Chip’s Story so far……

I wanted another border collie with the aim of having a stooge dog for the business to help people with reactive dogs and I also wanted to start competing in agility.

I had been researching collie bloodlines and looking at different breeders as I wanted to do it properly, like I tell clients to. I wanted a pup rather than a rescue because of my aim of the dog becoming a stooge dog. I was all set to meet a litter of puppies in Manchester when we stumbled across an advert on Gumtree about a 10 week old collie pup that was needing to be rehomed.

The advert pulled at my heart strings and the pup was too close by for me to not go see it and find out why they were needing to rehome the pup.

To cut a long story short, the pup was too much, the women was pregnant and didn’t want the work so asked her fella to rehome the pup he wanted.

Me and Phill organised to go see the pup and before we went inside I said to Phill “If i see any red flags for behavioural problems we need to be sensible and walk away as we have a plan for what we want in a dog”............................. Who was i kidding!!!!

Meeting Potato

We went into the home and they already had another older dog that was very scared of us. The pup was outside when we first arrived. The owner let this bundle of fluff in and as soon as the pup saw us………. He ran behind the sofa and peed on the floor…….. First red flag!

I sat on the floor and the pup got brave and came to see me, very cautiously.

I asked “what is his name?”, the owner replied with a chuckle “potato”. His other dog was called waffle!

Me and Phill stepped outside so we could have a little chat about what to do………. As soon as the door was shut I instantly said “we are taking him”. I knew in my gut that we could have issues because he was scared but I thought what better place for a nervous pup than with a trainer! Still very young so it should be pretty easy to change round.

We went back in, told the owner we would like him and that was that. We had a collie pup!

I managed to track the breeder down through his microchip paperwork and its safe to say the breeder didn’t care in the slightest that I now had him. When I asked the breeder what type of socialisation did you do with the litter, his response was “what do you mean”. Second red flag! He did tell me he was from Wales and had 25 years of working generation in him. That could be a red flag but I wanted to do agility so working bloodlines wasn’t an issue to me.

Potato becomes a Chip

Me and Phill obviously discussed changing his name. We decided to stick with the potato theme because let’s face it, it is funny! We decided it would be either spud or chip. I thought chip sounded sweeter so we went for chip. He soon got nicknamed chip shop by my sister, chiperoo by a friend’s kid and chipdiddler by us…….. Poor boy!

Socialising a Reactive, Feisty Puppy

It was really important for me that my family dog Archie accepted him as I often look after Archie and didn’t want that to change so I introduced them whilst chip was tiny. Well……. Archie wasn’t the dog that I needed to worry about! As soon as Archie came over to sniff Chip, Chip bared his teeth and snapped at him! Third HUGE Red Flag!!

Most pups would shy away, maybe grumble or bark but no, this little one was fiesty!

From this point onwards socialisation became my priority as well as relationship building!

For the first week of having him he kept himself to himself and didn’t show much desire in wanting to sit with us. Quite strange for a young pup but i imagine he was very overwhelmed. He was easily encouraged to interact with food and toys but given the choice he would settle on his own. When it came to bedtime he did struggle to settle independently. I crate trained him from day one and took up sleeping on the sofa for the first week so I could be close by to comfort him or to let him out to the toilet. After the first week I slowly weaned myself upstairs and by week 2 he was happily sleeping downstairs in his den and would only wake me up if he needed the toilet. By week 3 he was toilet trained and sleeping through the night. The puppy stuff was the easy stuff with this little one. He was fiesty with his puppy biting but again after a couple of weeks this had settled and it was rare.

He wasn’t fully vaccinated yet so I decided to start carrying him around places so he could see things from a safe distance and take it all in from the safety of my arms. All was well unless he saw a dog….... Then he would just start barking and it wasn’t a little bark! He was clearly worried but he wanted to make sure he could tell them to go away. All at the grand age of 11 weeks!

Once he was vaccinated the vets invited us to their puppy play group, I am always cautious of play groups because done right they can be amazing, done wrong they can ruin pups! But I knew what to look for and knew how to protect my pup so i thought i’d see how he got on with some smaller dogs.

When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t bark but appeared very interested. There weren't too many pups so I was pleased he wouldn’t be overwhelmed so I chose to stay. The time came to put the pups down and it was very clear, very quickly that my pup had no manners, was very intense and had a strong desire to herd and control the other pups. I scooped him up as this isn’t what I wanted him to practice and as I did the vet agreed it was the right choice. I allowed him to watch for a little bit on my knee. The other pups weren’t running around as much now, so we tried again. As soon as I put him down he made a beeline for one of the pups and was trying to herd it into a corner. So I again scooped him up and instead we let him watch and I rewarded him for being calm and watching. Clearly not quite ready for playing with other pups!

He could now go for walks and what surprised me was how keen he was to go for one and how quickly he wanted to pull. So we took our time so I could help him learn to walk nicely on a lead and this is still a quality he maintains today thankfully :)

During these walks I quickly learnt if he saw a dog in the distance he was very quick to start lunging and barking (yes at 13 weeks of age!). However, if the other dog came into view suddenly, quite close by, he was actually quite polite but would roll over and go submissive if it was a big dog or a lively one. This is a much better behaviour for a nervous pup rather than lunging and barking but it was still quite clear he wasn’t very confident!

I worked hard on his reactivity and with the help of a very good day care and some very good play groups, once he was ready, he learnt how to interact with dogs properly and his reactivity improved to almost nothing when he was approximately 9 months old. The ones he saw furthest away were still the hardest challenge for him but he could cope well enough to not react, I could just see he wasn’t 100% relaxed.

Some of you reading this with reactive dogs will know this is a little bizarre because typically the closer other dogs get, usually the more a dog will react. Well Chip has always been the opposite way round which has made it slightly more challenging!

I would love to end the story here by saying from this point he was the ideal sociable dog and became the stooge dog I wanted……… unfortunately things took a dramatic change.

The Thing Every Dog Owner Dreads

He was approximately 10 months old and had been at day care one Friday. I picked him up and the day care owner said “he has been a bit quiet today and he snapped at another dog when they came over to him”. This was actually out of character for him and was the first time he had done it since I introduced him to Archie. I asked about the dog he had snapped at and the day care owner said it was a puppy so she put it down to the pup irritating him and he was just telling him to stop it he had still been particularly quiet. I didn’t worry too much but would certainly be monitoring the situation due to his history with dogs so far.

The next day, on the Saturday morning, Chip seemed perfectly happy, I let him out like I usually would, then happened to spot him being sick outside. Went out to check on him and look at the sick. I know, gross right! But sick and poo can tell us a lot about a dog’s health! I noticed something that looked like a big bit of plastic in his sick. I scooped it out with a poo bag and on closer inspection noticed it was some of the cow’s tendon chew i had given him the night before. By this point chip had trotted off quite happy and so I wasn’t overly concerned.

About an hour later I nipped out to go see to my horse. I was out for approximately 2 hours. When I came home, I came in to chip cowering in the corner. He looked terrified. I looked around downstairs to try and find what might have spooked him…. Nothing. I tried to go near him to comfort him and he tried to move away. That’s when I noticed he was moving like he was weak. I sat on the floor as he had now gone behind my table. He did slowly come out to me but as soon as I touched him he was flinching. I knew immediately that something was very wrong so I instantly got him in the car to the vets and cancelled all my training classes for the day.

The vets checked him over and looked at the thing he had sicked up and suspected it had irritated his stomach and made him feel ill. His temperature was quite high but they didn’t appear overly concerned so they gave him some antibiotics and sent me home with a course of tablets. My gut was telling me it was something more than an upset stomach but I took him home and made sure he rested. I spent the night on the sofa with him.

By the morning he was worse. He felt hot and his breathing was faster than normal and he hadn’t touched any food or water since the friday night. I took him straight back to the vets as I wanted them to check him again. His temperature had rose a little more, but again, they weren’t overly concerned and wanted me to give the antibiotics time to work. They did however give him an anti-inflammatory injection to help ease him further.

This seemed to help and although he was still very lethargic his eyes looked brighter and I was able to feed him a couple of pieces of chicken.

As the day went on, he did seem to pick up a little but I was very concerned about his breathing and I just felt he was getting hotter but tried to remain calm and not be the over protective, panicky owner that I so wanted to be!

I remember letting him out to go to the toilet and watching him like a hawk. I remember the wind being really strong that day. Whilst he was walking around the garden, finding his spot, he all of a sudden looked like he was stalking something. Not unusual for him. It was at first quite nice to watch as I felt he was obviously feeling better. Then all of a sudden he fell over, looked like he was struggling to stand up then got up and started to come back to where I was standing. At the time I thought the wind must've knocked him off balance because he was weak. Only after future events about to occur did I learn he actually had a small fit.

He came back inside, took up his spot on the sofa and curled up to go to sleep. I of course sat with him and planned to sleep on the sofa again with him. It was now late evening and I noticed chip was shivering but yet to touch he was still belt hot. I comforted him and stayed sat close to him and this appeared to stop the shivering. As the night went on I started to be able to feel the heat coming off him from a distance, his breathing started to get heavy again and the shivering started up. I rang the emergency vet and they gave me some advice over the phone but didn’t feel it was necessary to bring him in.

Monday morning came and he hadn’t moved from the sofa all night. He didn’t want to go out for the toilet so I left him be. I tried to offer him food and water and he wouldn’t take anything and he now felt like a radiator (I could feel the heat coming from him from the opposite end of the sofa). I patiently waited until the vets were open so I could ring and tell them I was bringing him straight in.

Our neighbours dog always barks before he is going on a walk and when chip would hear this he would run to the stairs and sit on them so he could watch the dog go for a walk. Well this happened and chip shot off the sofa and ran to the window. I chased after i’m as i knew this wouldn’t be good for him and I was right!...

With that chip came crashing down the stairs (luckily he had only gone up 5 steps). The sudden movement and high temperature had caused him to have a fit. I have dealt with dogs fitting before when i worked in rescue but I had never seen a dog fit like chip did. Instead of thrashing about on the floor he was almost semi conscious so instead was standing himself up and throwing himself against the walls and the floor. I managed to grab him and hold him still so he didn’t hurt himself. I sat and waited for it to stop and for him to come round. He just laid in between my legs looking terrified. Safe to say by this point I was sobbing.

I carried him to my car and took him straight to the vets.

They took his temperature and it was now dangerously high! Any higher and his organs would have started failing. They rushed him in, got him hooked up to a drip so they could start trying to bring his temperature down.

They ran test after test to try figure out what was going on with him and all they could find was that he had an extremely high white blood cell (The main cells of the immune system for fighting illnesses).

I had dropped him off on Monday morning and on Thursday there was still no sign of improvement and he now was unable to stand up and could barely lift his head. They asked me to come see him as there was now a very high chance he wouldn’t make it through much longer. When I went to go see him they were holding him up round the middle with a bandage and he was trying his very best to walk to me. As soon as he got to me he just collapsed on me. The nurses were lovely and let me just spend some time with him whilst I waited to speak to the vet.

Training saved his life!

The vet explained all the tests they had tried and how there was one more thing they could try treat him for but there were two issues. 1. - he needed some solids in his stomach to take the treatment, 2 - the test, to double check what they now suspected they were dealing with, was very risky as they would need to take fluid from his spine which has risks in itself but would also take at least 24 hours to get the results from which I could tell they didn’t feel he had that long.

So I agreed we would try to get some solids in him and try the treatment. My thoughts were that it may even just give him enough time to do the test on his spine. I really didn’t want to put him through force feeding if I could help it so I asked them to get me some chicken and I would see if he would eat for me.

They brought me some chicken and he wasn’t in the slightest interested. He just wanted to do nothing!

But…………. Here comes the miracle!!!!

Some madness in me decided to see if he would take the chicken like he would a treat because I knew how much he loved training. I decided to ask him for a nose touch on my hand which was one of his favourite things to do. I held my hand really close to his nose so he barely had to move, I gave the command “touch” he responded well and he took the first bit of chicken. The vet was amazed and I was now hopeful. I repeated this and managed to get two small bowls of chicken down him.

The vets were keen to start this last treatment and to try stop this story turning into a book I will cut the next part short!

The vets rang me on the Saturday morning asking if I would pick him up because he was howling and unsettling all the other dogs up. He also kept pulling his cone off and pulling his drip out!

Finally home and enjoying some chill time in the sunshine!

Happiest day ever!!!!!!!!!!! He was home!!

He was diagnosed with a life long condition called poly-arthritis which is where his immune system attacks him instead of fighting off the disease. A rare condition but seen typically in adolescent dogs when their immune system is still very immature. Although he now has this for life, in the last three years (touch wood) we have only had one relapse!

The road to recovery and why I now have a lazy dog!

Unfortunately this whole ordeal made chip very fragile and the first step in his recovery was lots of rest………. 3 whole months without a single walk allowed!

Remember, Chip is a border collie from working stock and not even 1 yet!! Oh the joys!

I am so pleased I crate trained him and he loved his crate as this encouraged him to sleep a lot. When he was out of his crate I relied on interactive toys to keep his mind busy, I scatter fed him outside in the grass but kept him on his lead so he couldn’t be tempted to run about and I also practised a lot of stationary training such as stays and leave its.

After the first month he seemed to adapt to this lazy lifestyle and spent most of his time sleeping and chilling next to me whenever he could.

After this we had to very slowly build his walks up. Started with 5 minutes on lead for a week, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes and so forth. I was then allowed to incorporate small bouts of off lead sessions. The vets thought he would never cope with more than half an hour exercise and would need to be on steroids for life but boy has he proved everyone wrong.

After about a year and a half he was steroid free and enjoying up to one hour walks. The vets gave me the okay to start treating him like a normal fit active border collie :). The agility dream was a possibility again!

His reactivity was back and had peaked!

During the whole ordeal I had completely forgotten all about his reactivity and for the first 6 months of us slowly building up his walks I had stuck to walking him near my home which is basically in the middle of nowhere where you never seen anyone.

Once he was walking much further I decided to take him somewhere different for him to explore. Well lets just say we didn’t stay long!

The first dog he saw he just exploded. The reactivity was back and 10 times worse. I deal with this issue day in day out so I knew there was no point continuing this walk as he was now high on adrenaline and I was also very conscious of how this heightened stress could possibly cause him to relapse with his illness. This reactivity could be back and worse because A) he hasn’t seen any dogs for almost a year apart from the ones he knows and B) the day before he was poorly he had snapped at a dog so this makes me wonder whether he was already feeling poorly that day and has remembered feeling rubbish the last time he was around strange dogs. Either could be an explanation but neither matters really as my job now was to help him cope with seeing dogs again.

That’s exactly what I did but wow; It’s been a slow process! Even now he can still have his moments. His reactivity is rare now and only on the odd occasion but what is clear is, he is still unsure of new dogs and he doesn’t have much desire to make new friends. He is always the dog that is happier either playing with me or by himself rather than interacting with the dogs around him.

Part of me thinks his illness affects him more than we realise because any discomfort can alter a dog’s behaviour which may explain why it hasn’t 100% gone, after 2 years of training, by a professional that helps 100s of dogs a year, with this same problem! The other part of me thinks he was genetically predisposed to this behaviour with him showing it from such an early age at quite a high level. But regardless of the reasons I will always keep trying to help him cope better around dogs as any improvements will improve his mental well being and I will never be complacent with him as I don’t want all this hard work ruining!

The real positives are he does have a few select friends and has made several new ones this year through careful introductions and 100% no pressure on him to meet them. I have also now managed to get him to the point where he is comfortable enough to participate in agility classes but I don’t make him sit and watch the others do their turns as I can feel him become on edge if they are too close. I have also attended a couple of competitions with him and he very quickly moved from being a beginner into the novice group. He seems to adore agility. When he is doing it its like he has no worries in the world. Whilst he is enjoying it we will keep doing it but for me it’s no longer about working up the levels. I just cherish the moments when we do it as it is such a big bonus considering everything he went through and I never thought he would be able to cope with an agility competition environment with his reactivity. but we’ve done it against the odds :).

Unfortunately our challenges don’t end here as he has recently develop spatial seizures. Vets aren’t sure if these are linked to his illness or whether they are completely separate, as epilepsy in collies is very common. It is in its very early stages and very rarely happens so at the moment he is still living life normally.

Unfortunately for me, these seizures are very random and so rare that I don't know when they might happen. This summer he had one during a training session. They make him very scared and unfortunately he is now very worried about learning anything new. So if you’ve been wondering why I don’t post many training videos with him anymore, this is why. We are slowly working through this but even a simple task of following a treat can freak him out. I have seen some signs of improvement lately and I've enrolled us onto a 6 month scentwork course which I am hoping is so natural for him that he will find his enjoyment in learning something new again.

Chip’s Lessons for me

The biggest dog training lessons chip has taught me is to think outside the box when it comes to working with any problem, if things aren't happening how you would expect them to.

The one I feel we would all benefit to learn is; sometimes reaching a lower goal and accepting that goal over the one you set out for is much more rewarding because now anything more is simply a bonus.

Thank you for reading Chip's story so far. He is extremely special to me and I'm sure this story will have many more interesting chapters……

To be continued.

Natalie & Chip.

It all started with a Reactive Puppy called Potato!

Chip’s Story so far……

Training saved his life!