I wanted a Standard Poodle, but my husband had enjoyed a Border Collie mix before and if I wanted a dog, that was the kind of dog I would get if I were smart. He started reading the puppy ads in the newspaper. Once, he said, "Look, border collie, blue heeler mix pups, $20" and I stopped him cold and told him we definitely did not want blue heeler in the mix because they are bred to nip at heels even if the heels were attached to people, not cows. "Oh," he said, and he continued to read the ads.
Then he found an ad that said, "Border Collie mix puppies, FREE to good homes." We made the telephone call. Yes, they had one female left. We got the address and presented ourselves to the puppy owner. He placed this seven pound, six week old, black and white ball of fur in my arms. She was making those little puppy grunts; she was adorable.
"What breed is the mix?" my husband asked. From far away, as if from a troubled speaker system, I heard: "She is part blue heeler."
I looked into the pup's eyes. She looked into mine. I didn't acknowledge hearing anything but the normal ringing in my ears. I had my puppy and I was oblivious to anything else. "Thank the man, and let's go home," I said, and Dick slipped him a ten spot for dog food, and we left with our new dog.
So we took Molly the Collie home and right away we had our hands full. She had been part of a 13 puppy litter and their mother had abandoned them when they were only 5 weeks old. Poor thing! I knew the feeling. Molly had already been weaned and was eating moistened puppy food, but she had not been taught the things mother dogs teach ...such as No Mouthing. She had never disciplined the puppies with her teeth on the back of their heads like the Dog Whisperer does. (You could try that ad infinitum on Molly; it didn't even get her attention.)
She was just one stubborn pup, so I bought a book on Blue Heelers to see if there was any wisdom that I could latch on to that would help. What I did learn was that Blue Heelers were bred for the outback situation in Australia. The Smithfield Collies that the cattlemen brought over from England couldn't take the conditions encountered down under. So they bred them to the wild dog, the dingo. In order to instill more order, they then bred those pups to Bull Terriers and then back to the dingos again.
This resulted in more nipping at the cattle's heels as well as the horses, so the breeders reasoned they should impart some Dalmation blood. Then back again to the dingoes, then the final round to the Highland Blue Rough Collie. Whew. So we have a multi-breed dog here, fit for the United Nations.
One bit of wisdom the book implanted was that you couldn't civilize an adult dingo, but that puppies would respond nicely. Since our dog was only 1/4th Blue Heeler, I felt we had a fighting chance.
Of course, she was bred to be a working dog, a dog with a JOB, and we are in our 80s and have a very small back yard. She fought the leash and so the walking exercise would not work for her. She plainly had been mis-placed. I was bombarded with family members saying, Put her up for adoption. And for a while, both Dick and I had bites on our arms -- well, not bites, exactly, but with thin skin and her sharp puppy teeth, just grabbing us made us bleed. It was a low time.
Slowly, though, as she aged, the nipping at the heels stopped (I told you so!) At 16 months, the mouthing has (almost) stopped. She hasn't knocked me over for 6 months. She finally has been house broken. Now I can ask her, "Outside, pee pee?" and if she needs to go, she trots to the door, proceeds outside, and squats and pees and is back inside the house again in about two minutes flat. She knows 35 words and phrases and her mental aptitude is about equivalent to that of a three year old child (I am told by those who know about such things.) I am working on stringing three ideas together, such as Go Find -- Mr. Treat -- and Bring Him to Me. She almost has the hang of that one.
She can differentiate between her toys. Go Find Mr. Bone makes her snap around, smell the air, and locate Mr. Bone. Not Squeaky, not Ball, not Mr. Lion, but Mr. Bone. She understands that even if an object is hidden, it is still there.
She is a handsome dog, but hard to identify as to breed (duh?) Her back looks as though a black pelt has been thrown over her white body. She has the long legs and white spotted face with the black ears of a Dalmation, framed by the fluffy white ruff of the Collie. The black fur on her back is rather stiff, shiny, and oily, and curly on the rump. The tip of her tail curls over her back, Collie style, and is white. She has three cowlicks, one on the middle of her chest and one on each front leg. She has a Playboy bunny emblazoned on the top of her head.
But what is unusual ... as if all of the above is not enough ... is that she seems to have a lot of the instincts of the wild dog of the outback. Sometimes she looks at me as if she is trying to deliberately understand what I am saying, and she does know those 35 words, with the appropriate hand signals to accompany them. The first time she heard thunder she ran right over to me, looked me straight in the eyes and seemed to be asking a question: Should I be afraid? I told her no, it is just a loud noise; she returned to her doggy day, but not after she looked out of the window for reassurance.
I am sorry I don't have a sheep ranch. She is sorry, too. But she likes the food and I hope she is making allowances for her family. We have certainly made a lot of allowances for her -- but like Marley of current dog fame, there isn't another dog like her in the world for me.
(For more about Molly, read "Molly's Lament" and "How Dog Evolved, Part II".)
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