stelz

Thank you all very very much for offering your thoughts and contributing to our decision making. We have enlisted the services of the experts, a trainer, and will work through the issues with them. There is a lot of common advice from you and our trainer and we will try to piece together a strategy. We will be picking the dogs up on 12th Jan and be taking care of them for a while irrespective of if we make the decision to rehome one of them. We aim to make that decision asap and get on with things. Thanks again - we will let you know what we decide and how things go Stelz

Thanks again Mystigview We are getting a bit clearer on the strategies we will adopt for the first couple of weeks, namely: 1. Set up there own play pen spaces which are adjoining under our large outdoor pergola with their crate (bed), water supply, toilet (grass strip) and their own hollow toys which will contain their food for the day (except for rewards). They will spend their un supervised time in these areas, including night time sleeping. This arrangement will allow them to learn that the chew toys are good and fun as opposed to other backyard or house behaviour. With them in the same area, but not together, their food is managed seperately and they are not playing with each other (bonding too much), but they are still close to each other for comfort to prevent anxiety. 2. Supervised time will be in a few categories: a) In the house in crate (with kongs) and brought out for toilet. Crates could be near each other. We'd bring them out seperately for toilet training and reward, play, walk etc... following success seperately. After they have both had this time, they could have some together time playing before going back through the routine. b) In the house supervised, but not in crate (after toilet success) just being with us while we watch TV etc... before going back into crate c) General training seperately either inside or outside d) Playing seperately with our family d) Playing together with our family As time goes on and they learn what is expected, their freedoms outside and inside grow in line with what they have demonstrated they can handle until ultimately they can be in the house and outside roaming free. I guess at this point their crates will be their den or "kennel" which will give them their seperate time. So if this is basically right, I need to get 2 crates and 2 play pen fencing equipment sorted out. Does this sound right ?

Thank you both for your wise / experienced and honest advice - I appreciate it greatly and am not too proud to make changes to our decisions, should we need to. We do want 2 dogs and yes the idea of leaving one of these beautiful dogs behind to probably have a needle was too much and we bailed them both out on the spot without adequately researching the differences between raising one pup and 2 simultaneously. That decision is made now so we have to deal with what is ahead as best we can and one option in that could be to rehome one of the dogs to a GOOD home. We have raised one BC pup before, so understand what was involved in that. Raising 2 properly is what we need to get ready for, so we will be focused on that for the next little while at least. We've been reading the dogstardaily material by Ian Dunbar and all that seems to make good sense. We have a trainer / coach lined up too so should be well educated and that will leave us to make sure we give it the right time to train them and shape them to be the dogs they can potentially be. We know it will be an investment (timewise). I am very interested in the comments that indicate we should keep them seperated a lot so they become dependent (bond with) on us rather than each other. I had understood that this was required for the training time to allow good focus, but I guess it is much much more than that (sleeping eating etc...) It is all looking like they will need seperate pens (would adjoining be OK ?) and seperate crates. Thanks heaps, Stelz

Hi everyone, I've browsed around www a fair bit and this forum for a few hours and need to ask for some advice. By way of introduction, we have been dog people all our lives with our last dog being a Border Collie (beautiful girl) which got to the end of her time nearly 2 years ago. Here is the situation. We have just purchased a pair of 3-4 month old female pure bred Border Collie puppies from the local pound. It looks like they are from the same litter and we can only guess it was a private first time breeder that has let 2 of the pups go (for whatever reason). They appear to be in good physical shape and good temperament and we just had to have them (had been thinking for some time on having 2 dogs) and they appear to fine. They seem to have been kept together. The real question is how to set things up when we pick them up on 12/1 after they go through the necessary process at the pound / vet. We've been reading through the dogstardaily material and will read thoroughly the books there soon. First thought was to arrange their sleeping area (raised bed style) outside underneath our pergola and give them free access to the backyard at night (it is very safe). During the day we would go through the indoor training by bringing beds inside to a room, give Kong filled with food + water bowl and take outside to grass area hourly for toilet training. I know we have made a bit commitment here, so more experienced advice would be gladly received. We are a bit worried that restricting their movements in small pen (or pens?) outside could be too similar to what bad experiences they may have received at the pound and with their owner that abandoned them and be unnecessary or even harmful for their anxiety Thank you in advance, Stelz