[threenorns]

what could his dad have been?

mom's a purebred BC but really tiny - the owner says she weighs 27lbs but my friend (who still runs the pet rescue we started) thinks maybe a smidge closer to 30. she's the kind looks like a fox (very smooth fur on the body, very long feathers on ears, legs, and tail)

dad is also a purebred BC but big - he's the kind looks like a panda with a blunter face, very thick upstanding coat (think the father dog on "babe"). owner said he weighs 60lbs but my friend says not a chance - maybe 50, 55 at the most.

both dogs are actual working dogs from stock brought over from wales 40 years ago but they herd cattle now, not sheep.

she had 11 pups in the litter - 9 of them perfect teeny little black-and-white border collies like both mum and dad and then 2 crows in the nest: dandy and the only female, both black with tuxedo marks (dandy's are trout-spotted, the female's were plain) and two to three times the size of the others. one or two of the black-and-whites died and the mother rejected the two big black ones when they were 2wks old.

the farmer was going to drown them but his daughter talked him into waiting to see if my friend could help. she found someone who could take one of the black pups and she already had the female marked for me (since i'd been looking). she lives far away so she fostered the dog for a few wks until we got our schedules organized and now here i am looking at this 9wks old scrap of black fluff on my floor thinking "you don't look like a border collie" and then upon inspection "and i see you have the wrong accessory package".

but i have absolutely no regrets - he's as nurturing and mothering as any female, even when he was hyperfrenetic and out of control, he was gentle as could be with cats and kittens. mother cats in labour allow him to stick his face right in the box - i have a picture of a cat having a baby and he's licking the baby but the mother is licking his face! he's saved my daughter more than once (she has developmental issues and tends to wander).

he is now 3yrs old, weighs 70lbs, is black with white chest and trout-speckled belly and spats, the merest white tip to his tail, and a single white hair between his shoulder blades.

is it possible he's purebred border collie but a throwback?

could it be that mom entertained more than one gentleman caller?

i *could* get a DNA test done but where's the fun in that?

[cigwyllt]

Just looks like a border to me - there's a huge variety in sizes and shapes. How can your friend who runs a shelter possibly have sent you a dog and not a bitch??????

[threenorns]

yyyyyyeah, we're still discussing that, lol.

she said by the time she'd spent time with the two pups, she just knew the male was the better choice for me. the female is still doing well but she has nowhere near the personality dandy does - she's all business. i thought that was what i wanted but i guess my bff/sister of 20yrs plus knew me better than that.

[CorkyMax]

I am of course only wondering --more then making a real guess. I am inclined to think that you may be on target with the notion that there was another gentleman caller mainly because he weighs much more then a Border Collie and from the pics--he doesn't appear to be overweight. Very handsome and healthy, lol, maybe it is because of all that good food you feed him that he got so big! And hey, would love to know what all you feed and proportions if you would? And do you do any supplements, vitamins, etc? I have been feeding raw and some home cooked for about 12+ years and I still have doubts if I am doing it the best that I can.

Getting back to your dog--By the way--Don't think you said what his name is?
As far as the bigger weight---A male Australian Shepherd can be in the range of 40 to 70 lbs. I have only seen pics of these 2 breeds but there appears to be somewhat of a resemblance. Do you know if this farmer has/had more dif. breeds of dogs around at the time the mother dog got pregnant? Of course if he didn't, doesn't mean another different breed wasn't in the vicinity esp. as that mother dog prob. ran loose wherever she wanted being a farm dog. I didn't think a border collie would be so black and of course the Australian Shepherd isn't prob. all black either. The only reason I mention the Australian Shepherd is because of the more weight your dog has.

Here are some links to check out--> This 1st one is of the Border Collie. I am putting this one here because it gives a pretty detailed description. Thinking maybe you might see something there that your dog doesn't have that might make you suspect another breed may be mixed in your dog.---.
Border Collie Information and Pictures, Border Collies

Hey this could be it!! Border Collie--Black Lab! That 11th pic sure looks to me a lot like your dog. And also note the pic just above it and the 3rd pic is not bad either! The male Lab would also have a weight range of 60-75 lbs. too And that great looking coat your dog has could be because of a Black Lab--so dark and glossy!! And your dog is almost all black--which is a Lab thing too. I of course don't have the 2 pics next to each other but that face is pretty right on for both I think. And Black Labs are pretty popular so the mother dog had a good chance of meeting up with one! If there is another breed mixed in with your dog--I just know this is the best bet!-----Borador, Boradors, Border Collie Lab Hybrid

And here is the link for the Black Lab so you can read the description and note that a Black Lab has brown eyes like your dog! What color is a Border Collie's eyes? It seems to me that maybe they don't have brown eyes?--->Labrador Retriever Information and Pictures, Labs I just checked on Border Collie eye color---Some do have brown eyes.

A little resemblance?--1st dog on page 3 of the pics--Lot of black on that one too--Australian Shepherd Pictures and Photos, 3
I am only giving this so you can see the 1st 2 pics--I know your dog is not this mix but it does remind me of your dog.
Australian Retriever, Australian Shepherd Golden Retriever Hybrid Dogs, Australian Retrievers

What do you think!?

[threenorns]

he gets mostly beef, but i feed him chicken once or twice a week - chicken leg quarters. i keep it just under a pound a day in two feedings - when he was younger, he needed closer to 2-1/2lb a day because we lived out in the bush and he was VERY VERY active (plus he was a growing pup).

if it's cheap enough, he gets lamb but i don't give him veal because i can't see any nutritional value in anaemic meat. i don't give him pork only because it makes him fart - trichinosis is pretty much a non-issue these days thanks to modern processing methods.

every so often, i give him carrots, sweet potato, mashed potato (cooked - bit of butter or olive oil, no milk or cream), cooked eggs (raw eggs prevent absorption of vitamin B), banana, or squash. he prefers acorn but will eat butternut - hates pumpkin. i just switch out one meat meal for the equivalent in veg.

he gets bones on a regular basis - sometimes he gets constipated but sweet potato fixes that pretty quickly.


i love the pics in the link! definitely can see resemblances in some of them.

this is the dog most ppl mistake him for - flat-coated retriever, which are apparently quite rare these days: Flat-Coated Retriever - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

he's the right height, right weight, and his build is similar. his personality fits the profile perfectly and border collie is one of the dogs mixed in to improve temperature and manageability so that would fit, too.

reading the borador page: *facepalm* - "hybrid" dog - a mix of two breeds of dog is NOT a hybrid!

a "hybrid", by strict definition, is a mix of two *species*, not two different types of the same specie.

i had a hybrid - wolf/dog. my mom's goldendoodle is not a hybrid - it's a designer dog, to be kind, or a mutt, to be strictly factual.

"mickie roonie rourke" could be dandy's clone!

the farm is a huge one but it's in the bush and during hunting season, there are a LOT of ppl bringing a LOT of dogs into the area - good odds it was a lab, i agree.

[CorkyMax]

This is a 2 part reply as I made it too long--Needs to only be up to10000 characters or it won't 'fly!'---so see the following post also!

[QUOTE=threenorns;106917]he gets mostly beef, but i feed him chicken once or twice a week - chicken leg quarters. i keep it just under a pound a day in two feedings - when he was younger, he needed closer to 2-1/2lb a day because we lived out in the bush and he was VERY VERY active (plus he was a growing pup). I just recently started feeding bigger servings of meat as I am afraid I wasn't giving enough before. I don't feed any bones---use to a long time ago. Especially chicken necks/wings but was leery of them as one dog, a Cocker/Golden mix would gulp them down and the other pure cocker didn't care for them that much. But wish they were getting bones as I know it is good for the calcium and cleaning the teeth. And the price of those round cross cut beef bones are ridiculously high priced at my groc. store--$1.69 to $1.79 a #. They told me it was because they don't have an expensive diamond? saw and they go through what saws they do use pretty quickly. Lol, it wouldn't be so bad if they would leave a little meat on the bones--absolutely no meat at all!

if it's cheap enough, he gets lamb but i don't give him veal because i can't see any nutritional value in anaemic meat. i don't give him pork only because it makes him fart - trichinosis is pretty much a non-issue these days thanks to modern processing methods. Would love to feed some lamb but out of my price range. And I know pork is safer to feed raw (so I do feed it at times for the variety--but I always cook it. (Also cook the fish). but I am still cautious of raw pork because of the trichinosis--If you are sure it is from the USA then better but who knows for sure what some farmers are really doing! I am sure you know that it is supposedly safe because MOST pigs are not permitted to run in unclean environments and are on cement, etc floors but I am afraid it isn't 100% done! I just will not feed raw pork. I would love to feed a lot of venison but hard to come by--The hunters in my family including son-in-laws and grandchildren get quite a few deer during hunting season and enough that I could have some for me but crap!-They will not let me feed it to my dogs--Really pis*es me off!! I even offered to pay for the deer license for them to get me a deer! No go!! And I can't say it is for me because they know I don't/won't eat venison! Have you ever fed venison to your dog(s)? I believe it is the best meat for them--very lean (If fed a lot though-you'd best give more fat in the diet.) No hormones, etc fed to them like all the crap that is fed our cattle to fatten them up for market--Did you know that there is even cement dust fed to put weight on them! I don't feed as much beef as I would like --Even the supermarket regular beef is so high priced and not the best meat either but I sure can't afford organic!

every so often, i give him carrots, sweet potato, mashed potato (cooked - bit of butter or olive oil, no milk or cream), cooked eggs (raw eggs prevent absorption of vitamin B), banana, or squash. he prefers acorn but will eat butternut - hates pumpkin. i just switch out one meat meal for the equivalent in veg. I feed raw eggs including the white raw. The white has more protein then the yolk. There is suppose to be more then enough Biotin in the raw yolk to make up for what the raw white depletes! And this just lit up a light bulb----Prob. getting hardly any--Maybe none!-- of the Biotin as this is a water-soluble B vitamin and is greatly depleted when cooked/ heated!! I feed a whole raw egg-minus the shell. But that gets saved to make egg shell calcium for their calcium since I don't feed bones. They get this egg almost (95% of the time) every morning in either their cooked, cooled down enough oatmeal or in with canned rinsed mackerel that I feed at breakfast once or twice a week.

Have you ever tried raw asparagus - A lot of dogs love this stuff and very good for them and my Corky (who had to be put to sleep over a year and a half ago), the cocker/golden was no exception. I have a garden with asparagus in it. I have a chain link fence between the garden and the back yard. Corky would stand at the fence line waiting for me to throw him a spear or two of asparagus and when I walked around to the front of my house and opened the kitchen door. I couldn't even get in the door before he was snatching asparagus out of the bag I was carrying. I know he wasn't getting much nutrition being as the spears were whole and not ground up/pulverized but I couldn't refuse him because I think he even preferred this to meat as his favorite food. I ground up/pulverized plenty and froze it for future meals so he did get a lot of nutrition out of that. Lol, of course he loved cooked shrimp which he didn't get much of--too expensive! And he loved those chicken necks too. He also loved fresh picked green beans and snow peas to be thrown to him and also got into the bag for them as soon as I set the bags on the floor. Not sure but it sounds like you cook the vegetables. Do you ever give any raw? If you do you are prob. aware that they need to be ground real, real fine/pulverized in order for them to be of any value for nutrition as dogs can't break down the cellulose walls in veggies/carbs/grains and will just pass through their system with no nutrition had. A good way to see this happening is to give a whole raw carrot for the dog to chew on--good for the teeth but not much nutrition there if any as you will see the big chunks of orange carrot in the poop undigested. I also put a couple big tablespoons of pumpkin in the breakfast meal and at times --most of the time--will sprinkle some cinnamon in with it all but they will eat the pumpkin without the cinnamon too. They like it but it is mixed in with the oatmeal, etc---Probably would turn their noses up if I just gave them some plain pumpkin by itself. And I dehydrate chips of sweet potato/yams in my dehydrator which I sprinkle some cinnamon on the tops of the slices on the trays before I start drying them. Max, my cocker won't touch them though without the cinnamon on them. (The cinnamon is good for them too--just don't overdue on the amount.)--This is mainly as a treat and hopefully help clean the teeth--Don't know how much nutrition they get because of the whole cooked chip--I have seen small pieces of undigested chip in their poop so prob not getting much nutrition but the cinnamon should be good to digest.. But this is for a treat not necessarily for the nutrition and it is a treat I have control over--not commercial crap that is full of sugar and other bad things like rawhides that my dog has choked on before plus the way these are bleached/processed is not a good thing either. You may find healthier ones made in the USA that are more expensive but I still won't give because once they end up with a big 'slimy piece from chewing' they try to swallow it whole and end up choking on them. And commercial dog biscuits have ingredients that can be dangerous--bad gluten etc. Most dog treats and toys are made in places like China and the potential for making your dog sick or worse- die! My 2 dogs get a couple home made sw. potato/yam chips set on one side of their Corelle spaghetti bowls with their breakfast meal. Got the bowls at Walmart and made sure this was made in USA so not possibility of having lead in it like could happen from many other countries like China. I have read that even the people of China are afraid of so much contamination and not caring going on, etc that they are leery of eating their own food. Wonder how bad their drinking water is! These spaghetti bowls fit in my raised doggie diner perfectly. Lol, funny thing is they will not eat this treat until they have cleaned their bowls clean--like it is their dessert! And if I forget to do this --put in their bowls--Max wants his treat--He will go over in the place where I keep the chips and wait for it to be handed to him.

he gets bones on a regular basis - sometimes he gets constipated but sweet potato fixes that pretty quickly. Adding equal parts of plain yogurt with the 'cultures' (Not flavored vanilla, etc) to the pumpkin or in your case --sweet potato is suppose to help too.

[B][COLOR="SeaGreen"]Geeze! Sorry I am getting carried away here--Hope you don't see this all as some kind of lecture! Once I get started--I just never shut up! Part of all the details are because I know other people are reading what I am putting here and feel I have to go into detail as one thing leads to another and I don't want to not give the whole story or it could be bad--not knowing the whole thing. Hope you know what I am trying to say here.

----continued--next post---->

[CorkyMax]

Glad you liked the links. And that flat-coated retriever looks a lot like him too but I was also thinking when reading about it being rare here that the chances were a little slimmer--BUT who knows--I mean you said there were a lot of different hunters around there and this is a hunting breed--Lol, someone may of had one and it only takes one! But prob more Labs around too as they are a hunting breed too. It really doesn't matter what the make-up of your dog is as you love it no matter but it still makes you wonder I know. I feel that way about the newest dog that I rescued about 14 months ago.--Sami (female) She was a stray so no background what so ever. Lol, I find myself saying things to her--I wish I knew your history/story? What kind of life did you have? Did you ever have puppies (and I think she did)? How were you treated--What kind of family did you come from--Were there kids for you to play with? Did my Corky the cocker/golden I had to put to sleep about 6 months before I got Sami. arrange for us to meet--And I really do think he did but won't go into all those details. Why were you running loose? I can't believe whoever had her before would ever give her up--She is very affectionate--happy smiley all the time. And she knew what a doggie door was and the 1st thing she did when I opened the kitchen door was make a bee line straight to my bed and jumped on it. Of course I made her get down and she only did it one more time . She was very behaved too. I had an appointment with a vet check the next day after I got her and found out she had mammary tumors so got them removed 2 days later and it appears that all the cancer was got. Lol, cost me over $600.00 the 3rd-4th day after I got her, but I would do it all over again because I love her. I think Corky wanted me to have her and save her life because I felt so guilty having to put him to sleep--But it had to be done. And that is not the only reason that I believe Corky sent her to me-- there are many more reasons I think he did! She also needed a couple teeth pulled. One of the biggest questions is how old is she--Not young, Vets are guessing tenish --She sure acts a little younger though!
[/COLOR]
i love the pics in the link! definitely can see resemblances in some of them.

this is the dog most ppl mistake him for - flat-coated retriever, which are apparently quite rare these days: Flat-Coated Retriever - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

he's the right height, right weight, and his build is similar. his personality fits the profile perfectly and border collie is one of the dogs mixed in to improve temperature and manageability so that would fit, too.

reading the borador page: *facepalm* - "hybrid" dog - a mix of two breeds of dog is NOT a hybrid!

a "hybrid", by strict definition, is a mix of two *species*, not two different types of the same specie.

i had a hybrid - wolf/dog. my mom's goldendoodle is not a hybrid - it's a designer dog, to be kind, or a mutt, to be strictly factual.

"mickie roonie rourke" could be dandy's clone!

the farm is a huge one but it's in the bush and during hunting season, there are a LOT of ppl bringing a LOT of dogs into the area - good odds it was a lab, i agree.[/QUOTE]

Well I guess I am done writing this book![/B]

[threenorns]

dandy won't eat raw egg - he licks at it, then looks at me like "whyyyyyyy!???". the rare occasion he does eat it, i swear he's gagging, lol.

dandy eats whole raw carrot no problem and there's never any chunks of anything coming out in his poop - it's always very homogeneous. he only poops 3 - 4x a week and it's a scant plastic-baggie'd handful at best.

he doesn't have a dish at all - i hand-feed him because otherwise the cats rush his bowl and then he walks away and refuses to eat. just sits and sulks with his back to me. plus it helps with the trick training - i run him through the easy stuff and each time he does it, he gets a piece of meat until it's all gone.

no worries about the tome - i know exactly what you mean because i feel the same way too: posts are not just private dialogue. i hate it when two ppl are posting back and forth and leaving out all kinds of inside information - feel like telling them "get a [chat] room!".

dandy gets all sorts of bones - today is turkey necks, last week was chicken leg quarter, the week before that was t-bone steak. reason is simple: we can eat it, too. drove me nuts when i was on welfare - freeze full of meat and nothing for the humans to eat, lol.

i don't feed him scrap meat (although i did feed him for free for nearly a year on scraps from the grocery store meat department) - i buy the meat from the discount bin so he eats sirloin, blade steak, stew beef, you name it.

i could get "dog food meat" from the meat processor down in lindsay, ontario - 75c/lb. he ate that for a while, too, but while it's cheap as anything, it was a pita to portion it out. the butcher in town sells a mixture of beef, lamb, and liver for 1.89/lb.

i don't know if you're stateside but in canada, we've got some pretty stringent rules for raising beef and milk cattle. f.ex, we're not allowed to use growth hormone on milk cattle.

the only issue i've got with wild game is the parasites - if a raw-food dog's gonna get worms, that's where they'll most likely get them. dandy's 3yrs old and not once has he gotten worms - my vet refuses to believe it so the last time, she ran the test and it came back negative, she ran it again and then a third time using the entire sample.

i love bending her brain.

[threenorns]

this is a great shot!

[CorkyMax]

It sure is--Beautiful--Love that shiny coat!

[Lara's mom]

Try beating it up really well and then mixing it into fairly warm wet food. It loses that slimy texture.