SailorHere

Sailor here. Well, Sailor is what my new Mom calls me. My real name is very long and ends with �In Cahoots,� but Mom says that if she goes into the back yard to call me, she�ll sound like an owl and the neighbors might whisper. So she named me Sailor.

I came to her from Washington state and she says that when she opened my crate at the airport and I stepped out, her heart almost stopped because I was so drop dead gorgeous. Now explain this to me. If her heart stops, SHE drops dead, not me. She has some perplexing figures of speech at times. Anyway, she had never seen me in dog before; only in pictures, and says I am even more beautiful than my pictures. Of course. She had several names waiting for me, but when we left the airport, some random man said, �Hi, Sailor!� and since I sailed out of the baggage claim room on my leash, she decided that fate had a hand in naming me and who was she to tempt fate? She tells everyone that I sailed into her heart. Awwwwww.

I AM gorgeous. I used to be a show dog and have entered many beauty contests and won some of them and Mom says I am pointed. Well, yes, my nose is pointed; I am a collie after all. And my toenails are pointed some of the time. And my ears are pointed when I fly them up in the air but Mom does things to them so that they won�t take off and be airborne. But that�s about all. Mom is strange sometimes and confuses me but I love her to bits.

Our first week in my new home was fun and strange and a little nervous. I slept with Mom on my fish blankie by her bed and when I got up to sniff and look out the windows, she was always there to scritch my ears and make me feel good. Moving one�s home is hard. It helps to have your own bed and your favorite toy with you, and my very own crate was nice to have too. All these came with me on the airplane and helped me feel at home in the beginning.

Mom introduced me to her family. She lives alone but has two children, a pink one who graduated from college and a blue one who has not yet graduated from college. And she has a cat. Now, I like cats. I do. But the cat doesn�t seem to like me. She calls herself HissSpit and introduced herself to me every time she laid eyes on me. She spent a lot of time introducing herself that first week. I think she�d like to lay claws on me, too, but I am too polite to get within striking range. She has had experience with dogs and I don�t think her experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I think I will stay out of her way.

My new backyard is really cool. It is big and full of trees and squirrels and grass and bushes. I love to run on the grass and jump through the bushes. Mom says that her daughter�s sweetheart has a dog, Zoe, who is a Siberian husky and therefore loves to run. She says Zoe loves to jump over the bushes. Mom says that Zoe will come over and play with me when I get settled in. I can�t wait! A Zoe all my very own!

And training has started. Mom says I seem to have conveniently forgotten Sit. I guess I did. She tried to get me to sit by holding freeze-dried liver over my nose. I backed up. She then backed me into the corner and held freeze-dried liver over my nose. I got discouraged because she wouldn�t let me have it and gave up and sniffed the floor. I realize now that I was supposed to sit when my nose went up to eat the treat. I got it half right. My nose went up, but my butt stayed right where it was. Hmmm, I heard her say. Then she got out a clicker.

Click, went the clicker. Treat went Mom. Click went the clicker. Treat went Mom. Every time the clicker clicked, she gave me a treat. These treats were pretty good. Some were raisins, some were liver pieces, some were beef jerky bits, and some were Cheerios stored in the freeze-dried liver can and so tasted a lot like freeeze-dried liver Cheerios. I never knew what I was going to get, but I knew that every time I heard the click, I would get something. Then she changed the rules. Pretty soon I figured out that if I sat down, she�d click and give me a treat. I am very intelligent. I caught on really fast. Now this is how to train! Mom learned to have a stash of treats and clickers in various rooms of our house because she says that at odd times, I�d come flying up to her with that Treat Look in my eye and splat my butt on the floor. Mom is clicker training very well; I am pleased with her progress.

Sailor the internet collie