Myst - The Journey Begins

On Tuesday November 30, 2010 I started my journey to pick up my new Border Collie puppy in Canada from Carolyn and Bob Lewis owners of Cedar Border Collies. Carolyn choose my puppy for me from a litter of 5. When the time came to let me know which puppy she had selected she wrote, “She is a live wire! I love her attitude and I love her personality. She is such a toy driven girl, and is very coordinated and fast on her feet for her age!  She started tugging on my pant leg when she was only 3 weeks old. She is SO happy and outgoing.”

Carolyn does such a wonderful job working with her puppies  before we get them and matching her puppies with their new owners…AND Carolyn was so right…she has the most amazing personality and attitude. AND Myst has never stopped tugging.  She came enjoying people and children and seemed to understand that a three year old needed her to be quieter and softer than adults.  I LOVED this darling little girl from the day I met her at her home in Ontario. 

Our journey was quite an experience. I arrived in Buffalo, New York at 2:00 a.m. and awoke to a raging snow storm. After hiring a cab, I arrived one hour later at Carolyn's. We had a wonderful visit with the other puppy owners and got to meet all of the Cedar Border Collies. It was so wonderful to see Myst's parents, Cipher and Reckon running in their lovely huge field. After a wonderful 2 day visit, we started our 12 hour journey home. 

Myst fit right into our family. Our Puli Ziggy became her giant tug toy. Ziggy was so patient with the new puppy and soon they became best friends.

My Border Collie, Kaffee would not look at Myst and he seemed to project that he hoped that when he returned home from our hikes that this new puppy would have left. Today, now that Myst is older, they too are best friends. 

My dog training journey has now come to a very new junction… perhaps it was  my second Border Collie, Kaffee that helped me to get here initially with seeing how play and joy could be built into very successful training and that the old style of negative reinforcement was not necessary for success. Getting my new puppy from Carolyn has also helped convince me that I now am committed to my paradigm shift of positive training. AND perhaps most importantly, I signed up for Susan Garrett’s recallers course this spring when my puppy, Myst was 5 months old.

The recallers course was one of the best training and learning experiences I have had while training my dogs. This course was not just about doing recalls and having your dog come when called. It was so much more. It was about building GREAT reinforcement for behaviors that we want; becoming our dogs most favorite “cookie”; learning how to train effectively through creativity and positive training. And, building a wonderful and happy relationship with our dogs to have not only as  an awesome pet to live with but a wonderful team partner for dog sports.

I now understand that it is often easier to fall back on negative training methods than to take the time to think creatively of how to solve the new problems and challenges that our dogs constantly present us with. I have learned and am committed to Susan’s philosophy that the criteria for our training is JOY.

I am looking forward to sharing my continuing journey with my young puppy, MYST.

Meet MYST…

She is now 10 months old.. but we will share highlights with our journey over the last 7 months.