Dublin is hinting that he wants a dog bed for Christmas.

I had my laundry neatly folded in an IKEA bag waiting to get put in a drawer and Dublin decided that he really liked the bold yet sleek Scandinavian design and made an ad hoc dog bed for himself. Border Collies sure are clever; he actually used his nose to push up the lip once he got in to provide more support.

I guess I’ll have to get him a legit dog bed of his own for Christmas, but sadly it doesn’t look like IKEA makes dog beds and I don’t think anyone who does will sell me one for the 59 cents that the IKEA tote bag cost.

Dublin earned a 4th place trophy and coveted QUAD finalist shirt from the incomparable Jeff Hoot at the 2011 Denver Quadruped.

Dublin has always been an amazing Frisbee dog, and I’ve slowly been catching up as a decent thrower; he’s clearly the only athlete on the team, so it’s only his name on my jersey.  Since my father’s stroke, competitions have been few and far between but I always make an effort to compete in The Quadruped.  It’s a unique event founded and run by Jeff Hoot which pits teams head to head in heats that are all about the longest catch.

Dublin loves to go long and given a choice he’ll book it out to 80 or 90 yards before he’ll turn around and expect a disc coming his way.  I can’t throw it that far yet, but he indulges me and catches up my 65 yard throws on the way back to deliver the disc for another round.

This year’s Quad was our best finish ever. Dublin and I bested the largest men’s heat ever and advanced to the finals for the first time.  During our inaugural Quad back in 2007 when he was just a year and a half old, we were just edged out by the team that won in the round just before the finals.  Every year we’ve improved our longest catch distance and this year was a nail-biting path to the finals.  During the early morning seeding throw I had to throw first and was cold, rushed, and a bit distracted.  I had one of the worst seeding distances and thus had to throw second in a field of more than 10 competitors in my heat.

Only the top 3 advance to the second round and later throwers know exactly what distance they have to hit to guarantee themselves a spot in the next round.  Going later means you can make it into the finals in only 3 throws.  Going early you can’t afford to save your dog and can throw as many as 9 times to reach the finals.  This is the path we had to take as we squeaked through the first round in 3rd place, barely missed the cut again in the second round coming in 2nd, and took all three throws in the final round to come in first.

By the time of the finals the sun had shifted to the West but given the hurried pace of the day to give all 75 teams their chance, we neglected to request a change in throwing direction.  The finals were brutal for some competitors as the sun darted in and out of cloud cover right at the perfect level to blind both thrower and dog.  We still got one good catch in but it wasn’t enough to advance our standing past 4th.

2011: 4th – Christopher Landauer and Dublin – 59 yards [First Finals bid]
2010: 6th – Christopher Landauer and Dublin – 58 yards
2009:  Didn’t attend.
2008:  13th – Christopher Landauer and Dublin – 55 yards
2007:  5th – Christopher Landauer and Dublin – 58 yards

So Dublin finally brought home some hardware, a beautiful wooden frisbee etched with our rank and the event details and I got the most coveted prize: a QUAD finals t-shirt.  It can’t be bought, only won, and past finalists wear their shirts with pride at future QUAD events to psych out the competition.  Of course Dublin wanted me to throw his trophy for him, but he’ll have to settle for admiring it on the mantle.

He really is the best dog ever, and one day I’ll be able to throw it as far as he deserves.

Dublin and Christopher rocking the Littleton competition in preparation for the upcoming QUAD.

On the software front, I’ve made some improvements to the blog recently.  After I broke the feed and then the entire blog, I did a fresh install from scratch.  The font size for posts is larger, the color scheme is a little bit patriotic and easier on the eyes, and I’ve added some more interactive features in the side column.

The post feed link is more prominent with a rotating banner of the most recent posts.  Feedburner reported 173 subscribers on August 8th, an all time high for the blog.  The number jumps around a lot but the average subscriber count is now over 150.

If you’d like to get the blog in your inbox, there’s now a form right on the blog where you can enter your e-mail.  Thirty five people already use this feature.

I’ve ressurected the Google Friend Connect box that was once only available on blogger but now comes in a widget that is multiplatform. Twenty three of you had joined over two years ago before blogger broke my blog and I moved to wordpress. So now if you still use the blogger platform to read blogs or you want to show your support for BorderWars publicly you can join this site via Google Friend Connect once more.  The blog has grown a lot in the last two years so be my friend!

If you have a blog and link to BorderWars from your blogroll, I’ll add you to my “Incoming!” link list and also feature your most recent posts in the new “Allied Communications” box.  This neat feature is actually a bundled feed of all the recent posts of the blogs that link here. You can even subscribe to it if you’re interested.  I hope this will reward those of you who read the blog and post good content with cross traffic and new readers.

Recent comments are now featured prominently on the sidebar and I’ve added both CommentLuv; a graphical user interface for the comment form so you can easily add links, images hosted on other sites, and text effects; as well as an upload feature so you can attach images or PDFs to posts.  This allows you to both upload and display images in comments as well as attach other files such as scientific studies to share with other readers.  The blog already has over 1550 comments and I hope this will foster even more discussion.

There’s also an archive list in the sidebar as well as an Archive Page that has every post listed chronologically.

No one asked you, fat ass. <click to enlarge>

Dublin was a little full of himself following his big adventure during the cattle roundup and branding.  After the morning chores the day after the big event, the overnight snows made a trail ride impractical, so we headed off to Jackson (Hole) for some tourism.  Dublin decided that he wanted to come along so he put on his cutest beggar’s face and tried to get Kara–who was sitting in the back seat of the truck–to agree.  He was not pleased when I told him to scram and he let his displeasure be known with a disapproving stink-eye.

The Taylor Ranches.

Kara Taylor, Cattle Rancher

I spent the Memorial Day weekend on a working vacation in Wyoming.  One of the puppies from the Dublin x Celeste litter is a working cattle dog on a 300-600 head cattle ranch outside of Daniel, and this last weekend was the yearly branding.  The whole month of May is branding season and like a Mennonite barn raising, it’s both a working and social event where most of the community will assist in the work on each other’s ranches and enjoy a feast and party afterward.

Pinedale High School class of 2011 graduated on Friday and several of the graduates were in attendance at the branding, one even moved her graduation party forward just so she could attend.  I don’t think any of the city kids at my high school would have moved their graduation party to work for free for an entire afternoon riding, roping, wrestling, and branding cattle.  Especially not the Gucci-Hoochie girls or the velvet-palmed boys.

That’s not the case in cattle country, and there were more girls and women in attendance at the branding than there were boys and men.  It was rather fitting given that the entire ranch is ostensibly a one woman show most of the year with Kara at the helm.  Mr. Taylor runs a construction company and is the master of the various snow machines, 4x4s, motorcycles and diesel powered fun machines.  Kara is the purveyor of all things warm blooded on the ranch, both two and four legged: children, dogs, horses, and cattle.

After a full morning’s work feeding, birthing, and cooking the dogs followed us over to the old homestead and we saddled up the horses as we waited for the guests to arrive.

All saddled up and ready to ride out.

The dogs were excited with all the people, movement, and anticipation in the air but they didn’t know how much fun they were about to have chasing cows and splashing in the natural streams that crisscross the acreage.  Border Collies are natural workers and any sort of methodical human activity will draw their attention.  One way to really freak out a reactive Border Collie is to totally ignore them and start dancing, or very slowly follow them around from behind.  So all the commotion and orchestrated movement of the riders and the horses really had Mercury and Dublin mesmerized.

Where are we going? What are we doing? I want to help.

I was curious to see how well the dogs behaved around horses as this was their first exposure and you never know where the dog will draw the line between an animal that needs to be worked and one that is off limits.  Both did just fine and were neither scared nor enticed to herd by the horses.  With everything I throw at these dogs I’m always waiting to find the one thing they can’t handle, the spark for a melt down or tantrum and they never disappoint.  It’s a blessing to have dogs that you never have to explain to people, dismiss their bad behavior, or worry about their safety or that of others.  They always abide, are always friendly, and they always draw compliments.

When we first left the homestead and entered the pastures, there were only a few cattle milling about and the dogs were unsure what we wanted from them or what the mission was.  Mercury came over to check in multiple times with a look on his face that said “why are you ignoring these cows!?  Let me move them!”

Mercury takes in the sights

But when we got up to the bulk of the herd and the riders began to arc behind and bring in the cattle from the rear, the lights turned on and Dublin and Mercury took off to get behind the cattle and help drive them back into the corral.

Look, cows!

Dublin stayed close on my side of the herd and Mercury split out in a wide outrun to the other side of the herd and disappeared from view.  I didn’t meet up with him again until the herd was all the way back in the corral and the branding was started.  Word is that he was quite the little cow dog and one rider made a point of searching me out to tell me that my dog was hilarious.  Apparently after most of the cows were through the last gate Mercury celebrated the event by finding a mud bog and wallowing in it vigorously while bellowing his satisfaction.  I keep a blue plastic kiddie pool in the backyard to keep the dogs cool in the summer and Mercury is always the first one in and the last one out, but he’s never yodeled in bliss before so he was either totally amped by the cattle drive or he was stuck in the mud and wanted help out.  Either way, I finally tracked him down wet but clean and sleeping in the back of one of the 4×4 utility vehicles I had given him a ride in earlier in the day and left parked behind the barn.  He apparently managed to open the Velcro door himself and knew I’d come back for him there.  I thought that maybe someone had put him there but it was so out of the way and everyone was busy with the drive that I suspect he figured it out himself.  Smart dog.

On the cattle drive.

I took some video of the drive but it’s so shaky that it’d probably give you an epileptic seizure if you tried to watch it.  While most of the pasture is flat, it’s surrounded by several small bluffs which we riders would often use to form a perimeter.  This was rather exciting for me getting Big Red to navigate the hills and valleys while keeping me on his back.  This part of Wyoming has had record snows this year so the natural streams on the property were full and flowing.  The clear shallow crossings went without incident, although a couple of times Big Red decided to jump the streams instead of wading into them, and somehow I survived and stayed in the saddle the entire time.  I was told Big Red was a stellar horse, so thank dog there was at least one of us who knew what he was doing.  The pool to see how long the city slicker stayed in his saddle payed out on “until the end.”

Six cowgirls, One Cowboy bring up the rear.

Back on the drive I did my best to stay on the horse and not make a complete fool of myself.  It’s a lot easier to ride a horse as an adult since your legs are at 10 and 2 instead of 9 and 3.  I remember as a child that I always had the feeling that I could fall off at any moment despite being unable to even get my legs back over the saddle without some clunky gymnastics.  Now as an adult, sitting in a saddle felt very natural and I had no sensation of instability or falling, even when I got Red up to a fast trot to catch up to the other riders after I fell behind fooling with my camera.  It was extremely liberating to be on a horse again after so many years and I can hardly wait until I get the chance again.

Poor Red drew the fat kid in the rider lottery.

The final obstacle on the drive was the gate leading back into a long fenced corral where the roping and branding would soon take place.  The experienced riders knew exactly where to park their horses to keep the cattle in line and moving.  When I wasn’t needed to fill a gap along an edge I rode behind the final riders and snapped a few shots of the roundup.

Traffic Jam

After the herd was driven past the gate and crammed at the end of the corral, two horse trailers were pulled in sideways to provide a visual and physical barrier and the branding equipment was brought out.  Dublin had a stellar moment when he turned back a stray calf in the corral and rounded up another stray all by himself.

On to the branding!

I don't think riding a cow makes you a cowboy, but I had to check just to be sure.

I’m a cowboy and Dublin is a cowdog, or at least we got to play pretend for a few days this weekend.  It’s been 20 years since I’ve been on a horse after taking riding lessons as a child.  That came to a swift end after I developed a sudden and severe allergy, my eyes swelled shut and my bronchial tubes imploded.  We never established what exactly I was allergic too, be it the horse dander, the hay, or something else at the training site.

Up at dawn the morning of the Branding, I took 2 benadryl in hopes of staving off death long enough to make it to town should the old allergy rear its ugly head, but I didn’t have so much as a cough the entire weekend and not for lack of exposure to hay, horse, cow, and mud.  And since all my old cowboy getup was long outgrown, this city slicker had to hack it in Sketchers and long white socks instead of chaps and cowboy boots, and no Stetson in sight.

Despite a long afternoon of work on the schedule, the other ranch chores couldn’t wait for a day so we were out feeding as soon as the sun came up.  When we took the first bale of hay we saw a cow on the ground in distress.  She was a heifer–yet to birth a calf–and she was lying on the ground trying to birth a too large calf.  I sat on her back to keep her calm and down while Kara and Roe used a tow rope to try and extract the calf past the shoulders.  The calf was already gone and when the placenta came out with the calf it was a sign that it must have detached hours before in the middle of the night.

Kara and Roe assist in the difficult delivery. Blood, sweat and tears all before breakfast.

It was a hard start to the day, but it wasn’t the last dead calf.  One had been taken by the snow and another that failed to nurse was hovering on death’s door.  Kara prepared a bottle of formula and we fed it directly into its stomach and propped it up in a nice warm spot near the side of an old car where the sun and its reflection off the car would warm both sides of the calf: a long shot but worth the effort.  Before all the cows and horses were fed another mother was starting her delivery but this time all was going well and we saw the newborn calf walking around an hour later.

Although I was mostly a spare wheel, Kara got a lot more work done before 10am than you’d expect would get done in an whole day.  Another full day’s work by city standards was done before noon preparing for the branding and the party afterwards.  Then we brushed out the horses, saddled up, and road out to round up the cattle.

No hat, no cattle, but not bad for a tenderfoot.

While I tried my best not to kill myself or my horse, Big Red, Dublin and Mercury were in dog heaven. Mercury found a stream to play in and decided that his role in the cattle drive was to wallow in the mud and howl with glee. Dublin paired up with Kara’s cowdog Oscar and helped push cattle.

Dublin’s breeder runs cattle and although his parents were sheep dogs, his grandfather works cattle and was the Reserve National Cattle Dog in 2008. This was the first time Dublin has seen cattle and he was a natural. There were so many riders on horseback during the roundup that the dogs weren’t as vital on the drive as they would have been to a solo shepherd, but when we got the cattle crammed into the corral for the branding Dublin pulled out the stops twice, making me quite the proud papa.

Dublin, cowgod.

It was just chance that I had my camera out and shotting as we came down the final fence line before bringing in the trailers to block the cow’s escape back to the pasture and start the branding.  I snapped a shot of Dublin with the cattle in the background and still had the camera on when an obstinate calf decided that it wanted to keep its testicles today and bolted past the front line riders and made a b-line for open pasture.  I called out to Dublin and stopped that calf dead in its tracks between the fence and a power line post.  With an experienced cattleman doubling back to retrieve the calf, Dublin turned it around and blocked its escape.

Dublin was very pleased with himself and I was too.  That’s my boy.

Only a few minutes later after the vast majority of the cattle were crammed at the end of the drive, one of the oldest calves made a break for it and managed to clear the last open gate back into pasture.  Dublin wasn’t going to have any of that and so he slinked through the barbed wire fence and single handedly marched that calf back through the gate.

The calf's freedom was short lived with Sheriff Dublin in town laying down the law.

So, while I had an amazing weekend rediscovering the joy of riding a horse, getting some real work done before breakfast, and playing at cowpoke, Dublin was existentially a very good cattle dog and more than carried his weight on our working vacation. He was clearly upset when we had to go and he’s spent the last few days mourning his Wyoming adventure, giving me the stinkeye and foregoing his usual sleeping spot on the end of my mattress. It’s been a week since we started our trip and we’ve been home since Monday night, but only this morning were we on talking terms again. And by that I mean that he accepted his usual morning milk bone from my hand instead of scoffing at the deal that he has to like me if I feed him.

I’m sure he’s already counting the days until Branding 2012, just like me.

Co-pilot is my dog.

Of the six Dublin x Celeste puppies: I kept two, two others stayed in Colorado, and two went to homes out of state.  I had the chance to visit Stella Rose in Monterey California in 2009, and despite getting to meet up with Bella’s family several times while they were in town for hockey tournaments or music concerts, I hadn’t gotten the chance to see her in the flesh since we met her ride home to Daniel in Cheyenne when she was just under 3 months old.  Winter storms had prevented her from going home sooner.

Eager to see how the quiet, reserved, and gorgeous girl was growing up and regretful of missing the event last year, I packed up Mercury and Dublin to attend the 2011 Taylor Ranches cattle branding and barbecue over Memorial Day weekend.

Mercury took the co-pilot’s chair while Dublin decided to work Engineering on the lower deck, and we headed off on the 8 hour drive from Denver to the northwest corner of Wyoming.

I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!

We were several hours outside of Denver before the boys decided that they no longer had to sample the 65mph wind for traces of the dog park or sheep and settled down for the rest of the trip.  They don’t like the windows in my car as much because they can’t roll them down all by themselves like they can in the big Jeep.  Plus, the big Jeep has 4 windows and mine only has two.  I never really appreciated why one would need a child lock on the automatic windows until the dogs discovered the magic black button on the console.

Dublin was the first to teach himself how to open the window and he was also he first to accidentally strangle himself by pushing the button the wrong way while his head was hanging out of the car.  Since then I’ve used the child lock much to the dogs’ frustration. They’ll paw at the button now and then poke me in the back with their nose as if to say “make it work, daddy.”  In my car there’s no magic button so they simply paw at the glass until I oblige.  I also keep the doors locked because Dublin, in an effort to see if any of the things he could paw on the door worked like the magic black button in the other car, found the handle which opens the door and successfully pulled it hard enough to unlatch the door.  He’s either very adventurous or suicidal.  His old favorite trick was to lean out the window so far he’d put both his front feet on the rear view mirror and play superman, blissfully unaware that his harness would prevent him from taking flight.

Our first stop was at the highest point along I-80 at 8,640 feet, which has a nice monument to Abraham Lincoln.  A huge bust sitting atop a rather square pillar like the world’s largest rock PEZ dispenser.  The dogs were unimpressed.

Abraham Lincoln, brought to you by PEZ.

Luckily the rest of our drive up was uneventful, although there were 50-60mph gusts crossing the highway on I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie, one of which overturned a truck carrying a light trailer which blocked up the eastbound lanes for at least 10 miles.  The WHP was out in force, my Whistler radar detector lit up like a volume meter most of I-80.  Once I hit the turn off to US 191 though, the clouds parted, the cops disappeared, and the sun came out.

The Road north to Daniel, Wyoming

After getting the dogs some fried chicken gizzards and liver at some gas station in the middle of nowhere, we finally pulled into Daniel with just enough daylight left for a little Frisbee in the Pinedale city park with Bella’s mom Kara before dinner, an unexpected attendance at the Pinedale 2011 Graduation, and a late night arrival at Taylor Ranch.

8 minutes of Frisbee wasn't enough payment for 8 hours of driving, thought the dogs; but they didn't know all the fun that was in store for them over the weekend.

The dogs were very appreciative of their short Frisbee session, but after all the fun they had over the next few days, they didn’t even notice that the frisbee didn’t make it back into the car with us on the way home.

Behind the back?

Down low.

Anticipation.

Victory!

Here I’ve collected some photos and videos of the border collie puppies’ first attempts to herd sheep.

Dublin making friends at White Fence Farm, 8 weeks old

I picked up Dubin on St. Patrick’s Day and here we are just a few days later at my birthday dinner at White Fence Farm.   Apparently this sheep was unimpressed with Dublin’s predator stare, and I can’t blame her, he was so damn cute I’d run toward him instead of away from him too!  He’d have to wait another two months before his real first time “working” sheep (because you have to call it work even when it’s play, them’s the rules!).

..

Yes, you did hear that right. My father puts down Dublin and says “Now listen, I’m hungry, so go get me a sandwich” and later, “Chris, why don’t you try this at the singles bar.” Heh.

This was also young Celeste’s first time seeing sheep, mere days after we got her. She had just turned 9 weeks old. This was also the first time she had a new heavy collar on so she spent a lot of time trying to scratch at it, much to our amusement. The cuts are where she ran out of frame into the shade to work on getting her collar off.

..

I also took my camera to Mercury and Gemma’s first exposure to sheep but since I was no longer a complete idiot around sheep, my instructor had me take the pups into the ring instead of me watching her do it. Thus my humble little camera was left perched on a chair.

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It’s amazing to watch that light go on when they first realize that they have power over the sheep.  You can see it, they are rather carefree and oblivious, looking around like this is any other dog park except with smaller pieces of poop on the ground, and in an instant it’s BAM, the instinct kicks in and it’s a different life from then on.