed, epilepsy and hip-dysplasia. See more about epilepsy in dogs in this blog post [link]. Hip-dysplasia can be diagnosed by taking an x-ray picture of the hips.

There are also some other diseases that are known, but luckily not very common, such as: Elbow dysplasia, osteochondritis (inflamation of the joints), deafness, and hypothyroidism (causing too little thyroid hormones to be released, and thus low metabolism, slow heart rate and other symptoms), Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (only in show dog lines, affecting the nervous system) and Trapped Neutrophil Syndrome (a disease that causes the dog to have a faulty immune system). 

To end this post on a brighter note: Below is a video from the dog show/agility competition last year in June in Tromsø. A Border Collie competing in agility. Enjoy!

Resisting the "any-dog"

This puppy was born at a good friend of mine and being a pure bred Siberian Husky did not risk ending up in a bad home. For me it was hard to resist the temptation to get a SH when these puppies were born, but me and my boyfriend had already decided on what breed to get, a Danish Swedish Farmdog. It is easy to understand why people get dogs without planning to when you see this little guy. All puppies are adorable, even the ones that are free..

 
I'm waiting and waiting. And then waiting some more. Sometimes it seems like the waiting will never end.
What am I waiting for? I'm waiting for the perfect puppy. As I already mentioned in a post, the breeder we're gonna buy a puppy from used a male related to the male we're planning to use if we ever breed from our future dog, so we can't buy a puppy from that litter. And thus we are again waiting for the next litter. Sometimes I'm so tempted to just adopt a dog from the animal shelter or a dog that is re-homed privately. Basically any dog will do! But then I come across some puppies that are given away for free.. and I start thinking. I do not want to support people that have no plan for their breeding. And even if those puppies are given away for free and hence the breeder doesn't earn any money, me taking one of the puppies makes it possible for that "breeder" to be that irresponsible again, since he/she didn't have to keep it or even worse put that puppy down, which might make him/her think twice about doing that again. Also I think about what kind of people will get these puppies. It is not likely to be people that have been planning to get a dog, or that will be willing to spend the money they should on good dog food and veterinary care. It is quite clear that if you don't pay for an item (sorry to use this word about a dog) you are not likely to take good care of it. This is painfully clear when it comes to cats, that are often given away for free. When my cat was ill and I took her to the vet (she got well again) and I told friends about this, they asked me why I would spend that much money on a cat, it would be cheaper to get a new one(!). They said this in such a matter-of-factly manner that they clearly didn't think of cats as living beings, but as things. Things that you could just replace with new things. And that is the fear I have for these poor puppies that are given away for free. They will be more than averagely lucky if they end up with owners that will take proper care of them. And this is why I wait. Because I know that the breeder I will buy from makes sure that all the puppies born under her care ends up in good homes. And that is the kind of breeder I wish to support.

It's been a while

Birk, Siberian husky, on a walk by the sea. May 11th in northern Norway. I've been taking care of Monica's huskies this weekend.

It's been a while since last I wrote. A lot has happened, and partly because I wanted to know what was gonna happen before I kept writing, I've waited until now to write. I have a few drafts that I hope to finish and share with you soon. Anyway the important news is that I got a new job. I'm a veterinary assistant at a clinic that works mostly with dogs and cats! It couldn't have been more perfect for me!

So what have I been up to, apart from the interview for the job.. Well I borrowed Noor for two weeks in the end of April, I've written a bit about it already. Below is a picture from one of the trips me, Noor and Mads made while she was here.

On the southern tip of Tromsø, playing chess. Good practice for Noor to stay calm even when other dogs are around.

When it comes to the Danish Swedish farmdog puppy we were gonna buy, we yet again have to wait for the next litter from that breeder. The male the breeder had planned to use for this litter didn't want to mate for some reason, so she used another male. That other male happened to be related to Scott, Mads' parents Danish Swedish Farmdog, whom we are planning to mate with our dog in the future if everything goes according to plan.

the wonderful Scott

That's it for now, and I hope I will be able to be more active here on the blog from now on! Hope you guys had a nice weekend!