Gulliver My Nervous Nellie Collie

My Collie, Gull, is a bit of a nervous Nellie. Raising him from a 9 week old pup, I did all the suggested socializing, puppy kindergarten, obedience classes, even agility classes. We were out and about meeting new people and having new experiences all the time, but it seems with Gull, he wakes up in a new world everyday anyway. So unless he could have possibly been socialized to every imaginable scenario or person or dog, you can count on some panicky barking at some point in the day.

His encounter with my eggplant plant (that seems a bit redundant, but not exactly sure how one refers to an eggplant, well plant), illustrates his new world perspective perfectly. I use to have a garden with an eggplant plant growing in it and he’d walk by this plant everyday, with only the slightest of interest, maybe a nose poke to the eggplant ever so often. Then one day, as he started to walk past said plant, it came to his attention that the eggplant was, OMG! laying on the ground (guess I was a might bit behind in harvesting it. I’m not the biggest of eggplant fans. Why I was growing it is whole other story).

I'm not sure exactly why eggplants are more scary on the ground, then on the plant, but I guess in Gull's world view, things had changed just enough to be highly worrisome. To the degree, that you would have thought he spotted aliens landing in the backyard. He did a quick double take, then leaped back about a foot (for a Collie, well at least my two Collies, that’s a pretty, scared out of your wits, adrenaline-induced leap) and commenced with the high shrill screeching, that I’m sure could be heard five blocks away. If there’s one thing Collies excel out, it’s alarmist barking (watch any Lassie episode). To quell the ear piercing barking, I calmly bent down and touched the eggplant myself and explained to him that it was a completely non-threatening alien substance and that it was in fact the same eggplant he'd been walking by for a few weeks. So get a grip, man. That did successfully stop the barking, but he continued to give the eggplant quite a wide berth, until I mercifully removed it to the trash heap.

Anywho, that drawn out eggplant story was really just the set up for future stories about my wacky Collie. Next one up, either our recent trip to the vet or his relationship with the dog next door.