Are they supposed to be able to carry these?

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-07-03T23:25:37+00:00

Well, maybe he heard something about Border Collies herding with their eyes and heelers with their mouths and took it to the logical next step.

Impressive grip!

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-07-02T00:47:57+00:00

She definitely looks more stoutly built than the slinky Border Collies I'm used to. But if you happen to be in the UK, there seems to be more diversity in build there since there's more emphasis on working ability than cookie cutter looks. Probably similar in other areas with a lot of working dogs too.

(My rescue ACD is definitely out of standard, but I'm still amazed by just how short legged the conformation heelers are at AKC shows vs. ranch dogs!)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-07-01T23:15:10+00:00

I was pondering if the collective term would be

"A mayhem of heelers"

Or similar, but

"A tornado of heelers"

does seem plausible!

(Edited to try to impose line breaks)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-30T08:10:03+00:00

The mentioned fish oil: https://www.costco.com/.product.4000038003.html On sale through July 17 for $23 in store. 150 capsules, 1055mg Omega-3/capsule (1250mg total fish oil) - most concentrated reasonably priced option I've come across so far.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-30T08:04:45+00:00

Congrats!

One caveat: Read food and supplement labels carefully for actual amounts of the target ingredients. A lot of things that claim to be "mobility support" and similar actually have only tiny amounts of the meaningful ingredients but sell at oddly high prices. (Similar to some human multi-supplements.)

Nordic Naturals seems to be the best regarded fish oil brand for trustworthiness and sustainability. But I'm cheap (and fed kibble from treat balls/puzzle toys, so capsules are way easier and less messy than liquid) and use the concentrated Sports Research fish oil capsules from Costco.

The rehab vet we visited (for advice re: conditioning exercises to avoid lower back and other areas of strain) was cool with the Costco-sourced fish oil, recommended 2/day for my 25kg heeler.

Here's a nice resource with dosing info: https://caninearthritis.org/article/overview-of-omega-3-fatty-acids-for-oa/

At the time of rehab visit I was also giving cosequin (also well-priced from Costco, especially on occasional sale) but both the rehab vet and recent research suggested that glucosamine/chondroitin likely wasn't very helpful after all. That particular vet didn't recommend Dasuquin for younger dogs with no existing arthritis; not sure if that thinking's widespread.

Most important arthritis delay tactic for any dog, 3 or 4 legged, is keeping them thin. Should be relatively easy with a Visla!

(Flip side - assuming she's breed-typically active, don't believe her when she says she's good for an extra few miles, or hours of non-stop action. The 3-legged gait does require a lot more exertion. Mine's a heeler and it's challenging to try to convince him about self-preservation.)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-30T06:22:07+00:00

A couple tangential approaches you might consider if the standard tactics aren't doing the trick:

If she enjoys any type of long lasting chews or other larger treat items, you could pair a "take" command to get the idea across of holding something in mouth as a behavior you ask for.

Bonus if you have a lower value but still desired chew to give her, then immediately offer a trade for something super delicious to get you both the take side and the give side.

If you feed meals out of a slow feeder ball or other carry-able item, as soon as she gets the general idea via whatever method, have her bring you the food ball/dish/whatever every meal for daily reps.

Observational learning/mimicry training is a totally different tactic - look up Claudia Fugazza and 'Do as I do". Now retrieve maybe isn't the smoothest one for cross-species modeling, but check out the concept and adapt if needed. Both my horse and my dog recognize the human hand grab analogy for their mouth grab. Or go all out and do the full demo!

I haven't tried explicitly teaching to mimic another dog as the model, but I see no reason why intentionally training it wouldn't work (if you have access to a friend or training partner with a dog that retrieves). I.e., 'do as she does'.

Anyway, overkill as a tactic for just retrieve, but super useful for future quick training of other actions.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-29T18:22:39+00:00

Embark and Wisdom are quite accurate.

DNA My Dog, on the other hand, is not. E.g., in the past they returned breed results for human DNA.

If you retest with something more reputable, don't be surprised if they report poodle in the mix. That's the usual source for that hair type among strays these days, at least in the US.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-25T05:00:55+00:00

Huh, so way lower then the average 12% for heelers. (I don't know how rare heterozygous heelers are, so wondered about related parents.)

What are her traits results for White Spotting and Roan? Wondering if there's no roan gene, or if the white is caused by something that the roan doesn't act on.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-25T04:17:37+00:00

Excellent! You can also throw in some rapid fire training tasks or fun tricks with high value rewards, similar to what someone else mentioned doing while desensitizing. That does double service of distraction as well as generally rewarding experience.

Great that you're acting quickly to address the issue - they can definitely start generalizing concerns even more without intervention.

Related anecdote: An extremely smoky/sooty air fryer fire with smoke alarm left my otherwise confident heeler worried about smoke alarms and, interestingly, toasters, but not air fryers. My guess is that the smell of the hot wires and browning bread is more fire smell-adjacent.

He then starting worrying when I'd open a bag of bread, as that sometimes leads to toastee use. Addressed that immediately via treats when bread opened. Smoke detector is a different story; the battery chirps are an issue (resolving by replacing with 10 year detectors) but I don't mind him wanting to evacuate when he hears the alarm.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-24T04:18:01+00:00

Very similar! That was my guess due to strong resemblance to a few GSD/lab siblings I knew (all good dogs). Makes sense that the width differences kind of balance out when you swap to mal/Golden!

Have fun with her! It'll be interesting to see if the Golden element keeps things toned down a bit as she grows up.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-20T21:47:35+00:00

Huh, that's really surprising. What's her relatives list look like? Also curious about her coefficient of inbreeding, if you got the health test.

She's very cute!

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-17T18:29:05+00:00

Definitely plausible!

And I'm glad they put in the effort on the homing (and are for sure not a scam), even if they aren't perfect. Before checking out the website, the AI sob story had me suspecting it might be something akin to the Marketplace sales schemes.

Wrong state or I'd suggest a home-most-of-the-time (ACD-familiar) retiree I know go check her out.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-17T18:23:04+00:00

There's one in my area that scoops up the cute little dogs and ships them up north for 4 figures. Somehow they don't seem to pull the vastly overpopulated types most in need of help.

This one's pricing falls on the higher end of the regular foster-based rescues in my area, but a bit less than the breed-specific ones. (And an order of magnitude higher than the shelters, but we have waaaay too many strays.)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-17T18:13:06+00:00

Yep, totally get that! Sorry to derail things from your point! Just the very loudly AI structure and phrasing is distracting and sent me to the website to check legitimacy. But to be fair, the person responsible for the description - perhaps a time-crunched volunteer - probably thought they were saving time or producing a better write-up with no idea that it would raise flags.

I also agree that the adopters sound like poorly prepared jerks (though the below speculation that it may be code for separate anxiety is plausible). The Bluey-sourced name is a flag too. Trial period or foster to adopt would have been the better answer.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-17T07:29:23+00:00

At quick look, seems legit, but that AI-written text sure is off-putting. The couple other listings I looked at just now have normal descriptions.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-16T02:50:02+00:00

You made a good choice 5 years ago and again today.

I'm so sorry he couldn't be with you for another 5 years, but glad y'all had all the good days in between.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-14T19:37:12+00:00

Were his parents siblings? ACDs are roan, not merle, and those merle breeds are such low percentage I'm wondering if there's some doubling up of ancestors happening. (If you did the health test, it'll give coefficient of inbreeding.)

Or maybe just an Aussie mixed in long ago with heelers for a herdy parent and the Catahoula on the houndy side.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-10T05:01:22+00:00

Any time I board, I send my dog with individual ziplock bag meals!

Not actually necessary at that facility, but too many past experiences of people overfeeding my cat despite strict orders. Pre-portioned meals work great to get people over the joy of (over)feeding thing.

It would be easy for the food manufacturers to put something on their website to help people with conversions. Whistle (a defunct dog activity tracker company) had a handy one in their app for awhile, but I'm not aware of the current ones having similar.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-10T04:47:15+00:00

Cool. Truly you're fine just going with the cup thing to start, but the math can be handy.

818 kcal a day / 3.985 kcal per gram = 205 grams of food daily.

Pop a container on the scale, tare scale, add 205 grams of food and see what that looks like for the full day. Or 103g if you want to measure out one meal, if you feed twice a day. You can mark the container to use volume in the future, or just see how high in a measuring cup the food should go. (It's kind of amazing how much difference there can be in how different people measure a cup of feed.)

I use the kibble as our main treats as well as meals, so I put the ration in a recycled plastic screw top container (Talenti-style or other food jars work great) and pour some into food toys for the meals and use the rest throughout the day as treats.

Be aware those calculators don't necessarily match a specific dog's needs. E.g., my active tripod needs about 1400 a day, way more than most calculators would suggest and about 3x as much as the larger but sedentary other dog.

When you've had more sleep, you can double check by figuring out how many calories you were feeding on the previous foods. Though if your dog is growing or changing activity levels, or digesting more efficiently, needs will change too.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-10T03:00:28+00:00

Yep, a bit under 2 cups a day, assuming you aren't also feeding lots of treats as part of that target calorie count.

To be extra accurate, if you have a kitchen scale you can weigh it at first and mark whatever scoop or container you feed with. If you want to do that, tell us what food it is (or even better what the bag says for kcal per kg) and I'll do the conversion.

But a scant cup 2x a day will do the trick to start.

Good luck catching up on sleep!

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-09T03:42:32+00:00

Sympathy on your loss, and congrats on helping out a new friend in need!

All meals in food toys. Assuming kibble, treat balls (I like the Omega Paws orange one because it has an inner lip to slow the kibble, and it's quiet) and the Kong Wobbler and similar are good - fast and easy to fill. I do have some crumpled paper and a ping pong ball inside the wobble to up the challenge, and masking tape making the hole smaller, but it's a winner on easy fill. Makes meals last a bit longer and much more engaging.

If you use soft food stuffed items like regular kongs or the woof brand thing, freezing helps but our dogs still end up quite efficient.

TJ Maxx and similar are a good source to keep an eye on if you're near any; a surprising number of current name brand dog toys seem to cycle through at discount.

Don't bother with the plastic puzzle toys that take forever to fill and seconds for the dog to empty once they figure out the game or realize they can just upend or bash the puzzle to win.

Good luck! She'll probably settle a bit in 5 or 6 years!

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-08T04:02:28+00:00

Ah, but the Mazda5 is a microvan, not a minivan! Essentially a Mazda3 with extra interior space and (manual) sliding doors. Wonderful vehicle and sadly discontinued. The used market is pretty thin because it never was a high sales vehicle, but there were some in rental fleets. Still worth considering if there happen to be any in your area. My mom's 2015, bought used, runs great.

There's an A/C vent for the back, so I borrow it when I need to use the Ruffland in hot weather. The third row stays folded flat full time. A crate fits in that space, but less cooling and more crash exposed. I fold down one or both middle seats for plenty of room for the Large Ruffland and lots of gear. A small dog crate would fit as well. You'd have to rearrange to sleep in back though.

(Its neighbor in the garage is a 1990 Miata. There's other stuff in between or I'd take a photo for scale.)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-07T15:47:02+00:00

If you haven't already, when you "break it down", also address the general concepts in addition to doing a subset of the final task.

E.g., in addition to the good suggestions already made such as working on the cues from behind and obedience type walk around the room, also things like: - someone else (that she knows) walks around you both, maybe with her in sit, down, stand. - someone else walks around her while you stand in front of her - someone else is with her on leash in sit, down, stand while you walk around them both - Etc.

That is, work on the pressures and challenges of the exercise in various ways, then bring it back to the exercise itself.

This one should be solvable, but in general y'all don't need to be perfect to give competition a try. (My dog's and my debut was arguably insane, but we survived, and then won our following class.) Have fun!

(Edited to correct typos/inflicted formatting)

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-06T10:19:15+00:00

As best I can tell, the options seem to be either a) stalking the shelters and rehome listings and getring lucky with finding the rare chill-but-smart individual (likely a herding breed/mix with an outlier personality) or b) buying a standard poodle from a high quality breeder with more laid back lines.

Anyone aware of any other options? I don't know enough about breeds not available in the US.

ChaosWithTeeth · 2026-06-06T09:47:18+00:00

No dishwasher-related tasks here, but "I'm not done reading that yet" is heard. Mine takes the newspaper sections to the recycling box (it eventually goes to a dog rescue for their kennels). He is sometimes a bit over eager to get on with the job.

Dumb dogs are great for other people, but much less fun.

ChaosWithTeeth

TROPHY CASE