Both the blog and the puppies turned 4 this year. Here's Mercury at a few weeks old.

Back in March I set some goals for this blog.  At the time there were 125 feedburner subscribers and my goal was to reach 150 by the end of the year.  The blog broke 200 subscribers on November 18th and now we’re closing in on 210.  You have rewarded me richly with your loyalty, thank you.

Back then you had left 785 comments in total on the blog.  Today the number surged passed 2,040.  You have rewarded me richly with your engagment, thank you.

I’ve published 65 posts in those 282 days, you’ve left 1255 comments on them, averaging 4.45 comments per day and 19 comments per post.

I’ve published 33 posts since the last update 143 days ago, since then you’ve left 727 comments at 5 comments per day and more than 22 comments per post.

I’m so grateful that both interest and engagement is growing.

Several new blogs have linked in since the beginning of the year, please reward them by checking out their content:

Brigadoon Border Collies
Carnivore Cafè
Conker the Shiba Inu
Dobermann Daze
Dogma and Cattitude
Dore River Border Collies
Masakado Shiba Inu
Musings of a Biologist and Dog Lover
Prick-Eared
Rancho Buena Fé
Smartdogs’ Weblog
Stephen Bodio’s Querencia
The Court of Tails
The Dog Scoop

All the blogs that link in to BorderWars are listed under the Incoming! box to the right of the content and new posts from all these bloggers appear in the Allied Communication box.

2011 has been a transformational year on the blog, and I’m grateful that you are all coming along for the ride, helping me grow and refining my understanding of dogs and the issues that contribute to what make them so wonderful.  It’s been a great four years and I’m very proud of how far we’ve come.

I will strive in 2012 to continue to bring unique and important content, to tackle tough issues with facts and candor, and to expand both my audience and my knowledge.  Again, thank you.

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.

BorderWars is #35 on Technorati's Top 100 Pet Blogs

When Scottie announced that his Retrieverman blog has reached #1 on Technorati, I checked to see where BorderWars was ranked and got a great surprise. Right now we’re ranked #32 with a Pet reputation of 130. I eked into the Top 100 Pet Blogs a few months ago, but this was a very unexpected surprise. This means that BorderWars currently sits above really great and popular blogs:

36. Pet Connection
57. FIDO Friendly
62. Dog Show Poop
75. Dog Spelled Forward
96. BAD RAP Blog

Some really big hitters didn’t make the top 100: Terrierman’s Daily Dose, Pawesome, KC Dog Blog, For the Pitt Bulls, Pawcurious, ManyMuddyPaws, Dogster Dog of the Day, The House of Two Bows, Wayne Pacelle: A Humane Nation, The Poodle (and Dog) Blog, Smartdogs’ Weblog, Lassie Get Help, Raised by Wolves, and more.

This comes on the back of a really successful six months on this blog.  Back in March I set some goals to reach by the end of the year:

150 feedburner subscribers.  The blog hit 155 this week with 34 on the e-mail list.
919 comments.  We just blew past 1313 comments and 93 people commented on Double Merle Breeders Don’t Want You to See This alone.
I added a Like button on posts. 273 people liked Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy.

After more than a year without a statcounter, I installed one last November and the blog now counts 220,000 pageloads and the trend is rising.

BorderWars stats since November 2010.

These are the stats for this week.

This week's blog traffic at BorderWars.

BorderWars has also sustained our place as the #1 Border Collie Blog on Google (out of more than 5 million results).

BorderWars is the #1 Border Collie Blog on Google.

Another new addition to the blog is a custom skin for reading on your Mobile device! No more wasting bandwidth and super tiny fonts on tiny smartphone screens.  Check us out on your mobile device and if you’re still getting the regular template, leave me a comment with your model number and I’ll add it to the list of phones to automatically switch to the low-bandwidth but slick-looking mobile template.

BorderWars' new WPtouch theme for mobile devices.

I really appreciate all of you who read the blog, leave comments, and send e-mails with feedback and tips on stories.  I look forward to your contributions on my future posts.

Mercury, Gemma, and Dublin bask in the sunset.

Subscribers:
Beyond all expectations, this blog now has 125 feedburner subscribers.  My goal for this year is to reach 150, so if you like something I post, please share on Facebook or other social media sites.  Tell your friends.  Develop multiple personality disorder and subscribe twice.  Adopt an orphan from the third world and teach them English by reading them my posts on inbreeding.  Do it for the children!

Comments:
So far you’ve left 785 comments on the blog.  My goal for this year is to reach 919 comments (a prime number, ooooh) and I’ve installed “CommentLuv” to encourage you bloggers to advertise your posts and get traffic when you comment.  The 919th commenter will win a free copy of DogJoy so you can stalk my beautiful dogs even more than you do now.  Want more snark? Leave a comment.  Something I said really piss you off? Do tell.  Have a lead on a new topic for me to pounce on? Suggestions welcome.  I very much appreciate corrections, so if you think I’ve got it wrong, make the case.

Blog Roll:
If you’d like to appear on my Incoming! blog roll, just link to this blog or a post on your own blogroll or side bar.  If I don’t catch it right away, drop me a comment or an e-mail so I can include you on the list.  I know several of you dropped me off your blog rolls during my extended absence but haven’t put me back on since I’ve been back.  The current Incoming! Fan Club:

• BCxFour
• Confessions of A Pet Store Employee
• Desert Wind Hounds
• Dinsdale Schnauzers
• Dog-li-ness
• Flyball Blog
• Growing Up Border
• Hoof & Paw Blog
• Little Heelers
• Lochinbrae BCs
• Niagara Dogs
• Old Time Farm Shepherd
• Pet Connection
• Retrieverman’s Weblog
• Spot Check
• The Hairy Edge
• Time 4 Dogs
• Zephyr’s Zoo

This is my only blog roll and it’s so much easier on the ego linking back to people who already link here than trying to solicit link trades or what have you.  Why waste time flirting when you can just reciprocate the good will of others?  So if you thought I didn’t link to you because you suck, not so, just link to me and I’ll link back.

Product Reviews:
I guess the blog has reached some minimum threshold of size to be considered for product reviews (books, TV shows, pet supplies) and invitations to pet industry conventions. I’ve arrived!  I’m a firm believer in capitalism, free markets, and focused advertising but I can’t guarantee I’ll like your stuff just because you send it to me for free.  But I do appreciate companies that do community outreach looking for feedback and viral marketing… this is how it should work: responsive, in-touch companies meeting the needs of the community.  Some bloggers think this is “payola” but I don’t think you can really send me enough free stuff to lie for you.  The time it takes to test products and write up reviews is considerable and if your product sucks, the prospect of a “free” sample is rather crappy compensation.  Even if your product rocks, most dog products don’t cost enough to provide more than minimum wage renumeration for the time and effort it takes to review them.  If I like your stuff, hopefully you’ll agree to send out an additional free sample to a blog reader too.

Inspiration:
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Scottie at Retrieverman for helping me improve the quality of the blog and for his relentless marketing of my posts.  I appreciate the camaraderie and leadership he’s taken in questioning the dog culture status quo and raising the level of the discussion from petty insults toward actionable solutions.  ”Get a cat” and “adopt a shelter mutt” are not actionable solutions to the problems facing purebred dogs.

I’d also like to thank Jess at DesertWindHounds for being a role model as a breeder who is putting theory into action and spearheading the sort of breeding program that can keep both new and ancient breeds genetically healthy into the future.  Not only has she brought an awareness of the MHC complex into the dialogue but she’s also been a great source of advice and tips on breeding and raising dogs.

And of course, thank you to all the readers and active commenters, those who show up for Scottie’s chats and those who send e-mails.

Not my dad's brain, but you get the idea.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, but the reality hasn’t been sunshine and roses.

My father nearly died in March after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. If it wasn’t for my mother’s sharp eye and the world class stroke center 3 miles away, he wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to make the miraculous recovery he has slowly made. But the morning of his stroke marked a clear ending and new beginning in the life of my entire family.

This blog has always been a space for me to vent, to work though ideas and encourage debate. And despite a desire to continue frequent updates, this is entertainment, not a job.  And really, getting cranky about dog politics is a luxury for times when everything else in life is going A-O-K.  My dogs have been such a wonderful diversion lately, and an integral part in my father’s recovery, so I just haven’t had the motivation to tackle the dog-world darkness out there when there’s been so much dog-light right here, and more pressing problems to address off-blog.

After finally re-establishing some sense of routine in my new life, I returned to the blog only to find that it had been deleted by Blogger and marked as a spam site by Google!

My father, a.k.a "Guano the Lawnboy," in better times.

Oh joy, when it rains, it pours. I’ve had to pull in favors with old college friends who now work at Google, sift through Google’s horrible help forum, cyber-stalk the one person who could turn my blog back on, and tell off some other Google employee who wanted me to “make concessions” to him to get my blog back.

Needless to say that I can’t trust my content in the hands of a company who would delete it WITHOUT notice of any kind before or after, not respond to their help forum for over 6 weeks, not publish a name, phone number, or e-mail of anyone who can actually help, and then want to chastise me for wanting my content back.

So I’ve made the jump to WordPress (rather quick and painless) and now have my content under my own control. I highly recommend it to anyone still over at Blogger.  Getting a domain name and hosting is an afternoon project, and moving the blog is actually very simple as WordPress does all the work for you. Took 10 minutes.

The new blog address is: http://borderwars.astraean.com/

And my feed is STILL http://feeds.feedburner.com/BorderWars … hopefully this is seamless for almost all of you.

So goodbye Blogger, Hello WordPress, and thank you all for sticking around.  Drop a comment or two now and then to let me know you’re out there.

I just got a comment on a year old post that is a lesson in poor breeding practices in only 17 words:

Im looking for a breader for my border collie. she is in heat know can u help?

- Jeanie 1/13/2009

I have a link to e-mail me at the bottom of every post and clearly on the right margin. You think someone who wanted a serious and quick answer would be able to figure that out. If you dug just a little deeper, you’d be able to find my breeder website with a phone number right on the front page.

But I guess you’d also think that someone planning to breed their dog would also be able to spell simple words like “I’m” and “breeder” and “now.” And don’t get me started on text speak “u.”

So who is this mysterious Jeanie who didn’t even leave contact information for me to be able to respond except by posting another comment to a year old post?

Well, cross referencing the IP address from her comment (Arlington, VA) with the IP address in my search logs, Jeanie arrived to this blog by searching yahoo (who the hell uses yahoo search?) for “boarder collie breeders in westminster.” Misspelling your own dog’s breed name doesn’t instill any more confidence.

This isn’t the first booty-call I have gotten on behalf of my Dublin, but the other would be suitresses had owners who had a command over the English language, had researched my dogs and who were planning their litters with enough lead time to meet me and my dogs and for me to meet them and evaluate their dogs and pedigrees.

They also had better reasons to breed than “OMFG, she’s bleeding now!”

I gave Jeanie 20 reasons why she shouldn’t breed now, and perhaps ever, but somehow I doubt any one of them will be enough to dissuade an unprepared owner who seems more hot to trot than her ovulating bitch.

Feedback is either that really shrill, paralyizing noise you hear when some innocent peep gets blown up beyond all recognition and thrown back in your face or the process by which future output becomes easier because you recycle successful past output to maintain quality and momentum. 

One of the family Christmas cards every year comes from my aunt’s dog, in the first person, even though the dog has now been dead for two Christmases. It’s time to stop. It wasn’t clever when the dog was alive, but now it’s just awful that I get a card from a dead dog who regales me with fond memories of the people who used to pick up her crap.

“Dead men tell no tales,” and the same should go for dead dogs.

And I know several of you who read the blog also write in the first person as if you were your dogs talking and from looking at your comments, a lot of your readers do too! There must be some serious fun here that I’m just not seeing.

I have a question, do we have to play along and pretend we’re sending a message to your mommy (or alpha, or food person) or can we just break the suspension of disbelief and not pretend that your dogs are both literate, conversant, and bloggers? Does it ruin the fun for you if we don’t play along? Is it rude?

The other practice is also saccharine and hokey and done way too often. It’s like 1337 speak for sheeple. “You” is so cleverly replaced with “Ewe.” Nyuk nyuk nyuk. And it’s pervasive:

About Ewe Border Collies, Brackenhill Cooler Than Ewe, Dog 4 Ewe Border Collies, Eyes For Ewe Border Collies, Have Ewe Herd, Hay Ewe Border Collies, Shoreland’s Bouncing For Ewe, Shoreland’s Flirt’n With Ewe, Shoreland’s Tri-Umph For Ewe, Tainsh’s Ewe Too, Shoreland’s Missing Ewe, Silvertip’s Stalk Ewe, Centaurea’s Ewe Decide, Grayloch’s Ewe Can’t Catch Me, Eyes for Ewe Smokin’ Ewe, Rival’s Joke’s On Ewe, Jayden Lacey’s I’ve Got Ewe Babe, Shoreland’s I’m Too Hot For Ewe, Shoreland’s Bouncin’ For Ewe, Shoreland’s Have Ewe Herd, Shoreland’s Dew The Ewe, Shorland Ewe Go Tally-Ho, Darkwind’s Ewe Go Girlfriend, Shoreland’s Have Ewe Heard, Shoreland’s Creepin’ For Ewe, Altamera Sky’s Watchin Ewe, Shoreland’s Mad About Ewe, Shoreland’s Watchin’ Over Ewe, Shoreland’s Razzle Dazzle Ewe, Shoreland’s A Nita Ewe, Shoreland’s Make Ewe Mine, Think’n Do 4 Ewe, Winterwood’s Hex On Ewe, Shoreland’s Ewe Know Who, Uherdit’s Ewe Move Me, Bo-Tyne Crush On Ewe, Darkwind’s I Owe Ewe, Shoreland’s Hope For Ewe, Abfab’s Good For Ewe, Shoreland’s Zooming In On Ewe, Tainsh’s A Toast To Ewe, Shoreland’s Ewe Got The Clue, Brittemar’s True To Ewe II, Shoreland’s I Still Love Ewe, Darkwind’s I Got Ewe Babe, Hieyeq’s Am Busier ‘n Ewe, Contact Point’s Ewe Cant Touch, Contact Point’s Eye on Ewe, Contact Point’s Made Ewe Blink, Shoreland’s Ewe Must Be Joking, Shoreland’s Just Right For Ewe, Darkwind’s I Hope Ewe Can Dance, Bonnidune This Bud’s For Ewe, Borderpatrol Duffy’s Eye On Ewe, Shoreland’s Ewe Talkin’ About Me, Shoreland’s Ewe Take My Breath Away, Norwood K Mac’s Mad About Ewe, Wyld Fyre’s True Blue For Ewe, Rr’s Zippin’ by Ewe, Rising Sun I’m On To Ewe, Lock-Eye Got A Crush On Ewe, Shoreland’s My Eyes Are Set On Ewe, Hieyeq Ewe, Kerales Vodoo Ewe, Watchme Charm Ewe, Cyllo Chase N Ewe…

… and literally hundreds of other dogs from both the AKC and the ABCA. And I’m sure everyone who picked those names thought they were deviously original in doing so. Ewe Sew Clevar!

Sadly, the joke only goes so far, as I haven’t found any: Ewe !@#$ my wife, EWE !@#$ my wife?, I Wanna Sex Ewe Up, Silence! I Kill Ewe, Screw Ewe And The Horse Ewe Rode In On, Ewe Turn Me On, I Wish I Knew How To Quit Ewe, or the simple and effective Fuck Ewe.

Perhaps I’m just a grinch and these things are really fun. I’ll give you that speaking in the first person for your pets isn’t nearly as annoying as Lolcats24/7 (tiem 4 dat 2 dye nao?), and I was momentarily ewephoric the first time I heard a clever naming ewephamism, but I’m over it.

To your credit, most of you have added grammar and spelling to your animal’s repertoire which is severely lacking in the Lolcats mania. Maybe it’s just because you’re writing on behalf of really smart dogs. I can deal with the reverse ventriloquism, but if you start naming more crap “Ewe,” my dogs have something to say to you: “Shudda upa EWE FACE!” (Dublin does a great impression of Brooklyn-ease).

And as long as I’m on a non-serious humor rant, I have to give some attention to this week’s most incongruous subliminal advertisement:

My dogs get regular vet visits and their dental care is one of the most important things, and we make sure their teeth are clean and healthy. And don’t have any mesothelioma either!

Oh thank dog!

It’s flattering that my regular readership has grown from 15 a year ago to over 55 today. And even more satisfying, you guys actually leave comments now. Perhaps it won’t be long until some sheeple and showple will speak up and actually debate what I have to say. I like to be challenged, I like to debate. This doesn’t seem to be the norm. The sheeple and showple have left some links from their own forums, but they seem a bit scared to bring the debate on to my turf. Weenies.

Outside the blog it’s been a great year in dogdom. I’ve bred and found excellent homes for a litter of puppies, I’ve expanded my brood from two dogs to four, and I’ve even studded out Dublin to another breeder. Becoming a breeder has been a very rewarding experience and I feel much more invested in the breed now that my theories aren’t just academic. The experience has also allowed me to talk with numerous other Border Collie breeders and trace my dogs’ lines all the way back to the beginning of the ISDS registry.

In the coming year I hope to enter Dublin and Celeste in Agility tournaments and make gains toward their Agility championships. The only thing holding us back is the Weave Polls. We’ll continue our Frisbee and perhaps work up a Freestyle routine. I’d like to find some time to get back to training on stock, although the best weekends for training on stock are usually taken up with tournaments.

When the pups are 18-months-old midyear, I’d also like to get them started with agility work and I’ve neglected their trick training so I want to make up for lost time and get them clicker savvy in the mean time. The biggest challenge is giving them individual time and separating them from the pack. Mercury has the makings of an amazing Frisbee dog as he loves the disc and he has an amazing jump. Gemma is still figuring out what she likes to do, although she’s finally asserting herself when I toss the tennis ball. She enjoys getting the ball so much that she usually runs off and gloats with it before she’ll bring it back.

Time seems to flow faster and faster each year and despite all that has happened in 2008, it doesn’t really feel like it’s been a whole year. As so many things seem to be falling apart and descending into chaos, I’m really fortunate to have so much to be thankful for in my dogs.