Bronwyn Parry

How can one cute little puppy disrupt our settled lives (and my blogging) so thoroughly?

Way back in January I introduced our new border collie puppy, Pippin:

Pippin at nine weeks old in the toy basket.

Way back in February was the last time I updated this blog. These two things are connected 🙂

Pippin is the most gorgeous, loving, full of energy and never-stopping puppy we’ve had – and we’ve raised three other border collies! She’s now seven months old, and she has more energy and get-up-and-go than the others ever did – I not-so-jokingly say, possibly enough energy to power the state.

Not long after we brought her home, we discovered that she had a congenital deformity, an ectopic ureter. In February I took her to a specialist vet in Tamworth for scans. Basically, one ureter leading from the kidney to the bladder was embedded in the bladder wall, and through the wall of the urethra, so that it didn’t empty into her bladder at all but instead just dripped fairly continually. She really did try to keep her pees for outside, but physically it was impossible. Thankfully, we have a polished cement floor rather than carpet, but it did keep us busy cleaning up when she was inside. In March, we went back to Tamworth again for the surgery, and our little Pipsqueak spent a week in hospital.

Now, if you’ve ever had a dog who’s had major surgery, you know that the vet says to ‘keep them quiet’ for some time afterwards. And if you’ve ever had an active dog, you can imagine the challenges of keeping a super-energetic border collie puppy ‘quiet’ for two weeks! The additional instruction from the vet was ‘no running’ for four weeks post surgery – yes, you may fall about laughing now! We couldn’t put her out with the other two dogs in the dog yard for the first week or two, because she and Skye would just have chased each other at full speed around and around. So, we had a lot of time with her inside, trying to keep her entertained. Giving her bones outside on a chain worked at times, too. I gradually put her out for a while in the yard with the other two in the middle of the day – sleepy time for dogs. We did fail on the ‘no running for four weeks’ but did manage to limit it.

The surgery was successful, although it has taken a while for her bladder to stretch, and for her to get used to the new internal ‘arrangements’. All three are inside in the evenings, but because we don’t have a fence around the house, and there are so many kangaroos, wallabies and bunnies, we can’t just let them outside to pee, we have to take them out on the lead. And Pippin needs to go out every half hour or so…

She’s so active and wants to play All. The. Time. Chasing ropes or balls, playing with Skye – in the evenings we have to put her in the crate for a few short breaks, just so we can all have some quiet time. Fortunately she usually quickly drops off to sleep and we have half an hour of quiet before she wakes up and is raring to go again.

If she’s not in the crate, this can go on for ages:

All three dogs get along pretty fine:

But Pippin’s so active that sometimes Skye decides she needs a break – and she goes into the crate of her own volition for some quiet time!

So, all in all, my quiet evenings in which I used to do lots of writing, blogging etc, are now mostly taken up with dog playing and supervising. And since we’re all up at 6am to take dogs for long walks, I’m not getting much done after 10pm-ish, when the girls go outside to the dog yard for the night. It’s wonderful, it’s fun, and we wouldn’t give up our lovable little girl for anything… but I’m looking forward to her getting a little older, and learning to entertain herself more often! It’s starting to happen gradually, so all paws fingers crossed she’ll settle a bit more soon. And yes, I can see agility classes in our future!