Pondering

Yesterday we met Cindy and Chris from Border Collie Rescue of Ontario. We drove the hour or so to the SuperDogs training facility in Bowmanville, east of Toronto. The photo is from their website at www.superdogcentral.ca. We were an hour early (no excitement there, eh?), but as it turned out, so were they! Chris had to go to work earlier than he expected, and Cindy had sent us an email late the night before -- that we didn't see -- asking if we could come earlier than we had planned. Synchronicity.

So there we were, Birgit and I, sitting in the Subaru in the cold, thinking we were an hour early, and suddenly this other car pulls up in the parking lot. Cindy jumped out and came over to our car. Chris got out of the driver's seat and opened the passenger door, and out jumped Hiro. Cindy had me take the leash immediately and showed us the way inside. After years of calm Buddy on the other end of the leash, Hiro's gyrations took me a bit by surprise, but we made it inside without any problems.

The facility is huge! What a great place to train dogs. They must have every possible kind of training tool there -- hurdles, rings, tunnels, you name it. Cindy gave Hiro his favorite ball, and we were off to the races. My arm is sore today from throwing the ball so much. He is definitely ready to play! After a few throws, he started bringing the ball back to me closer, and closer, and closer, until he would run full speed toward me with the ball in his mouth and end up with his head sort of stuck in my chest as I knelt there. It was great!

But still, I do have concerns. Cindy thinks Hiro was a farm dog who spent little, if any, time inside a house. He was shocked the first time she turned on a TV, and she has found him standing on all fours on top of her kitchen counter. He also knows "sit" and "stay" in French, being from Montreal. What an interesting dog. He is really a 15-month-old blank slate. I hope I would be up to the task of training him properly. It's been a long, long time since I was in obedience school with a pup!

The next step is the home visit. Cindy and Chris will come to our house this Friday. We'll see how Max and Hiro react to each other.