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Following the demise of IQ Dog Training before Christmas, Sarah had to embark on the arduous task of finding somewhere else to train Duke.
Trying to find a relatively local class that fitted in with other commitments, such as work, Gloucester Model Railway Club on Monday nights and the fact that Duke does “day care” in our local kennels on Wednesday (and is totally hyper on a Wednesday night) was virtually impossible.
One class was on a Tuesday night at 6.30 and was quite some distance away. It also required a £50 assessment fee. With gritted teeth, we coughed up this and went through the assessment. The assessment wasn’t a great success and the training style different to what we were used to. We did attend one class, but we nearly didn’t get there in time because of work, and Sarah felt like an outsider with a very naughty dog! We didn’t go back.
Around that time a friend mentioned that she was taking her young collie to “Krazy K9’s”, that Steve Pitcher was very good and had five collie of his own. A phone call later and a couple of visits to his classes as an observer, found us at his Tuesday night class at Eastington.
Understandably it took Duke a couple of weeks to settle down, but he is enjoying the classes, learning to do retrieves and scent work and other stuff that he hadn’t done before, as well as working slowly towards to Good Citizen Gold. Maybe one day we will be doing competitive obedience comps together!
As Steve understands the working of the Collie mind, Duke is no longer being such a nightmare on walks and generally is a lot more focused– we still have a long way to go but…
On a sad note Angela Gillespie, Duke’s breeders, passed away suddenly on 12 March. She will be very much missed but her legacy lives on in her Detania dogs.
For more info visit: http://www.facebook.com/groups/200669903375900/
After lots and lots of thought we decided to have Duke castrated. Why?
1) Because the OCD may or may not be genetic,
2) Duke was diagnosed in August at his annual check up with light not going correctly through his left eye, with is certainly down to over breeding (always thought he was seeing things), and
3) In an attempt to calm down his “reactive-ness” to cats, bikes etc.
So the big day was 19 December 2011. Sarah had to go into work, so Duke was dropped off at the vets early. He was having his shoulder joint x ray’d at the same time.
Shortly after 1, sarah received the phone call to say that the op had gone well, and, good news the OCD has only got minorly worse. Duke was coming round and could be collected at 3.
We were given the usual advice, he’ll want to sleep, he won’t want to eat, he won’t want a walk. Keep him calm, no stairs, no off lead exercise …..
So we got him home and he demanded his dinner, which he got. The massive lamp shade collar took some getting used to. At seven he also demanded his walk, and seemed almost disappointed when I wouldn’t take him very far. However he settled down in the bed between Sarah and Giles and slept soundly for hours, something he never does.
The next morning he rushed to let anyone carry him down the stairs, and when Giles finally picked him up, he struggled so much that they both nearly went down backwards. So Duke was allowed to do stairs on his own.
But he was so miserable – being a clean tidy dog, he always cleaned himself up after a wee, and now with the collar, he couldn’t and we darn’t take it off. In essence he got depressed to the extend that he refused to eat. The nurse who checked him over on Christmas Eve was happy with his progress and so the collar came off. By Boxing Day he was running off lead and life for Duke returned to normal!
