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Need solutions to tame brat collie girl (long)



 
 
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Old September 6th 04, 03:49 PM
Chris Jung
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Default Need solutions to tame brat collie girl (long)

Hi all,
As you know we adopted our new collie girl, Lucy, a little over 4 months
ago. Overall she fits in perfectly in our family. Lucy was just under 2 when
we brought her home. She was living at her breeder's house, in a rural
subdivision. Each lot was about 3 acres or so. The local kids like to run
their ATVs & motorbikes in the field behind the breeder's property. Her
collies (all five of them) hate the motorbikes and take great delight in
chasing after them along the fence line.

At first, if Lucy saw anything exciting outside the fence (exciting being an
animal such as squirrel, mowers being used by our neighbors, people walking,
biking or running on our streets.) she would rush the fence, barking
furiously. That was really obnoxious. To reduce this behavior I only let her
out when I can go out too. When she starts a charge, I call/distract her.
I've been taking on many walks to expose her to bicyclists and all sorts of
people. While on walks, at first she would get overly excited about
bicyclists but is now nicely blasé about them. She has always been very
friendly and polite with meeting people on walks.

I need to describe our backyard set-up so you can understand our current
problem. Our house is a raised ranch which means our basement is half out of
the ground. The windows for the basement are unusually large. Inside they
start at 4 feet and go to the ceiling. They are 6 feet wide. Due to some
extra insulation work, three of the windows have extra deep sills which are
1 feet deep. The majority of our basement is an apartment rented by
Allison, a vet who has 1 dog (Sydney who hangs with us) and two cats,
Tabitha & Lilly.

Of the six windows in the apartment, four of them face the fenced in
backyard (two facing south, two facing east). It's very easy for a nosy
collie to spy on our tenant's activities. (go to
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/chrisjjung/my_photos to see a photo of Lucy
supervising Jo, our previous tenant while she was folding her laundry)

The problem is that if Lucy sees any movement in the apartment, she likes to
stalk and then rush up to the window with a big loud roar. I've been on the
reviving end of one of her charges and I just about had a heart attack. (As
an aside, Lucy was most embarrassed and apologetic when she realized that it
was me that she had startled) The two extra wide window sills would make
ideal cat sunning spots but when Lucy spies a cat, she charges to the
window, slamming her nose into the window/screen and spraying the window
with little rocks. Poor scaredy cat Tabitha runs. Lilly on the other hand,
has taken up the challenge and likes to taunt Lucy. They will both stand at
the window, nose to nose. Lilly will pace and occasionally sit up and paw at
Lucy's face through the glass. Lucy whines, wags and matches Lilly's pacing.
Both Lucy and Lilly are brats. If Lilly hears that I've let Lucy outside,
she immediately jumps up to the sill and taps at the pane to get Lucy's
attention.

Allison and I don't mind that Lucy and Lilly have a sort of play
relationship going. What we don't like is Lucy's sneaky charging/barking
behavior. Allison should be able to have her curtains open and walk around
her apartment without a bratty collie sneaking up on her.

My impression is that Lucy isn't doing this out of fear but that she thinks
it's fun. I"m pretty sure she knows I don't like it (if I spy her starting a
charge, I just need to say her name and she puts on the brakes and starts
non-chalantly sniffing grass). But she's sly and waits until I've turned my
back to make a quick charge.

I've thought about doing something in front of the window to force Lucy to
stay back. I had heard that dogs don't like to step on upside down plastic
runners (like those plastic mat used under office chairs). I tried that and
discovered that Lucy doesn't mind at all stepping on those plastic points.
I've tried a tube of chicken wire on the ground before the windows thinking
that she wouldn't like to get her little toes caught in it but that doesn't
bother her either.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to break Lucy of her bratty sneak attack
habit? I'm now thinking of buying some welded wire fence, pound in some
fence posts and making a half circle buffer zone around each window. I'm not
thrilled with doing that - it'll be a hassle. Any other ideas?

Chris and her smoothies,
Pablo the Good and Lucy the Total Brat, good thing she's cute


 




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