One year ago today, seven beautiful puppies were born here on the SandSpur Ranch. Bellatrix, Wentz, Logan, Koda, AbbySue, Ella, and Echo were born on the morning of April 9th, 2018 - blind, deaf, and completely helpless. That day we had an absolute downpour. Their kennel (which had been barely completed a day or so before they were born) flooded and I had to rescue the pups and move them to the barn in the pockets of my raincoat. They happily slept and nursed in the barn loft, totally unphased by the incident. Once I got the kennel cleaned out again, I moved them back and they continued to grow. Their eyes and ears opened, and they learned to walk. They explored their pool, which was the whole world to them at that time, then as they got bigger, they scrambled over the edge of the pool (Koda first) and fell out onto the floor of the kennel. Here was a new world to explore! They happily explored the kennel, while I raced to build the 2,000 sp. ft. run and play yard for them. Pretty soon, they had the kennel memorized and were ready for bigger horizons. By this time they knew me and my family members very well, and loved to be petted and loved on by us. They were growling, barking, and playing with each other, and their eyes were no longer hazy blue, but bright and becoming clearer every day. My father and brothers pitched in to get their play yard finished and finally I was able to open the back doors of the kennel and expand their world. The puppies played with each other and their "cousins" from the second bay of the kennel, who were one week younger. They learned important lessons like when to bark, how hard to bite, who was bossy and who was friendly, and how to play tug. They began responding to their names. Some decided that the kiddie pool was fun; some decided that water was wet, cold, and unsuitable for any sensible puppy. They learned to sit before meals. They all loved people more and more. They memorized the puppy yard and their world was small again. And then came the biggest event of their lives up to that time: Pick-up Day. Suddenly, the world changed. Six of the puppies went to new homes, with new people around them, new scents, new surroundings, new experiences. It was a new world. Echo stayed in the old world and is still here. This birthday update is an overview, from the owners perspectives, of how the puppies have done in their new worlds. Logan Logan is doing amazing! He is a hyper, super lovey, tennis ball addicted baby boy. Since the day I brought Logan home he has always been very snugly and protective of me. Every night after I come home from work we play ball or frisbeeoutside, work in the garden together and then go inside to snuggle till it is time for bed. I couldn't have picked a better best friend and companion. Logan also recently got 2 new siblings, Olivia and Darcy 2 black cats.. He is infatuated with Darcy (and protects/ herds him because Darcy is blind in both eyes) and has a healthy respect of Olivia because she has dubbed herself Queen of the Castle. Another favorite hobby of Logan is sitting in the pool. I can not keep him out of it haha. He hasn't shown an interest in swimming yet, but loves to lounge on the top step for hours. He is incredibly smart and has also learned the command "clean your feet" where he goes and washes his muddy feet on the top step of the pool before coming inside the house. We are looking to possibly start agility training this summer. Thank you Alayna for providing me with such an amazing pup, Logan and I are so blessed to have each other. He has truly changed my life, and now I cant imagine life without waking up to his smiling face and coming home to it every afternoon. Happy Birthday to all the puppies, looking forward to many more years and adventures!! Bella L. Wentz Hey Alayna. Happy Birthday to our sweet Wentz! He is a loving, energetic dog who loves to hug and snuggle! He isn’t very fond of loud noises and doesn’t appreciate rides in the truck! He loves his brother Aspen (the American Eskimo) the most. He plays with Diesel (our 13 year old Border Collie) some, but since he is older allows him some space! We love having him as a member of our family. We plan to continue to work on his agility skills – he is a great jumper! He knows many commands – heel, both on a leash and off, sit, stay, down, drop, get off, come, kiss, stop, look, hug, up (to jump straight up in the air), fetch a ball, frisbee, anything that is thrown! He even climbed a tree once! (that was crazy!) He has a deep bellowing bark for his size. He is not very big and favors his mom a lot. He is SUPER fast and can run forever. We hope you enjoy the pics – we are so thankful to you for sharing him with our family! Andrew P. Bellatrix Here’s a short update about Trixie. Trixie is a lot of fun. She always wants to play. She likes playing fetch with balls, loves catching frisbees and playing tug-of-war with the rope or anything really. She loves going on walks and we just started doing short jogs with her. She's very fast, so even though I'm jogging, she's just walking at a fast pace. She spends a lot of time out in the backyard exploring and keeping an eye out the back. She'll bark at anyone who passes by, specially if they're with a dog, and even if they are across the street. We recently took her to the beach and she liked getting in the water. She gets nervous around other dogs and people she doesn't know, but after a while, she gets more comfortable. She knows a lot of words and phrases and still rings the bell to go outside. She's very intelligent and has learned things on her own. For example, if we put a jerky treat inside one of her bones, she throws the bone in the air so that it loosens the treat and it slips out. She knows some of her toys by name and knows the names of everyone in the family. She's a lot of fun and we love having her as part of the family. She’s 40lbs and 20.5 inches at the shoulder. Norman S. Echo Echo is my special pup who stayed here. She is gorgeous, extremely smart, and very affectionate. She is built like her father, long, fast, and lean. She stands about 20" high at the shoulder and weighs only 27 lbs, 6 oz. Unfortunately, she has not learned as much as I hoped she would over the course of the last year, but that is my fault, not hers. She has all the brains and desire to learn, but I have not put as much time and patience into training her as I should have done. The year has been a hectic, busy, and rather stressful one for my family and me, so it is not at all Echo's fault that she has not attained a high level of training. She knows the basic commands - come, down, stay, off, leave it, drop it, wait, etc. She has shown a good deal of desire and talent in herding the cows, but is often distracted by a desire to wrestle her parents (Duncan, especially) when they are working. She pays much better attention when she is by herself, which is perfectly normal for a puppy and has moved the animals with me, "single-pawed." (I.E. without her parents' assistance.) I hope to begin more formal training with her and Flora soon. Echo lives up to her name. She makes more noise than the other three Border collies put together, strongly favors both her parents in looks, and even runs concentric circles around Duncan when she is trying to play with him. I train all my dogs to come to an individual whistle (different for every dog) and her call is a medium-pitched, long, quavering note. I didn't think much of it until Mama asked me if I chose that specific whistle for her because it sounds like an echo. I didn't, but go figure. Everything about that pup is an echo. The only real problems I have had with Echo are that she is more timid than I would like her to be, and she tries to herd the chickens a lot. She does not intentionally hurt them and is improving, but she has to learn that chickens - free-ranging or penned - are off limits. The timidity is (again) more my fault than hers. We weren't having many people over and I was unable to take her places when she was younger, so she is cautious and afraid of strangers or strange places. That is, she is afraid of strangers temporarily. She warms up to most people who visit within just a few seconds. (She proved this recently by enthusiastically washing the face of a friend-of-a-friend, about three seconds after he got out of the car. It turned out that, unbeknownst to me, he loves Border collies. I guess Echo figured that out before I did.) She hates riding in the car, but will get over that in time. Echo is amazingly affectionate and is a licker like her mother. She is extremely fast, like her father. I'm sorry to go on and on... She is a great dog and I am blessed to have her. Abby Sue Hey!! Sorry so late with this,we had Abby spayed Thursday and she is a handful to try to keep quiet! She is 19inches tall and weighs 34 pounds. She is amazing and loveable. Her natural talents are herding and jumping high. Her struggles (or ours) is she loves to dig and try to climb trees while biting them. We have 3 trees with bald spots. Her favorite treat is Dogsters ice cream, yum...She always comes when called and her favorite playmate is Maggie a 1 year old black lab. She also loves her pool and favorite place to go is fishing!! Marilyn W. Ella Hey there Alayna, We could not be happier with our beautiful Ella Lua. She weighs about 34lbs and is still petite. She loves to play with her big sister, Panda and they love to play catch. She learns tricks very fast and one of her favorites is to jump up into my and Johnny’s arms. She also does the basics - sit, stay, down, shake, 360 right and left, she will roll over but doesn’t love that trick. I started doing agility training with her in August and at first she was very excited and loved it. She learned so quickly it was amazing. Then sometime in February she was very fearful and started hiding in the tunnels and running back to her crate, she was concerned about something, but there was not an event that we could pinpoint. She was much happier in the class last week (WE don’t go every week due to either weather or we are traveling) so that was great. I would say our biggest challenge with her is her fear issues. At first she hated going to our shooting matches and would cower in her crate the entire time and was nervous even when she was with us but now she is absolutely fine with going to matches. She is fearless (a little too fearless) with the horses and the cows and we tell her, go get the cows and she tears into the pasture and brings them in for us which is amazing as we never really taught her. We have a new calf, Patrick (he was born on St Patricks day) and the two of them play chase… super cute. She is off the charts smart and is very sensitive. Any corrections have to be made gently and she pretty much gets it the first time, but she’lll just go hide if you correct her to forcefully. It's a fine balance. She still has some puppy naughtiness like she loves to shred paper/cardboard and she can destroy a 24-pack of water in 20 minutes. She is an outside dog but was potty trained at the pet sitters house on her second stay there and has been great since then. The only time she has an accident is if she has diarrhea and thank God she seems to be done with that. She had lots of parasites her first 6 months but has grown out of that. She loves to eat anything that she isn’t supposed to. We put her on a special Royal Canine feed when we were having all the stomach issues, and she does great on the food. She gets easily distracted from eating her meals and likes dinner better than breakfast. What I love the best about her is how affectionate and eager to please she is… also how independent she is. She can play with her toys for hours. She likes to take her toys from her toy crate and hide them in her hiding place under a bush so that Panda can’t find them. She runs around the arena the entire time we are riding and she loves to be at the barn. She loves playing with our barn kitties. The only challenge is when she is fearful but she is getting better every day with that. This is probably more than you wanted to know about her:) Nicole G. Koda Hi, Alayna!... What I like best about Koda are his sweet temperament and extreme trainability. Anything I want to teach him I can, as long as I patiently work with him. He’s shown a lot of talent for frisbee! We work on it consistently and he’s becoming quite talented. His biggest struggle was excited peeing for a few months which is now under control, and destructive behavior when left alone (I believe it’s separation anxiety, because if he’s unsupervised and we’re home he’s okay), but we just crate him for short intervals when he’s alone and that’s worked great! His favorite treat are pupperonis, his best trick is “bang!” (I make a finger gun and say bang, and he lays on his back and plays dead). Our favorite place to go is the beach, or one of the many hiking trails around Tallahassee. He’s quite small, at only about 34 pounds. I’m not sure of his height at the moment. His habits are loving to lick, ALL the time, he’s quite timid sometimes, and he’ll bark at me in frustration or simply walk away sometimes if he’s confused by a command, like an upset toddler! He pulls on leash a lot, but he’s getting better quickly with reinforcement not to. He’s good at barking when people come up to the door and stopping on command, and has made an excellent alarm system! There’s so much more I could say, but I’m on a time crunch.
Also, to add on! I believe we’re going to venture into Georgia this summer to do both agility and some sheep herding training this summer, so I’ll keep you posted on this results! He shows a lot of natural herding behaviors. When he spots another animal, he’ll begin to crouch and crawl forward. I’m working on teaching him when to simply drop and watch, and when to run. I’m also trying to teach him how to circle them on command. I don’t know much about herding, but I think he’ll be able to learn if we do some courses. We’ve only tried agility once before, but he was great at going through tunnels and hopping over hurdles. He knows how to come, sit, stay, hold himself up on his back paws (lift), jump up and down objects, drop, give, high five and paw, roll over, and even pick up his toys and put them into a box. We’re working on teaching him his toys by name currently, and speaking on command!! There’s probably more that I’m not thinking of right now, he’s honestly a joy to train. He also has a relatively mellow temperament as long as we get exercise every day. We typically do two long walks, a one or two mile run, a short hike, a walk on campus (high distraction off leash training), or the dog park. I‘ve noticed it’s very true what they say about border collies, that they truly need that stimulation to not be overly hyper. Luckily, we’re pretty active! I absolutely love him, and if I could afford another dog, I would absolutely look into getting a second. Sadly, that’ll have to wait a few more years. Nicole V.
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AuthorMy name is Alayna Feldman. I have been greatly blessed and am thankful, first and foremost, to the Lord Jesus Christ, Who has saved me. I am also deeply thankful to my parents, who have raised me in a stable, safe, loving home and taught me about what is most important in life. Archives
February 2022
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