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Look at him! Legs for days. All muscle. Super athletic. Sooooo good lookin’.

Also, completely useless.

We were enrolled in a Scent Hurdle Seminar this weekend, and I have been so looking forward to trying something new with my Big Red Dog. But for us the seminar lasted through one exercise, mostly unsuccessfully. We tried some restrained recalls/runbacks over the hurdles – but there were dogs barking in the other direction, so Oy either didn’t do the hurdles or did do the hurdles and then ran past me, did a big circle and tried to run toward the barking dogs.

The next exercise was to “interest the dog in the dumbbell.” We have been practicing with the dumbbells at home, so he is familiar with them. But you know what he was actually interested in? Other dogs barking and being excited. I could not get him to look at the dumbbell, or at me, or do a nose touch, or even face in my fucking direction. I took him out into the barn corridor and tried there, no luck. I took him out into the parking lot, also no luck. So I put him in the truck and went home because what’s the point of being there if my dog not only can’t do ANYTHING except stare at and lunge at other excited dogs, but also because I HATE THAT BEHAVIOUR and I don’t want him to have the opportunity to practice it. Because practice makes perfect.

And so that was $150 for 5 minutes of training. I didn’t stay and “audit” because I cried in my car instead of paying money to sit in a freezing barn and watch other dogs learn things my dumb dog can’t do.

I am so so so so SO frustrated with him. We almost quit agility foundation class for this same reason, though after MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS of class (and hundreds of dollars) he can now work in class about 75% of the time provided there is not more than one other dog in the barn at the same time as him, and it can’t be doing anything interesting or making any noise. And honestly, after something like 8 months of foundation class he still can’t do any obstacles – forget sequencing – because we waste so much time focusing on getting him to focus that he has fallen way behind his classmates, so I am thinking about throwing in the towel on those classes after this set too.

I am putting another cute photo of him in here because typing this is making me angry and I have to remember that I actually do like him.

And people looooove to tell me, with that condescending head tilt, and that little puckery mouth gesture that I want to rip right off their face, “Well, he’s an adolescent boy border collie.” Like that explains everything. It explains nothing actually. This is NOT my first or second or third or fourth or fifth (you get the idea) rodeo. I have owned and lived with and trained drivey, intense dogs – SUCCESSFULLY. We have played many sports and won things. Big things! From the time Oy was a small puppy, I knew we had a challenge in this area. I worked so hard on engagement with him and got NOWHERE. To this day, his favourite place to be is far away from me – and it’s stupid, and I know it’s stupid, but it HURTS my feelings – and nothing I have to offer him in terms of rewards or engagement is as rewarding as focusing on other dogs having fun. For all of my other border collies the run rose and set on me, but for Oy I am just an obstacle between him and things that he finds interesting.

Here are my favourite (NOT) suggestions from people on this topic:

• What about rewarding with food? (right, because border collies are not at all known for not being food motivated at the best of times, AND THESE ARE THE WORST TIMES)
• Have you tried tugging with him? (I have worked on tug with Oy from the day after I brought him home, he does not like to tug with me)
• Maybe he just needs to try a different sport, like Nosework (No offence to the Nosework lovers out there, but no. I have no interest in doing Nosework. Also how does that solve the problems we are having? Stop suggesting it.)

I have worked so hard on foundation stuff with this dog from the time he was small and we have the worst working relationship I have ever had with any dog. I stopped playing fetch with him (and I played way less fetch with him than any of my previous dogs) because I felt I was just the means for making the ball or disc move, but it has made no difference – if I am not going to throw something for him, he just fucks off and does his own thing in the woods. I have worked so hard on training so many little behaviours to make training fun and something he wants to do with me, but he can take it or leave it.

The worst thing is that he is not even interested in other DOGS – he is only interested in their excitement. If he takes off on me in the barn and goes to see what another dog is doing, he doesn’t even interact with them at all. As soon as they stop being excited, he stops being interested. It’s not like he is chasing them or pouncing on them. And it’s not, like, motion – though motion is part of the equation – it’s the barking that gets him all interested the most.

I don’t even know what to do anymore. Nobody has given me any useful suggestions and I don’t have any more ideas. The only game he can play where he can successfully ignore other dogs is disc – when we went to disc class he could play while other dogs were playing at the same time. So I know he can do it, I just can’t figure out how to get him to do it. And I want to play more than disc with him. I wanted him to be me Do Everything dog and instead he is my Do Nothing dog. I will just throw him on the pile with my other household full of Do Nothing dogs :( I love all my dogs (maybe not Evil Baby though for real) but they aren’t candidates for Doing Stuff.

My friend who is an agility instructor invited me to bring him to one of her classes this week so she can see if she has any ideas, but I am trying not to get my hopes up. Oy’s Gotcha Day is coming up in a few days and PETTY AS IT IS I don’t feel celebratory because my dog is a damn dud. Or I suck. Whatever. If you have any training suggestions for this scenario, please feel free to share them.

Neato is a Do Nothing dog because he has performance anxiety and will only Do Stuff when nobody is watching. I mean anyone other than me. And while his legs are short, his grudges are lengthy, so it has taken him this long to finally play with Evil Baby. I think it was partly or mainly out of desperation though – Addy is too old and grouchy to play now, and since I was not busting out the Chuck It or Frisbee, Oy had fucked off into the forest and Neato really wanted to play. So Evil Baby it was.

Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable.

This is just a photo of Winter because he is so old and so handsome. He has been a Do Nothing dog his whole life, and that’s okay. Because I didn’t pick him special and fly on a friggin’ airplane to go get him. GRUMBLE

Also to round off my perfect weekend I got a really good deal on a 20 gallon tank with PEA PUFFERS (omg so cute) in it and went and picked it up today and was so excited but the previous owners were very neglectful, the water in the tank was so filthy I couldn’t see the fish (I really wanted to scoop them out and pour the water in buckets I brought for traveling, so I could mix old water with new to acclimate them slowly, but it was -1 outside so I couldn’t be poking around in the 4 inches of filthy black water trying to find the fish) so when I got home and tried to carry the tank into the house it was WAY too heavy for me and I kinda stumbled into the house and I hit the tank on the door handle AND BROKE IT, so now two pea puffers, a small pleco of some kind and a fancy shrimp are all living in my emergency 5 gallon tank, and now I have to buy a bigger tank so the puffers are no longer a good deal AND OVERALL THIS WEEKEND JUST KINDA SUCKED. Even if these are first world problems.

So in summary – if you have dog training ideas for me to help solve my Oy problem, please share. Also if you have a spare 20 gallon fishtank for cheap, also please share lol

(i love him i love him i love him i don’t hate him i love him i love him i love him)

2025 was not kind to The Food Lady. It started out garbage-y when Donut died, which while technically was 2024 was close enough to 2025 to make no nevermind.

It then brightened up a month later with the arrival of my shining star Oy. My first purpose breed puppy, my first time on an airplane alone to retrieve him, first time I chose a puppy instead of a rescue choosing me. And other than the confinement issues we had at first, he was SUCH a good puppy.

And I thought everything was coming up roses; I had a great puppy, I’m living in a great little house with a huge yard, five minutes from work so I could spend a lot of time working with my new puppy, my job was going well and everything was great. And about a month after that, the worst event of my life happened, I was deeply traumatized by it and I’m still not okay and it was a real tough slog for months after that. Sometimes it still is.

And then a few months after that, Dexter died. He was very old and his body had given up and it was time, but it was a terrible blow. He was the last of the OGs and it just really hit home for me that an era of my life was over.

My family got so much smaller, so fast and very traumatically. It was hard to keep up with the emotional turnover.

When Neato got “sick” and I had such terrible experiences with the veterinary clinics that were supposed to be helping us, I was really disappointed with some of the responses to me expressing that frustration online. A number of long time followers were really dismissive of my experience and I couldn’t help but feel like there was an element of petty vengeance in that dismissal, like some of you resented me not sharing the painful event where I lost my girls and maybe even the time off I took afterward. Maybe after 20ish years of sharing all the details of my dog life I set the bar too high and when I needed privacy some of you took it personally, I don’t know. But I lost some long time followers who were really pro-vet in this scenario. And maybe some of you would like to know that the same specialty clinic that insisted Neato needed to be hospitalized at 9PM on Tuesday night – despite all other medical opinions the contrary and the fact that he was racing around with a stuffy in the yard at the time – is the clinic that missed a gastro-intestinal blockage not once, not twice, but three times in a friend’s dog, sending her home each time with “gas.” The fourth time they removed a couple dozen feet of dead bowel and a stuffy toy and charged her $11,000.00 for their services. I trusted my gut, and glad I did, even if some of you thought I was being overly dramatic.

Neato is, by the way, completely fine and has had no other episodes since. And I genuinely believe this to be because I stopped letting him eat cardboard. Oy had a lot of cardboard for enrichment when he was a puppy – I shoved treats in paper towel tubes, in egg cartons, in boxes inside boxes, so he would have activities to keep him occupied – and Neato LOVES to eat cardboard and scavenged around constantly for the castoffs. The vets said cardboard would just digest, but I think a lot of that super compressed cardboard is way more complicated than that and I think it temporarily blocked him and caused some motility issues until it finally did digest and pass. Because no more cardboard = Neato with normal appetite.

Then I got Evil Baby in a moment of weakness and PTSD, because he looked so much like Fae in his shelter photo. But he is not Fae and I do not love him. His behaviours make him challenging to love and sometimes even to like. One day I will deep dive his complicated temperament. He was problematic from the moment I brought him home, which I shared in a light-hearted way to more shitty reception from people that I thought understood my humour after years of following me. This probably sounds pretty woe-is-me to some of you, but you know what? After the year I’ve had, I am really sensitive and easily wounded by hurts, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it, so if you can’t be empathetic you know where the door is. I’m sad to have lost you, but I have enough on my emotional plate right now.

Take this with you when you go though.

Oh sure, it looks cute and all, but there is no relaxing with this thing in my house. It’s a constant vigil against escalation and overarousal. My ADOLESCENT BORDER COLLIE is more relaxing than this little flag-tailed twelve pound turd. I don’t really want him in my house but nobody else seems to want him in their house either, despite my best efforts (and yes, I do realize that naming him Evil Baby may have crippled those efforts somewhat). Although Oy is very fond of him, which is adorable because of the 35lb difference between them and also because when Evil gets all worked up and angry, Oy is mystified and just takes it until I come in to stop it. Because Oy is the best.

He really is the best. I mean, I didn’t mean to get a gargantuan border collie (AGAIN – and he makes Dexter look like Dexter was SMALL) who is 24″ at the shoulder and weighs 47 extremely lean lbs, but his temperament is 99% absolute perfection. Evil was a flop, but Oy won the Oscar. He is my soul mate.

I would still like to find Oy a playmate closer to his own size, and I also would like to have a regular sized border collie – or border collie adjacent – dog so I am still on the hunt for that mythical creature. And those of you following on Patreon please know that I will resume writing about that journey in the new year; I got really sick in October and in November I went through a really depressive period and could not get my shit together AT ALL, and then it was Christmas. But I am committed to returning to exploring the adopt-don’t-shop adventure I’m on and will be a lot better about it in coming weeks and months.

A follower recently said they miss my dog stories. I want you to know I miss them too. And maybe I’m not articulating this really well but the trauma that I went through this year changed ME. It took away a lot of the lightness that I enjoyed about having a pack of dogs. Dog ownership is heavier for me now in ways I can’t really explain. I am lot more hypervigilant and less cavalier. I trust less and fear a lot of unknowns. I have come to see that I will never be the same Food Lady I was before. In November, when I was so messed up, it was largely because of one facet of my life that was not going as well as I would have liked (not dog related) and it cascaded into basically daily tears, obsessing over this relatively small issue that I could not control anyway and I couldn’t put it down and walk away from it. I have come to see that 2025 broke me in ways I am still discovering and I don’t always know how to put myself back together. So I am sorry that I can’t find the flip and funny Food Lady that went with the doggie flow for so long – she’s still swimming against a tide of fear and sadness.

My old lady Addy though? She did me a solid and gave me a worry-free year. Haven’t even seen her have her annual seizure this year at all. She’s my good girl. If she could stop aging, that would be great though.

And Winter, my backup dancer, always 10 feet from stardom, old reliable, my little outlast-er, got really sick and then followed it up by getting really injured, because I guess he thought 2025 maybe needed to go out with a loaded Visa and tears, but then he pulled it together and unless he has another trick in his hat, ready to go in the next 5 hours, it looks like we’re going to adios to this SHIT year without any drama and hopefully asleep before midnight.

So here we are, a few hours away from 2025 in the rearview and I can’t be happier to see it gone. Sorry to be a downer. But to those of you who hung in there, and checked on me, and shared love with me, thank you for being you. I appreciate the kindness of those of you who understood I was not okay. I hope 2026 is a year where I heal and put down some of what I’ve been carrying around.

Cheers to you, from my very different family than this time last year.
(and I still have not taught Evil Baby a sit-stay, so I had to glue him onto the family photo)

Happy New Year. Here’s a bonus photos of DOYrkus Maximus, because he makes me laugh.

Today my awesome though EXTREMELY HUGE baby is a whole one year old! He is the size of like 11 regular one year old border collies combined, but that means there’s just more of him to love. He is now about 23″ at the shoulder and weighs a very lean 50 lbs. His breeder said “He certainly is a tall fellow” which sums him up pretty well.

And what a great year (the Oy parts anyway) it’s been. I can’t believe how lucky I got, picking a puppy sight unseen, getting on a plane and meeting a stranger at the airport in another province and ending up with the sweetest, kindest, funniest border collie ever. I was sooooo nervous about the whole “buying a puppy” scenario. I looked at an awful lot of puppies/litters for like two years. In the end all I had was two pedigrees and a lot of hope. But it turns out I did what I always do – I picked with my heart. I knew he was meant to be mine as soon as I saw his baby photo, and it turned out I was right!

I TOLD YOU ALL HE WAS RED. All you colour blind people who kept saying it was a photo of a black and white puppy. Hmph.

But I mean I didn’t think he’d be so huge. That part I did not foresee.

He is also a huge suck. He is definitely a lover, not a fighter – a couple of weeks ago at class he was attacked by another dog and all he did was cower and cry until the teacher dragged the dog off him. Because he just wants to be everydog’s friend, or at least neutral companion. I am forever rescuing him from Evil Baby who makes him cry by biting him in the face, and he never retaliates. I am glad, because he is too big to be a naughty fighty boi, but I am also glad because he is the gentle soul I love so much, all the way through his pretty red body to his kind, kind heart.

Although I did not teach him “leave it” very thoroughly, so it was verrrrry hard for him not to eat his cake during this photo taking event (I would not call it a session because it lasted about 15 seconds as we were in extreme danger of losing the cake prop to his gaping maw).

He really is so delightful. I wish has the words to tell you all how much. He is so curious, and enthusiastic, and ready to rock, but also snuggly and sweet and completely delighted by little things he discovers, like slugs. He is grossly obsessed with my armpits and thinks they require grooming in bed every night, that part is weird…but I often wake up with his head draped across my neck or torso and he has to be touching me to fall asleep at night. He will try any new sport with me because he wants to be the best boy. He puts up with grouchy old lady Addy and her snarkypants, he is gentle with Neato and makes sure he doesn’t step on him under the covers when he gets into bed. (He could be a little nicer to Winter, but Winter doesn’t really bring out the best in his brothers…and now that Dexter is gone, Winter needs someone to antagonize.)

He really is the best.

I cannot wait for all the the birthdays ahead of him that we get to share! We are going to have so much fun playing disc and agility and lure coursing and hopefully in the Spring he will get to try his paw at sheeps.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OY BOY!