Pedigree Pictorial - DeltaBluez Jude

I've been researching online for pictures of dogs from Jude's pedigree. I've found quite a few but there are still a lot more gaps! If you have any photos of the 'blanks' here, send them to me!

Jude's Latest Puppy Lesson

Jude and I had a wonderful lesson with Diane at her farm on the 24th. Perhaps this was Jude's Christmas gift to me - that is, going in both directions around his sheep with ease and listening and cooperating with me!

He is getting a rather reliable 'lie down' on him which came in handy when Diane had me work with him on my own. No longer does he head the sheep and stop moving! Diane shared some tricks of the trade with me to get him going right. I also have to say that I did a pretty good job of working with him. I'm certain that getting to work with some of Diane's own dogs over the last year - from the seasoned 11 y/o professional dog to a young and vivacious 10 month-old, came in handy with getting my timing right and setting my expectation level for Jude.

Now that Jude is getting older and has demonstrated he can take some pressure, Jude will be getting more sheep time - I'm thinking now we'll get him on sheep once a week instead of just once every 2-3 weeks. In early Spring, depending on how things progress, he'll be able to get on sheep twice a week (plus, it will be lighter out and I'll be able to get to the farm after work!).








I was very happy with Jude this past weekend! Yay for the Klondike Bar Dog!

DeltaBluez Jude - Puppy Lesson

Jude had his 7 month birthday on December 18. He is a fairly large dog now. He expresses his enthusiam for life by darting around outside like an idiot, playing fiercely with Mattie, picking on Lucky and getting corrected by Scott. He's also started agility classes with me as I think this is a great outlet to build confidence and strengthen our relationship. He is pretty pushy but also very sensible.

A couple weeks ago, Jude had his 2nd puppy lesson with Karen Child at Fido's Farm in Yelm, WA. Video of his first lesson at age 5 months was posted on my blog a couple months ago.

Now at age 7 months, Jude continues to show keeness on stock. He also shows that he would rather be in a room full of sheep by himself - you can tell at first with Karen that he doesn't really want to bother with the concept of cooperating with her! She had to get into his head a bit - at least as much as a 7 month old dog can handle.

At 5 months, Jude liked to head the sheep. At 7 months, he still wants to do this. Jude prefers the comeby (clockwise) direction and I was very excited to see Karen making some headway in getting Jude to go in the away-to-me (counter-clockwise) direction. And, at age 7 months, he is a lot better with lying down when asked - although this is still pretty hard for him and still needs some reminders!

This session was also the first time a little bit of training pressure was introduced to Jude. At home, it's clear Jude is not overly sensitive when it comes to corrections, so Karen was able to get in some much needed correcting to Jude's sneaky and naughty behaviors. He is a bit of a stubborn, hard headed dog already! For much of his lesson, Jude was also on a long-line with Karen; without the line, Jude was not making much progress. The line offered Karen the ability to shape desired behaviors and gently correct as needed. You can see Jude starting to figure things out with Karen and near the end of the puppy lesson, they actually start to team up a bit - he appears to actually be cooperating!

All in all, I felt that the puppy lesson was a very good one for my dog - I think he learned quite a bit even though the lesson was only 15 minutes and that he is still very much a puppy-spaz!

My friend Wayne filmed Jude's lesson with his HD camera. The loud sounds in the background is the rain hitting the arena's roof - it was a downpour that day!

http://www.youtube.com/user/wseward01#p/a/u/1/Q5TyULhtJCM


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Happy Howlidays 2010

Tis the Season for pet themed ornaments and antlers on your dogs!

Well, some of the dogs are more comfortable in antlers than others...

Mattie likes wearing her antlers. She even has the santa-beard to really emphasize her holiday spirit.

Scott is, er, not a fan of wearing antlers (or dog-back packs, or coats or sweaters). This was the best shot of Scott I could get of him.

I tried to put the antlers on Lucky but he is so gamey, he was trying to rip the antlers out of my hands. For a little dog, he is very driven. Here is a tree ornament that looks like him anyway...

Jude would not sit still. The one picture I got of him (antler-less) does not want to load into blogger, so unfortunately, no festive pictures of the giant Border Collie puppy today.

GiGi, our cat, is a dilute calico. For some reason, the tree ornament makers in China love to make ornaments that look exactly like our cat.

Since I haven't yet found a blue-eyed Border Collie ornament - I guess I need two of these now anyway - I use this steer to represent Scott...

And, for Jude (aka Klondike Bar) - he gets to be repped by this fluffy Suffolk from Switzerland.

I found some chicken ornaments this year. Yes, I know this is a rooster. However, I think Russian Orloff chicken ornaments are even rarer than blue-eyed Border Collie ornaments. Myrtle and Mergatroid the Orloffs will just have to get by with this ornament for now.

This season was also the first time I have successfully grown an Amaryllis. I bought the kit at the end of October and planted it in early November. This thing has gone gangbusters in our living room. So much so in fact, that out of the one bulb planted I actually have two stems that popped out. The stem shown here is about 2.5 feet tall. It's pretty amazing. The other stem (you can see it peaking up on the bottom right in this photo) is well on its way to being as tall as its older sibling.

And, this is a picture of the delicious Swedish baked goodies my dear co-worker Sandy makes each year. I especially look forward to the cookies in this pile that look like Snickerdoodles. But, these are no average Snickerdoodles. These happen to be Swedish Ammonia Cookies. Yep, you read that right, ammonia! Sandy orders this special cooking ammonia from an online Swedish bakery. I can describe this cookie as something that looks like a snickerdoodle, but is crumbly, lightly sweet, airy and has a very slight chewiness, sort of like a homemade meringue. Sandy knows I love these cookies and so she filled up my plate with them along with other Swedish goodies she baked.

Diary of a giant Border Collie puppy

Dear Diary,

I continue to grow.

I am now bigger than Mattie the beardie and taller than my great-uncle Scott.

Although I still don't see the point of running around sheep in a counter-clockwise direction, I discovered this weekend that mom really likes it when I stop running around them when she asks me to.

My dad says my ears - one sticks up and one flops over - give me "character."

I am not sure why mom gets annoyed when I jump on the couch and onto the remote control and turn the TV off or mute it. She does though.

I love cow hooves and beef shank bones. I like cheese and hotdogs too. I am pretty sure I like all food.

I am wearing my cousin Mattie's fancy Coach collar right now because I broke-through my puppy collar while on a walk. Mom says when I stop growing I will get my own special collar with my name on it.

That white stuff all over my yard a couple weeks ago was certainly fun, especially when I pulled my mom across the ice. What isn't fun is getting toenails trimmed.

Oh, and I keep hearing talk about a tree being inside the house soon. Said tree will be on a table though to prevent GiGi the cat and us dogs from destroying it. I don't know, that sounds like a challenge to me.

~ Jude

Jude the Dude

Jude is more than 6 months old now and is really starting to express himself in good and bad ways! He has a few nicknames, including Jude the Dude, Jude-ee Juderson and Klondike Bar. I am sure that once we start getting serious with his training on sheep he'll earn a few more nicknames too.

I picked up Jude from the airport at the end of July - only four months ago. He's grown so much since then! He was always a big puppy but he truly dwarfed many of the other puppies we ran into at sheepdog trials. Here he is in the cargo area of Alaska Airlines when I picked him and his dam, Sleat, up from their quick flight from Sacramento, CA. The crate is supposed to hold a 20lb dog which I thought would be great for an 11 week old pup. Again, Jude was kind of a chunker though...

At first, Mattie had about 15 pounds on Jude. It only took an afternoon for Jude to start serious playtime with Mattie. So began the daily antics of wrestling around the living room and gnawing on each other's faces.

Jude is growing up. He's taller than Mattie and Scott now. His right ear is erect like his mom's and his left ear is floppy like his dad's Del'Mar side. His nose still has one pink spot on the right. His black eyeliner - a signature of him dam - is pretty much all filled in now. He is getting some heavy ticking on his front legs and it appears some light ticking on his face (in addition to one bold black spot on his nose that he's always had that I attritube to his Del'Mar lines). His paws are all white except for one toe - that's black.

As he gets older, he's getting busier and nosier. He graduated puppy obedience class in November and we are starting puppy-level agility with him soon. I think he's going to love it. I'm hoping agility classes will help him with his obedience in the presence of fun and distraction, and will help the relationship I have with him as well.

He has been in the round pen with sheep a few times now. While his recall is pretty good for a puppy, the all important "lie down" and "stay" is not that good. We will work on this in the coming weeks off stock. He is very keen to the sheep and has shown some good stuff already with regard to keeping off the stock and going between sheep and the fence with confidence. I'm pretty excited with him so far and can't wait for this Spring/Summer when his training can really begin.

Jude experienced his first snowfall this Thanksgiving holiday. All I can say is that he enjoys the snow more than Scott does but in this photo, Jude actually looks like he'd rather be in the house taking a bubble bath!



I created a copy of Jude's pedigree at sitstay.com. I only put his dams and sires on it; I didn't think there was room for the owners/breeders info. If you are intersted in knowing this aditional info, send me an email. Click on the image to make it bigger.

Fight Club

Welcome to Fight Club.

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.

The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!





Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.



Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight.



Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas.

Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons.

Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to.

And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Jude's Puppy Lesson

On Sunday I took Jude to Fido's Farm for a lesson with Karen Child. Karen is a respected sheepdog handler and instructor from Oregon and she is giving lessons at Fido's on a weekend each month all winter long. This is her website http://comebyekennel.com/

Jude's lesson was a puppy lesson, meaning for Jude, who is only 5 months old, would get to spend his time having fun in the presence of sheep for about 15 minutes. For me, it was a chance to see my darling, sweet little puppy "turn on" to sheep and validated that yes, indeed, I have myself a budding, working sheepdog.

It also gave Karen and I the chance to see how "mature" Jude was with regard to a training plan for him. As dogs all mature at different rates, it's always nice to get a benchmark for where your individual dog is at. In Jude's case, it was clear he is interested in sheep and was enthusiastic about them. However, he did some typical puppy-stuff, like heading the sheep and not really concerning himself with the handler who was in the pen with him. So, we will give Jude some time to grow up a little more and then try him on the sheep again and see what he's like.

I was able to take some video of Jude's session with Karen. You can see that he does like to go to the sheeps' heads instead of circling them, which the latter is preferred behavior but isn't required at this time. As Karen explained, we could try him in 4 or 6 weeks from now and it's likely he won't go to their heads and be more natural to circling the sheep. Pups apparently change over time.

I'm pretty excited that I'm getting the opportunity to start my own dog and have a hand in his training from the start. Scott has been awesome to learn from but sometimes he leaves me with more questions than answers. What is natural for a dog versus what is all training??? Getting the opportunity to work and train Rainey, Scott's daughter, is pretty cool too as her style, strengths and weaknesses are in many cases the same as Scott's!

Hmmm, makes one wonder. Nature or nurture? Chicken or egg?

Scotty See Sheep?

Scott, do you see your sheep?

It sure looks like you do!

Scotty... bring those sheep to mama.

Looks like Scott has got it covered...

Scott. Please deposit these sheep into the pen. Yes, the one with the American flag on it. And yes, make sure you get that pesky black sheep in too!

Jude, the uber-puppy, aptly nicknamed the Klondike Bar, is in awe of his great-uncle Scott and his way with sheep.

Hey Jude

Please welcome a new addition to our family!

Delta Bluez Jude

Jude arrived via Alaska Airlines on Friday, July 30th. I picked him, and his dam Sleat up from the airport as they arrived from Sacramento - it was only a short flight and both dogs did very well. They happened to be on the same flight as Martin Buser's Itidarod sled dog team (I saw Martin and his staffers as well as all his dogs, but I had no clue who it was until yesterday!).

Jude is nearly 12 weeks old and is really quite a pistol as well as being quite a looker. He is marked just like his mother Sleat who is one of the most unique Border Collies I've seen - and that's unique in a good way (she is beautiful!). Although we've had Jude less than 48 hours he is already well adjusted to the other dogs and is getting the hang of our routines. Right now, he is winding himself up in a fleece blanket... As expected, Scott and Lucky are not amused by a puppy in the house but they are taking the new addition quite well. Mattie is non-chalant about the whole thing - she knows she is still my number one girl. In a couple months as Jude gets bigger, he will become Mattie's #1 play buddy, giving Lucky a much needed break.

Jude went to Diane's sheep farm yesterday and our friend Kathleen surprised us both by announcing her new puppy as well! A 12 week old Australian Kelpie named Josh. Talk about cute! He and Jude came to be fast friends and it will be great to see Josh and Jude grow up together.

The pups found a piece of hard plastic and decided to wrestle for it...

Jude seems to think that by sitting on your opponent, you can get what you want. In this case, he was right and ended up taking off with the plastic-prize.

It will be fun to document Jude's puppyhood on the blog. Stay tuned!