BordersGirl's Final Phase to Goal - I lost 6 stone!!

JezVonSavage said:
Hi BG, Thought I'd pop in to say hello. I do SW but I seem to be doing the rounds on the forum at the moment!! Can't comment at all on your diet as it is an enigma to me :eek: But well done so far, you've done really well.

I have a collie too, her name is Dita and she is 4. She's a lunatic!
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Look forward to getting to know you, JVS x
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Gorgeous!!! X
 
Aww I love your dogs BG, my dad had a collie called Odie, he was the best dog ever, such a clever, lovely boy! He lived until 17 years old and was a real cantankerous old bugger in old age. I love to see that you have so many of them, a real pack, lovely to see x
 
I have a question for you BG since you know about dogs. I have a 6mth old Lhasa Apso, awwww my little baby. However said little baby when you take her in the car, turns into a furball of sliver. She starts slivering as soon as you pick her up to take her into the car. Then reminds me of Beethoven in the movie with the big old sliver yucks hanging by the time we reach our destination. Even tho the destination is like a treat for her ie park, beach etc, so hopefully she can associate car journey will fun times. Any suggestions to stop the slivering would be gratefully appreciated. I started dog classes with her last week and poor wee toot, by the time we got there she was a wet mess and would not do a thing I said to her.
 
She's nervous about the car ride coming up and associates even being near the car with something bad about to happen (ie the car moving). The drooling is caused by stress and anxiety.

Best thing is to build up a few nice associations for her which will involve not actually going anywhere to start off with. So take her out to the car and feed her something she really likes to eat (not her normal food, something tasty like chicken) and then praise her and take her back out again. Keep doing that every day when you have a few spare minutes and eventually she will get into the habit of the car being a nice place to be. When she's happy doing that put her in, give her some food (maybe her dinner), shut her in the car and sit in the driving seat while she eats (where does she travel in the car by the way?). Then take her out again and praise her. Then build that up so that you start the engine up and sit there for a bit and then switch it off and take her back indoors, praising her for being fantastic. When she's happy with that drive a very short distance round the block for less than a minute and repeat the praise. Eventually she will associate the car with somewhere where nice things happen and the drooling will subside. It may take a bit of time but it will work eventually. Your neighbours may think you are barking mad however :)

Sometimes going on a journey with her while you build this up will be unavoidable but if you make the car a nice place for her to be she will stop being so stressed when you take her out to the car. I've had puppies that will actively run and hide when we are due to go out in the car who are now demented idiots trying to be first to jump in :)

She won't make the connection with going somewhere nice when she get out of the car until she gets over the anxiety but eventually she will (some of mine scream when they know they're going to the beach in the car and there is always a mad dash to the car when we go anywhere :rolleyes:).
 
I have tried her in the back in her cage, back not in her cage but harnessed and also in front passenger harnessed. She is better in the front than back coz I am reassuring her, but she needs to go in back as cant see hubby being impressed at being relegated to back seats because of the dog lol
 
Cage in the back is fine. Stick her in the cage, sit in the back seat with her and feed her bits. It's better for her to be in a cage as she will feel secure in there eventually and it means that she's not leaping around in the car when she gets confident. Once she's ok with you sitting next to her, sit in the drivers seat and turn round to reassure her in the cage in the back. It'll be a work in progress but I bet she ends up liking the car eventually. It's dogs who never go anywhere in the car unless they're going somewhere like the vet who tend to hate it. Most dogs who get taken places in the car love it.
 
Hey BG! Didn't know we talked about dogs on here too! Bliss! If i'm having a crappy day, I look up pics of pups for sale to cheer myself up... I so miss having a dog but one day...
In case you miss the other post, just wanted to say 'thanks'... doubt i'd be doing this without seeing your progress.. (I hope you haven't made it look too easy :)
 
It is easy! If you're in the zone and stick to it it's easy peasy, nothing will make you stray from the path of the righteous ;). It's when you leave the zone that it's hard. I was there on Friday as I was p****d off with the scales staying the same so I took a break this weekend. Like you I'll be trying to get into ketosis this week so we can b1tch and moan together :). I could have said that I came out of ketosis so that I could support you but it'd be a lie. I came out because I was p****d off and ate 2 bars and a packet of Special K mini bites! :)

Oh and we talk about all sorts of random stuff on this forum, especially in the diary section. You should start a diary over here.
 
BordersGirl said:
She looks as if she is farm / working bred. The smooth coated ones are much more popular on farms where their coats don't get laden down with mud and muck after a day on the farm. Most pet and show ones are bred with longer coats, plus because they're not being bred for working a laid back temperament is more valued when they're being bred as family pets and temperament is inherited to some extent.

Mine are a halfway house really, bred from working lines as I only sell them to people who do some sort of work with them, but because they will all live in houses temperament is a factor too so they can't be the very sharp ones that farmers might breed from. That said I have one who is a bit of a guarder and who would probably bite someone if they broke into the house or garden. Not enough to do serious damage I think but enough that they'd know about it. She's ok if we're here and people visit tho as our acceptance of that person gives her the message that they're ok but the guarding instinct is definitely in her make up.

Collies can be quite noise sensitive (I have a couple like that) and you'll often find that the younger dogs take their cues from the older ones. So if your old dog was non reactive in this sort of situation she will have picked up on that and taken her lead from him. Now that he's no longer there her stable influence has gone, and her own natural temperament is starting to come to the fore, and her way of dealing with things is very different from his. Plus you're all she has left as she probably had a good bond with him too. That's what it sounds like to me anyway. She will have gone through a period of adjustment when he died and then the behaviour started to manifest after that. I'm guessing he went 6 - 8 months ago perhaps?

I'm guessing that you are the one she bonds with so anyone else is seen to be a potential threat to the attention you give her. So it sounds like jealousy guarding with a bit of territorial guarding thrown in for good measure as per her being uncomfortable with people wandering round the house. Add to that the fact that she's also nervous so likely to be more reactive to different situations and you get the dog you have.

To some extent this is something that is 'in' the working breed but I wouldn't just accept that this is the case. Take her many places to ensure she gets plenty of exposure to different situations and learns to deal with them, and if you can have her in other people's houses with you sitting on the sofa and see if the same thing happens or whether it's just connected to your / her own house. If it is just your house (my guarder would only guard her own house, never anyone elses) then you know that it's the location she's guarding as opposed to just you. If it happens elsewhere then it's you she's guarding. If you can work that out it helps as knowledge is power, and understanding why she does it is important so that you can then devise a plan to help.

I've never used them but some people use herbal remedies to assist with this. So something like this:

Calm Down! - CSJ Herbs for Dogs - CSJK9 Ltd.

Or some people use a few drops of Bach Rescue Remedy and swear by it, but as I said I've never used anything like that so can't recommend it per se.

I'm no behavourist by the way, I just have many years experience of dealing with this breed :)
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Thanks for the advice, I appreciate that you are not a behaviorist but you've offered better and more realistic advice than some of the "professionals" (one of them cost me £400!)

She has Bach RR over bonfire night as she really suffers, as well as Adaptil plug in and a sedative from the vet for the night itself. This year we took her to a cottage in the middle of Snowdonia to get away from it all, which she really benefited from: If work permitted we'd just move, but unfortunately it doesn't.

Barney died 10 months ago and this weird behaviour started 4 months ago so you were spot on :D I think it is more me rather than the house, but then we did get burgled once and she intervened, didn't catch the thief but put them off so they didn't get anything. Come to think of it, maybe that plays on her mind as that happened just before B died :( Literally a week or so before.

Anyway thanks for your help- I won't "hound" you anymore on this particular subject :D
 
Thanks very much for your advice BG and for taking the time to give such comprehensive advice too. It is really appreciated. Going to try the poocher in her cage with the chicken then take it from there.
 
She might benefit from you teaching her a 'settle' command. Essentially it tells the dog to lie down and relax and if you google something like teaching a dog to settle you will get various links up. It's not the same as a down stay, it's sending the dog to a place and helping it to relax and should help with her wanting to jump up and herd people. Of course a herding dog like a working bred collie will be born with all the natural herding instinct within them which is why so many end up in rescue as they herd kids, bikes, cars, anything that moves essentially. Fast moving kids wind my dogs up to distraction as all they want to do it head them off and bring them back into the 'flock'. It's understanding what makes your own dog tick and why it does what it does that's important so that you understand what you are dealing with and how to train different behaviours that help. Tellington Touch is supposed to be good for anxious dogs and it's a technique you could learn to use on her.

I had a collie years ago that would herd cars. I had to walk round the village streets with him for hours on end when he was young and every time a car came he'd try to dash in front of it to head it off and get it to stop. I then made him sit and told him no. It was just a natural instinct within him to try to 'herd' the car but I knew that I had to do something about it otherwise he would get in front of a car one day and get killed. Eventually it stopped, and I could get him to walk along without staring at the traffic. Collies can be complex animals, more so than other breeds, and I believe that for that reason if you are going to see a behaviourist it's worth seeing one that has worked extensively with collies as their herding instinct makes them very different from other breeds. And dog show people won't necessarily understand either. Collies bred for the showring are unlikely to have the sort of herding instinct that yours probably has, and neither are they bred for it either so their owners won't necessarily understand the issues.

As far as fireworks are concerned many people I know now swear by the Thundershirt (basically a tight coat / wrap that is supposed to calm the dog). We don't get fireworks here (live in the sticks) so I've never tried it.

Good luck with her and don't be paying anyone £400 again to be told that 'it's in the breed'. Yes, some of it is to some extent but it's how to deal with that that you're interested in!
 
Well yes, she herds everything and we have to be careful with her and kids. She'd never bite one, but it can look quite intimidating when she goes into herding mode. I'll try the Thundershirt, she likes small places and getting under duvets so I can imagine she will respond well to it, but I think we've made lifelong plans to go away for bonfire night!

As for the £400 behaviourist- she was a farce!! My vet referred me with no mention of cost, then alerted my pet insurance company that my dog had an issue with aggression before I'd even seen her! Therefore they took my public liability insurance off me and wouldn't pay for the referral. Admittedly, I only had the insurance for times of crisis so to not be able to use it made my blood boil and given that they took it off me without even a proper consultation, well it was a bloody joke!!
 
Unfortunately there are some really bad behaviourists about and vets only cover behaviour as a very small element of their training so they're not always clued up either, and as I said before working collies are special needs dogs :). From what you've said she definitely sounds working bred.

We are members of the Dogs Trust to get the liability insurance that comes with being a member. You'd have to check the small print but given that (I assume) your dog has never actually bitten anyone I would think that their cover would be ok for you. I wasn't bothered about having liability cover on my house insurance as we already had the cover from Dogs Trust but when I took out a policy I was sent the documentation to check and it said that I had no dogs. I called them up and said that I did have dogs and was told that it would be another £28 per year or something. I asked why that was and she said it was for the liability cover. I said that I didn't want that but she said that now I'd told her we had dogs I couldn't opt out :rolleyes:
 
I just cancelled the insurance in the end. It was hardly cheap and I was annoyed that they'd just taken it off me,as you say, without her actually biting anyone.

It's even more infuriating that my estate is littered with illegal dog breeds who are left to roam the streets, poo everywhere and cause chaos yet when you are a responsible owner with a legal breed who is microchipped, insured, properly vaccinated and LOOKED AFTER PROPERLY you get penalised for it!! I got stopped recently by a community support officer and was asked if I had poo bags on me. When I dangled poo in his face and told him I'd used the 2 I took out he told me I was irresponsible!! I nearly ripped his head off, grrrrrrrrr.

/rant.
 
This is a fascinating thread! All your talk of herding reminded me of my parents dog a few years ago. Her mum was a working sheepdog who had a 'fling' with a black lab! My parents dog Zillah, looked like a lab but a bit smaller and had a fluffy black and white tail and the feathering of a collie. She was funny when we went out on big family walks as spent all her time herding us together with my lab watching her in amazement wondering what on earth she was doing to the humans! She never caused any problems just wanted us all in a tight group and as a four generation family out for a sunday walk that was not easy for her!!! And looking like a lab it just looked so wrong!
 
Ha, sounds like she got the lab looks and the collie instinct genes :)
 
So I'm at the end of my weekend break (food wise) so I thought I'd record what I had today so that I have a record of it to look back at. I've been quite conscious of what I've been eating this weekend but didn't want to deprive myself as I wanted to understand what floated my boat. I haven't had a whole lot of things to choose from because I have bought nothing for me other than chicken, fish and S&S veggies, and this break was entirely unplanned. Not the best way to have a break to be honest :). I've been really conscious of calories and portion size and I know that this was what I was like when I did a VLCD before and started to 'eat' again. I think that a couple of years down the line that went out of the window so it's something I need to work on this time.

I know there are lots of diets about now where calories are not counted and it's more about the types of food that you eat but I'm from the old school where calories make a big impression on me if I bother to check how many there are in something before I shove it down my trap . So although I've had a selection of things today they've been in smallish quantities and I've counted every one. So today I had porridge made with water 150, BL snack bar 134, Tikka and satay bites 256, Special K mini bites 99, skinny latte 49, Go Ahead cake slice 89, another latte 49, a few peanuts 80 and then chicken and veg roasted in a roasting bag with Nandos spice mix, maybe 300 calories. I was going to have cous cous with that but decided that a lower carb meal would be better to get back into ketosis tomorrow and to be honest I wasn't hungry enough to have it. That probably comes to about 1200 calories today, having had 1000 yesterday, so pretty much 'normal' diet levels. Would have been better without the peanuts and the cake bar but that wasn't significant in the great scheme of things, and I didn't eat the whole packet like I would have done so before so that's a good thing . I would have quite liked to have had a yoghurt or some fruit but none in the house other than apples and I didn't fancy one of those.

Back on plan tomorrow tho and hope that I can get into ketosis by Wednesday's WI.
 
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