3 minutes a day in a centrifuge was part of the failed biosensor "super dog" program.

Dog culture is lazy and unoriginal, and profoundly stagnant. The desire for easy answers, simplistic how-tos and formulas for success is rampant. Just do this one simple thing! 

Breeders eschew complexity, uncertainty, and experimentation. They fear change and embrace unproven tradition on face value.  We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.

Reason gives way to mimicry, and that is the true mark of conformation: not in the dogs keeping to a written standard but in breeders kowtowing to the unwritten rites and rituals to fit in.

One cherished ritual that can be found proudly advertised on numerous breeder websites (usually after the “Our Boys” and “Our Girls” links) as a sign of their reputable status and deep commitment to superior dogs is the adoption of the “Bio-Sensor” program as the one true path™ to dog raising.

In only 15-25 seconds a day for only 14 days in a dog’s life you will realize “life long lasting effects:” “improve performance,” “respond maximally,” “attain sexual maturity sooner,” “resist cancer and infectious disease,” “withstand terminal starvation,” achieve “psychological superiority,” “stronger heart beats,” “stronger adrenal glands,” and “improved cardio vascular performance!”

That’s less than 6 total minutes of work to make a super dog!  AMAZING!

The brains over at the sci-ence blog have come up with a handy chart to recognize quackery, the relevant parts of which I’ve reproduced here.  Their instructions:

“If you come upon a treatment or product that seems too good to be true, consult this handy guide to finding pseudoscience, scams, and quack medicine. Remember, it only takes one match to be considered suspect! Be safe, and be skeptical!”

This widely tauted “Bio Sensor” a.k.a “Super Dog” a.k.a “Early Neurological Stimulation” program has many warning signs of quack science.

Let’s start with who is peddling this pseudoscience:  Dr. Carmen a.k.a Carmelo Battaglia, Board of Directors of the American Kennel Club.

Dr. Carmen L. Battaglia, of Roswell, Georgia, owns and breeds German Shepherd Dogs and is Delegate and Past President of the German Shepherd Dog Club of America. Carmen has chaired the Committee for the Future and Business/Planning Committee and as a former AKC Director, served as Board liaison for the Health, Parent Club, HEC and By-Laws Delegates committees. He has published articles on breeding and legislation as well as several award-winning books. He also serves as an AKC expert witness in dog legislation cases and has written county dog legislation which resulted in the model that is used in several states. Carmen possesses a Doctorate from Florida State University and has been Assistant Dean at Emory University and Regional Administrator at the US Department of Education. He is also the President of Atlanta Student Aid (financial aid consulting Firm) as well as the past president/owner of three post secondary schools which were located in two states.

You’ll remember Dr. Battaglia from his resurrection of Lloyd Brackett and his infamous “Brackett’s Formula.”  Dr. Battaglia gives lectures on cruise ships to up-and-coming brown-nosers in the AKC hierarchy who want to buy the secret knowledge and pay the right gate keepers to fast track show success.  He’s the closest thing the AKC community has to a celebrity doctor.

But don’t get too comfortable with the idea that he’s a medical doctor, he isn’t.  He’s a Ph.D. doctor, which he readily advertises at the end of his publications:

Carmen L Battaglia holds a Ph.D. and Masters Degree from Florida State University. As an AKC judge, researcher and writer, he has been a leader in promotion of breeding better dogs and has written many articles and several books.

Dr. Battaglia is also a popular TV and radio talk show speaker. His seminars on breeding dogs, selecting sires and choosing puppies have been well received by the breed clubs all over the country. Those interested in learning more about his seminars should contact him directly.

Visit his website at http://www.breedingbetterdogs.com

What he doesn’t advertise anywhere that I’ve found despite an extensive search is what subjects his degrees are in.  So I contacted the Curriculum Publications Coordinator at Florida State University and found out the unpublished truth:  B.A. Psychology 1958, M.S. Social Welfare 1960, PhD Joint Doctoral Program in Criminology Corrections and Sociology 1968.

So by way of education, Dr. Battaglia is more equipped to run a prison than a breeding program.  His dissertation was titled “Deviant behavior of parolees and the decision-making process of parole supervisors.”

The next indicator that “Bio-Sensor” is quack science is because it’s being SOLD as a how-to guide to success without having been vetted in any way by scientists in peer reviewed publications resulting from studies done according to the scientific method.

Dr. Battaglia sells his program along with breeding and puppy selection advice as part of his self-help for dog breeding commercial venture.  You can buy books, videos, DVDs, and subscribe to his newsletter and attend his lectures.

In accordance with yet another quackery red flag, Dr. Battaglia is pitching program that offers medical benefits but he (nor anyone else) has no peer-reviewed journal articles on his protocol. And it’s not for lack of trying.  If you visit his website you will find a link to request his so far unpublished journal article.  When you do so, you will be e-mailed a copy of an extended version of his Bio-Sensor article spruced up to look like an actual experiment with “Methods and Materials” and everything.

It appears from the file that Dr. Battaglia has attempted to get this article published since at least 2007, but he will warn you that the article is still under intense review and thus you can not share it.

This wouldn’t be the first time that the “Bio Sensor” program has been used to sell a self-help program, however, as Dr. Battaglia collaborated with Stanley Coren–king of marketing shoddy dog science to pet owners in book form–who included the information in his book Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

Battaglia and Coren’s considerable influence on the dog fancy combined with Battaglia offering the super simplified how-to instructions for achiving super dog success for free on his website as a teaser for his suite of videos, books, and lectures the “Early Neurological Stimulation” program has saturated the hobby pet breeder culture.  Breeder testimonials and reprints of the method are everywhere.

Diligently following Dr. Battaglia’s advice, there are breeders out there inbreeding their lines and producing singleton puppies who none-the-less credit Brackett’s Formula and the amazing Bio-Sensor program for giving them a super puppy abounding with exceptional qualities.

Apparently I’m part of a silent minority who have even questioned this program’s merits and the academic bona fides of the man who peddles it from coast to coast, as I’ve found no online criticism of the methods and not even one other soul who questioned what Dr. Battaglia’s field of study was until I sent out feelers over a year ago.

But it’s clear to me that Bio-Sensor is being marketed just like quack science is marketed, by people who have a vested financial interest in selling easy answers and quick fixes to gullible pet breeders who spend fortunes trying to rectify their ignorance with short cuts and feel-good nonsense.

In a quadrumvirate of quackery, Battaglia also uses his “Breeding Better Dogs” website to sell Japanese (think Eastern medicine) magic magnetic shoe inserts and magic magnetic dog beds that are “combined with magnetic technology, another ancient principle” and “enhance the body’s energy flow to allow healing and proper metabolism.”  This is a man perfectly willing to market quack science as a miracle product for profit.

So far I’ve shown that Bio-Sensor looks like a duck, and in a future post I’ll show you how it quacks like a duck as well.

I see what you did there! Oh wait, I can't see anything, you blinded me with stupidity.

I received an extortion e-mail from Rik and Diane Stirling “Collie Breeders in Minnesota.”  They want me to pay over $16,000.00 to them to “license” the images I used in my recent post If thy Collie Eye offends thee. In a rather half-assed attempt to sound legal and threatening, the Stirlings stole a demand letter that Getty Images sends out to scare websites who use their images without paying.  The Getty Images letter is so infamous there’s a whole website devoted to combating their overzealous tactics called “Getty Images Extortion Letter Info.”

The Stirlings basically copied the letter word for word but replaced “Getty Images” with “Stirling Collies.”  They claim that I failed to license 14 images and that they want $16,450 for the use to-date and even more money if I wish to continue to use the images.  That’s almost exactly ten thousand British Pounds Sterling.

We would consider a settlement for your unlicensed use of the attached images in the amount of $1,175.00 per image (which is usual and customary for proper compensation for the intellectual property rights) if a license cannot be provided. Payment of the demand will settle your unlicensed use of the referenced image(s). Payment must be received within 14 days of the date of this communication. Payment can be made electronically through the Stirling Collies website, or by Certified Check. Please advise us as to your preferred method of payment.

Please note that ceasing use of the image(s) does not absolve you of your responsibility to pay for the image(s) already used without a license. Stirling Collies is willing to discuss the circumstances surrounding this matter; however, absent appropriate licenses, Stirling Collies expects to be fairly compensated for the use of the image(s) in question.

If, after settlement, you would like to continue using the image(s), we can assist you with licensing the image(s) for future use.

With regards to the content of your posting, we will reserve reparations that may be legally pursued. Please note that this communication is without prejudice to Stirling Collies rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved.

This marks the fourth lawsuit threat leveled against me this year alone. Heidi Mobley threatened legal action over The Unfortunate Case of the Wild Australian Shepherd, and Gerald Roach threatened to sue over Brackett’s Formula: Nothing Special as did Donna Beadle.

Nothing ever comes of these legal threats, and nothing ever will.  None of the images in question were even removed from the webpage by my hosting company: a pretty low bar to hurdle.  All of the images I use and the manner I use them in falls under Fair Use.

BorderWars 4, Litigious Luddites 0.

Such threats have no legal significance or consequence other than being tactics to intimidate me into silence.  Every single one of the threats included clear indication that the action was being taken not over principle or even concern for copyright, but because the complainants didn’t like the content of my speech.   The demand for money, especially when it is done in bad faith also constitutes extortion.  And most of these complaints are in bad faith.  The claimants aren’t seeking to defend their intellectual property, they are trying to silence criticism.

A common example of bad faith claims are those made without standing.  If a Litigious Breeder posts a photo of their dog winning a ribbon at a dog show on their breeder website, they don’t have any claim whatsoever over that image’s copyright, even if they’re in it and it’s their dog being shown.  They don’t have standing to make a claim of copyright infringement because they don’t own the copyright.

For works where the complainants do own the copyright, they’ll need to register the works with the Copyright Office for $50 each if they hope to bring an infringement case and collect damages.  The registration also takes almost a year to be processed.  I doubt the Stirlings have spent $700 to register the 14 images they claim to own and given that the images are of weeks old puppies, it’ll be next summer before they could hope to bring a case.  They will also need to front the money to hire an attorney to send me more threatening letters prior to fronting even more money to file a case (which could easily run several thousand dollars or more).

And they would lose that case.

Title 17 Section 107 of the US Code details Fair Use, which is an exception to and limitation of the exclusive copyright granted to the authors of a creative work.  Fair Use allows me the right to use otherwise copyrighted works without acquiring permission from the copyright holders.

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.^[1]

My use of the images clearly passes the initial requirement that the Fair Use be used for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.  I am criticizing the animals depicted in the photos, commenting on the poor breeding decisions which lead to their unfortunate creation, news reporting their existence for sale in a timely manner, teaching the public about how these animals came about and the genetics underlying their disability, performing scholarship and research into the prevalence of this practice among breeders, and more.

Next we consider the four factors.

1. Does my use stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public? Yes.  Does my use aim to only “supersede the objects” of the original for reasons of personal profit? No.  Is my use transformative? Yes.  Is my use derivative? No.  Does my work parody the breeder’s product and the values they represent? Yes.

2. Is my use socially useful? Yes.  Is the public interest served in my use more than the protections of copyright? Yes.  Has the work been previously published? Yes.  Is my use the first public revelation of the work? No.  Was the work originally published for a profit? No.  Was the original work published for free on the Internet? Yes.

3. Does my use represent a substantial copying of the original work(s) of the author? No.  Did I only copy as much as was necessary for my intended use? Yes.

4.  Does my use infringe on the copyright owner’s ability to exploit their original work? No.  Despite copying the threat letter of a business which sells stock photography as their sole and primary purpose, the Stirlings are not professional photographers nor is it likely that they have ever sold even a single photograph nor licensed one for use online.  Nor does my use in any way infringe upon the market value of the images, not only because they have no market value, not only because the Stirlings do not engage in the business of selling photographs, but also because my use does not supply a third party with access to the image that they could not get for free at the original webpage.  My use does not afford my readers the ability to avoid paying a customary price charged to view the works, as there is no price charged by the complainants.  Is my use a direct market substitute for a the original work? No.  Does my use harm an existing licensing market? No.

My negative review and parody of the Stirling’s website and the images therein might harm the market value of the images should the Stirlings attempt to go into that business, but copyright does not protect a work against adverse criticism and harming the market for the images by criticizing them and discussing them does not oppose fair use.

Not only does my use meet the initial criteria for Fair Use, it also abundantly satisfies each of the four factors (not that it needs to).

It is clear that the Stirlings have no case, so their pursuit of damages and threats of legal action is clearly a case of a SLAPP strategy.  Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are designed to silence criticism by intimidating those who express unfavorable speech.  The goal is not to win a lawsuit (in this case to protect copyright), but to remove my speech from the public sphere and prevent me from participating in public debate over the ethics and results of the Stirling’s breeding program and others like them.

Have you seen me? I can't see you. And I'm probably dead.

In other Stirling Collies news, the litter website no longer features three defective white puppies, there are now only two listed and any reference to the third puppy has been removed.  It’s very sad that another victim has succumbed to horrible breeding practices which produced intentionally disabled puppies with a decreased ability to thrive for no good reason.

There were 3 defective puppies before.

Now there are only 2 defective puppies. What happened?

These diseased puppies are not an act of a caring and all knowing God, they are the act of a callous and backard thinking human.  They can’t even claim ignorance as they document their knowledge of the harm they might cause right on the litter page.

Unfortunately, these 3  2 White Collies can possibly be defective whites, which can happen when a merle x merle are bred (statistics are 25% chance for defective whites (no coloring or pigmentation) when breeding a merle to merle together).

Remember, this is a breeder who not only wants you to spend good money on poorly bred puppies to support their desire to breed merle to merle, they are claiming to be doing God’s work by blissfully creating seriously impaired puppies and they have threatened to sue me for over $16k for simply questioning their breeding practices.  Is this “declaring” God’s works or defiling them?

This was once the quintessential American breed, the able and diverse dog used across the country as the indispensable farmhand, shepherd, protector, and hunter. It is the dog that inspired Lassie, only to be replaced by a transvestite “improved” dog show version in both that TV show and in the public’s mental model of what a “collie” is. Before the well-to-do in cities made the Boston Terrier the toast of the fancy, before Rin Tin Tin made the German Shepherd “America’s Dog,” and long before the Cocker Spaniels battled the Poodles and the Labrador Retrievers for the most popular American breed, the “Scotch Collie” was the dog under foot as America grew from a few colonies into an agricultural powerhouse.

Shasta the Old Time Farm Shepherd and puppies

This is the dog that settled the west and patrolled farm, ranch, and wilderness alike. But as America became an urban and mechanized culture, the OTFS was replaced here and there with more specialized and focused breeds, some closely related and others vastly different. As agricultural specialization grew and farm families didn’t keep the diversity of livestock in small numbers, large cattle or sheep ranches bred dogs more specialized to work cattle or herd sheep, dogs that didn’t need to be versatile enough to do both and then some. Sheep workers turned to the Border Collie, Cattlemen created the Australian Shepherd, and smaller farms found their unregistered Scottish bred dogs disappearing into wave of registered English lines of shepherd dog that would make the English Shepherd.

Old Time Farm Shepherd puppies

Families that no longer kept a small array of livestock could then meet their hunting needs with a dog breed specifically focused like the Beagle, the Labrador, or Golden Retriever. Conspicuous consumption in the upper classes could pick the show collie as a status symbol or move to a more city friendly dog like the toy breeds. Those looking for guardians could pick the GSD, Pit Bull, or Rottweiler. Versatility gave way to indulgence and specificity.

Although it’s been almost a century since writers began to lament “What happened to Old Shep?”–realizing too late that they had given up a good thing–a small but growing group of enthusiasts still exists and is working to preserve this breed. One of them is Andy Ward of the Old Time Farm Shepherd Blog and Little Boy Blue Farm. His outstanding bitch Shasta just gave birth to a beautiful litter of new old-time farm shepherd puppies. Check them out and the pilgrimage he went on to make this litter happen.

The chocolate female demanded the most screen time yesterday, so here’s a longer clip of her refining her acting chops.

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Although you can’t tell from the above video, she’s actually quite the femme fatale.  She’s a bit shy at first, and by shy I mean that she’ll run up to within 6 inches of you, tail wagging and wriggling like a fish on a line and then stop as if there’s an invisible barrier preventing her from going any farther.  Then a few minutes later she’ll be sleeping in your lap.  After lulling you into a false sense of complacency, she’ll nuzzle her way up your neck until she can suckle your year.  Then, when she has you right where she wants you, it’s CHOMP!

I nearly died a few weeks back when she did this to my father. He was cooing about all the attention he was getting and then out of the blue he was screaming “Get her off of me!”  A 300 pound man felled by a puppy that’d barely register on the scale at the supermarket.  Just hilarious.  Now that she’s tasted human blood, we’re pretty sure she’s going to be a man-eating beast. You can see just how much she respects her mother:

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This next one is Zappa, and I’m predicting right now that this dog is going to be famous.  Since daddy is a cover model for the biggest name in dog publishing and mommy is a spokes-model for the biggest name in dog toys, it’s in his blood.  He’s also one of four puppies from this litter who are going to live with professional dog trainers, so we’ve got nurture covered as well.  This dog oozes charisma and the camera just loves him.  He already has the “pose and move” down pat.

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This one is the chocolate boy, who is devastatingly handsome just like his father.  Whereas the lilac female looks just like her mother, this one looks the most like Mercury.  He’s also going to be famous as his new home is with a trainer out in Utah who is planning on using him as her demonstration partner.

The chocolate boy also carries the trademark naughty spot on his nose, passed down from Mercury, from Celeste, from Cowboy.  Quite dashing, no?

Oh they grow up so fast, and the sight of his very first breath still plays vividly in stereo when I think of it.  There’s an amazing amount of plot in those first eight weeks, a story unto itself and the first chapters of what’s starting to be a great read.  It’s a different experience raising them from birth versus 8 weeks.

Each of my four dogs has a role, and a corner of my heart, and if I had to sum up Mercury’s part it’d be “Legacy.”  A legacy is a gift you leave to others, the continuation of your work after you’re gone.  But you have to build a legacy, and it has to start somewhere.  Dublin and Celeste are that start, my choices from the pool of others’ art.  Mercury is my art, the product of my breeding choices, and the start of my Border Collie legacy.

So it’s rather exciting to announce that Mercury is a father to 6 beautiful puppies.  The joys of doggy fatherhood consist of making your “contribution” and then letting the mother do all the work, but we’re pretty proud none-the-less.   Like human babies, there’s not a whole lot to talk about right now except which parent the pups resemble (apparently a sea otter mated with a mole-rat if looks are indicative of parentage at this age) and what color they are.

I haven’t had Mercury tested for color genetics, since it’s rather tangential to what I value in the dogs–I don’t breed for color–but it appears that Mercury carries his father’s tri-color allele (guaranteed given that it’s recessive and Dublin is homozygous) as well as the allele for the chocolate coat variant: a surprise.

Mara is rather a mystery as she’s a cryptic merle. Although there’s a separate dilution gene that turns black to blue and chocolate to lilac, the merle gene itself dilutes the coat as well, so black + merle = “blue” merle, even though we could very well call it black merle.

If black + merle = “blue merle,” what do we call blue + merle?  I don’t know the term and suggest that instead of making up yet another word for even-more-diluted-than-blue, we just call black + merle “black merle” and blue + merle “blue merle.”

The best guess on Mara is cryptic merle lilac tricolor, but if we ignore her merle is she a chocolate/red or is she lilac (chocolate+dilute)? Since she’s cryptic, we only have a few dark spots to judge, but they look lilac, not chocolate.  It’s also possible that there’s some sable element to her coat, giving even more complexity.  But since all the dilute puppies are also cryptic merle, it’s likely that Mercury doesn’t carry dilute, as we don’t have any just lilac or just blue puppies: their dilution comes from the merle gene.

The happy group consists of 4 Boys, 2 Girls: 1 blue tricolor cryptic merle, 2 chocolates, 1 chocolate tricolor, and 2 red tricolor cryptic merles.  The breeder calls the last two lilac cryptic merles, but I think the base color is chocolate, not lilac, and the extensive dilution of the merle makes their coats predominantly lighter-than-red.

The cryptic (not highly expressed) merle genes come from the mother, Mara, and are what dilute the black to slate in the blue merle tri, and the chocolate to “lilac” in the two lilac merle puppies. Since I don’t think Mercury carries Dilute, my guess is that whereas Mara is a Chocolate + Dilute + Merle, the two puppies are just Chocolate + Merle.  If they are lilac + merle, then Mercury also carries Dilute.

Although the 4D ultrasound is upstaged by the clarity and color of the CGI images, it’s a major improvement over traditional ultrasound. I, for one, find looking at the black and white patterns to be tantamount to reading tea leaves or deciphering the matrix.

Here’s a slide from Celeste’s ultrasound a little less than a month before she gave birth:

It’s decidedly not as easy to interpret as the 4D ultrasound demonstrated in the program.

But the real payoff is in the CGI. Through my amazing hookups with NatGeo insiders, I bring you high resolution screen caps of some of the show’s most interesting graphics:

The full program runs tomorrow, Sunday January 4th, 2009 at 9 PM on the National Geographic Channel.

It’s well worth a watch if you’re ever interested in breeding your dogs, getting a puppy, or just want a good DAWWWW session with some really informative information. Tune in 2 hours early if you want to learn about gestation in cats.

None of the common amputations (ear cropping, tail docking, dewclaw removal) are required in Border Collies and the dewclaw removal is really the only one you’re going to see done as a normal practice.

The benefits include: prophylactic prevention of tearing or accidental amputation due to rubbing or snagging during an activity, no need to trim the nails, and aesthetics. The disadvantages include: inflicting pain for questionable gain, wasting money on an unnecessary procedure, possible damage to the leg and decreased performance.

Dublin and Celeste both came with their dewclaws intact and I don’t really see a reason to have them removed. I certainly wouldn’t put them through a surgery for that alone, and since neither has had to go under for another procedure, the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. But neither dog wears down their dew claws which makes me question if they are really used during running and turning. But they’re not insubstantial, so I don’t think it’s as straightforward as removing the rear dewclaws which are typically attached by only a bit of skin and are much more likely to be torn off at the wrong time. Luckily, neither Dublin nor Celeste has rear dew claws.

Both of them do hate it when I clip their nails though. Fortunately they wear down the rest of their nails through normal activity and I don’t have to clip them that often. But those dewclaws grow with abandon and they each have one dewclaw with a slightly abnormal nail that is annoying to cut for both of us.

So last year when the litter was four days old I took them in to the Vet and had their dewclaws removed. Here’s the video:

So it’s about two minutes of pain and then it didn’t seem to bother them ever again. But what a minute there in the middle! They were all fast asleep within minutes of the procedure, there were no complications later, and I didn’t notice any of them licking the site or favoring their front legs. But who knows what associations they made with going to the Vet and pain?

I personally think that a lifetime of causing a bit of pain and annoyance while clipping those dew claws probably outweighs the minute of pain in the young pup, but it’s certainly not a guilt free experience and I’m unsure if I’d have it done again. At least Zeke forgave me after his claws were removed:

At one point I took her out back to relieve her bladder and she booked it across the yard in the pitch black and dove under the 16 foot high, 100 ft long evergreen hedge that runs along the boundary of the yard. I stumbled after the black streak who moved surprisingly fast for having a belly full of puppies, and listened for digging and grunting sounds emanating from yet another nest construction site.

After a hurried trip back inside to get a leash and rolling around in the cold dirt and dropped needles, I extricated Celeste from the hedge and patted down the ground to make sure she hadn’t dropped a puppy in there while I was away getting the leash. Back inside for another 8 hours of unrest and no puppies.

I spent the time re-reading the puppy intensive care manual and birthing books (which will convince you that everything is going to go horribly wrong even in the best scenario) and re-sterilizing the kitchen while Celeste continually re-nested. Dogs have been giving birth quite successfully in the wild for thousands of years, but after digesting the literature I was envisioning a scene from E.R. or maybe House.

By about 11 in the morning I was exhausted and there were still no puppies. The vet said give it two hours and if Celeste wasn’t birthing by then, bring her in.

Since it was bitter cold outside, Mom rushed off to Radio Shack to pick up a converter that would allow us to plug in a heating pad to a cigarette lighter (which the Jeep has placed strategically in the back cabin) so we could keep the puppies warm on the drive home.

An hour and a fifty minutes later the car was all loaded with the bottom of Celeste’s kennel, the gigantic tub of puppy towels, a heat lamp, a heating pad and car converter, a digital hang scale, gloves, thermometer, disposable thermometer tips, lube, blunt nosed scissors, cotton swabs, dental floss, rubbing alcohol, iodine, camera, extra batteries, and other must have supplies.

I made the call to the vet to let them know that we didn’t have “puppy sign” and would be making the long trip through lunch hour traffic to their office. I hung up the phone and Celeste’s water broke. The light green tinge suggested that the first puppy was imminent. Go or stay, go or stay? GO!

Mom drove the Jeep while I stayed with Celeste in the back, hoping that the last 14 hours of wanting this to go faster could be counteracted with hushed pleadings to wait just a little bit longer. We were “almost there” for the entire trip, and when it was finally true we were still without puppies. After we rushed Celeste, the kennel, and the box of supplies inside to the exam room that was waiting for us, Mom took off to get some food (we had skipped breakfast and lunch nervously waiting for puppies) and by the time she got back with some drivethru, Celeste had delivered three puppies.

For all the waiting and anticipation, I didn’t even notice that Celeste had delivered the first puppy until she already had it cleaned and nursing, and I was staring intently at her the entire time. She had been cleaning herself pretty regularly, and when she kept her head buried under her leg for a little longer I decided to take a look and voilà!

The demure silence of the moment was broken by me dancing around the room broadcasting the arrival of the first born, so when I popped my head out into the waiting room to announce the puppy, the receptionists feigned surprise and the vet techs came in to clean the puppy and tie off the umbilical cord.

Over the next few hours I made good use of the hang scale and the puppy rags and one by one we welcomed Zeke, Mercury, Stella Rose, Max, Bella, and Gemma into the world.

Everything went well and there were no complications, just six beautiful Border Collie puppies and some tired but relieved humans.

We packed up the puppies in the preheated tub and said our gracious thank yous to my wonderful vet and his doting staff, and made our way back home at a snail’s pace through the start of a snow storm that dumped several inches and made our investment in heating pads and car adapters well worth the effort.

It’s true, Dublin is now officially a stud for hire. Other bitches have tried to seduce Dublin away from Celeste, but Mara is the first one that pimp/daddy Christopher has approved of. I really wanted to see how the Dublin x Celeste puppies turned out before I let Dublin and his genes venture out into the wild, and I couldn’t be more pleased with what Dublin produces.

Mara is sweetheart and one of the most unusual Border Collies I have ever seen. She has a great temperament, is impeccably trained, and is quite the athlete. The best part is that her owner is one of the few people doing right by Arabian Horses (i.e. she’s well read and experienced in the issues of breeding performance animals), she has a solid head on her shoulders, and works with dogs professionally nearly every day.

Her pedigree lists her color as “cryptic lilac merle/tri” and you can see how varied her color is depending upon the light. The lilac in her coat has a handful of darker spots and lighter spots, thus the “cryptic” label, and she has solidly brown tri markings. Dublin’s tri markings appear to have a dilute gene attached, as they look like the blond color you see in ‘ee red’ Border Collies.

The puppy on the left (Elbert) appears to hold Mara’s dark brown tri and the puppy on the right (Hanz) has Dublin’s blond tri markings.

Mara’s sire is a blue merle tri and her dam is red and white with a white piebald spot on her back and ear.

While Hanz is clearly a black tri, figuring out what color Elbert really is presents a challenge. Is his mother really a cryptic merle lilac tri? Is that his coat color as well? Is he sable tri? Is he a merle? Here are a few more pictures so you can see what you think.