Mimi’s been with me a little over a week, and she’s started to feel comfortable. This morning, I found, just like the Aussies, she doesn’t appreciate it when two dogs are playing tug together and she started working on stopping that. Aussie rules are that they say who can tug and who can’t, except they can always tug. But if one Aussie doesn’t want another Aussie to tug, that Aussie can interrupt. Apparently, that is a Border Collie rule too.

Here are some other things Mimi’s got going for her.

She pulls cloth things off places.  My shirt off a chair.  A towel off a table.  My night gown off the bed. She chewed the collar off one of my t-shirts last week. So far, that is the only casualty.

She’s a fantastic hugger.

I caught her just as she started to chew the cover I had wrapped around the dog bed.

She pulled the toilet paper out from the floor near the toilet several times on day two, Monday, and once on Tuesday.  But not since then. She’s turned her attention to the toilet brush now, and pulls that disgusting thing out so she can chew on the handle.

Tuesday night was not a good night.  I let her out of her crate before I was quite done with fixing dinners and she had put paws up and finished half a bowl – not hers – before I could get to her.  I had to wrestle her off that bowl.  I put her back in a kitchen crate, and when I finished dinners and let her out thinking she was following me and her bowl back to the back of the house where her crate was, I was wrong.  I got there, but she ran back into the kitchen to finish off another bowl of food.  She’s a bit of a barbarian.

I was afraid of one possible conflict of dogs, my female Aussie.  However, Mimi has chosen her as a special friend and they choose each other to play chase games with.  Bunny occasionally plays with Dudley, but Bunny and Mimi have played together a lot.  Bunny is the very serious head of the fun police, so tries to hide her having fun by being the police at the same time. That dichotomy is very entertaining.  One night I didn’t know where Mimi was and I went into the kitchen and there she was playing with Bunny, who looked appalled that I caught her playing!  I hope Mimi loosens Bunny up a lot more.  Of course, everyone plays with Dudley.  Mimi’s no exception.  She’s already saved Dudley from a Dobie who was doing the usual pulling on his fur while playing. He likes that, but Mimi didn’t like that and stopped the action.   Bunny will step into stop that now and then too.  This is different than Dobies.  Usually two females don’t hit it off as well and as fast, if at all.

Mimi slept in my bed the whole first day, Sunday.  Even though I had part of an ex-pen on it to keep the dogs off.  She found a spot to snuggle into…my pillow!  That was the only day she slept so much.

She is OK with her crate, thank goodness.  She gets excited when I come home now, and barks a small, girlie bark along with the other dogs and their barks of welcome home, now let us out.

Besides being housebroken, thank you Goddess!, she doesn’t know much else.  I am teaching her sit, and her name.

Speaking of sit, she sits a lot. When she’s in the back yard, she sits more than any other dog. I wonder if that’s normal stuff.

She is heartworm positive.  I didn’t know that till Sunday when I read her accompanying paperwork.  It’s light positive, so I will use Ivermectin, once I get the OK.  I already sent in her MDR1 Genotype test to Washington State University.  This will let me know if she can take many drugs, Ivermectin being one of them.  Many herding breeds have a sensitivity to a certain class of drugs that can be lethal.  They also suggest all mixed breeds get tested.  Mimi didn’t care for the small brush I had to rotate under her lips to get the cells for the MDR1 test.  One didn’t fall on the ground.  The other sort of got flung there.

Sometimes, she can’t get enough of me.  She needs to hug and be hugged, and on my lap, and petted.  I was afraid this was going to be an on-going situation, but it has tapered off enough where she can go lie down somewhere else after she gets fulfilled or I tell her I need some space.   She will even go in the living room and lie down when I’m in the back room.  This is different than my Dobies who have to be in the same room with me.  It’s their law.

These sites helped me determine if she has the BC personality.

Border Collie Rescue Texas

Border Collie Basics