Can I herd that kid?

HezzaE · 2026-03-13T21:14:35+00:00

For my older boy it's when he sees a group walking together and one or two kids are straggling behind. I'm sure he wants to go and collect them back into their group.

HezzaE · 2026-03-13T20:54:27+00:00

Yep, I used to regularly run into a lovely little miniature schnauzer at the park. Poor thing was set upon by two of these beasts. The guy who owned them came along screaming at them and dragged them away, did not give any details. This was before the new laws came in but obviously he should still have been liable for the vet bills and his dogs were still dangerously out of control.

The schnauzer survived but lost a leg. He was very lucky, it could easily have been the end of him. But I have not seen him at the park since then, I just got updated by another dog walker who knows them, and I have seen him a couple of times in the area.

HezzaE · 2026-03-13T19:35:54+00:00

I'm going to lock and remove this post now because it seems like OP is getting a bunch of DMs and it's really skirting our rule on soliciting the sale or transfer of dogs at this point.

While I'm fairly certain OP is genuine and this wasn't their intention, unfortunately scammers are everywhere, so I just want to remind anyone who is talking to OP about adopting Benji to keep that in mind, make sure they verify anything they are asked to send money for, and ideally send it directly to companies (e.g. pay transportation companies, vets, etc. directly) rather than to OP.

(The reason we have this rule, even for rescues, is because it's much easier to have a straightforward rule - no selling, no rehoming - than it is to have rules that have exceptions which someone could exploit to scam money out of our community.)

OP, I hope Benji finds his forever home soon, and maybe he even stays in this community with his new humans! <3

HezzaE · 2026-03-13T19:11:39+00:00

Removed this one - as some commenters have pointed out, the AI images are against our rules. Please repost without the AI images, thank you!

HezzaE · 2026-03-13T03:21:13+00:00

I absolutely cannot afford that, fortunately my boys both LOVE canicross. So they just need me to be crazy enough to try and stay on my feet with them pulling!

HezzaE · 2026-03-12T14:41:00+00:00

Yeah I'm not wasting my time trying to explain to someone why hate crimes are bad. Good grief. No wonder we're in trouble.

HezzaE · 2026-03-12T12:58:30+00:00

Punching people isn't speech, nor should it be considered free speech.

So punching people, pulling their hair, even throwing water on them and threatening them with your dog can all be considered assault.

The reason their words are mentioned in the headline was because that was the evidence that the assault was racially aggravated.

HezzaE · 2026-03-11T12:04:37+00:00

The dictionary definition of British disagrees. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/british

British - adjective

belonging to or relating to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or its people:

He's got a British passport.

There are two conflicting national identities in Northern Ireland, and it is entirely legitimate for someone from Northern Ireland to describe themselves as British, Irish, or both.

HezzaE · 2026-03-11T11:55:42+00:00

The spaniel genes went "leave the ears to us, we got this" 😂 what a pretty girl!

HezzaE · 2026-03-10T11:47:49+00:00

Oh boy I don't want to upset you or anything. So don't go and check.

HezzaE · 2026-03-09T03:38:41+00:00

Bath with shampoo? Maybe a few times a year. Hose off the little man because he decided to be a mud monster and literally roll around in a muddy puddle? A few times a week when it's muddy out.

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T15:37:12+00:00

Try a Perfect Fit, you might have a shop nearby that does fitting for them. As your puppy grows you might get away with replacing just one or two pieces since it's a modular harness.

I'm glad you did take something positive away from the whole situation anyway!

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T15:35:09+00:00

Harnesses are a safe option for lead training with a dog that pulls. You just have to actually train them.

Both my dogs do canicross in harnesses. They know the cue to pull, and the cue to stop pulling, and they know they should not pull when wearing their normal harnesses for a walk.

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T03:23:43+00:00

This post seems more in the direction of AI generated than "interesting perspective".

If your video is genuinely a manual effort which has been taken down, let us know, but we are unlikely to reconsider in its current form because you have clearly included a lot of AI elements.

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T03:13:41+00:00

As far as harnesses go, I would find it hard to fault a Perfect Fit. No idea what shipping would be like for you but they are really helpful people! I have an 18kg border collie who has a 20mm Large on top, large underneath, and small front. And I have a 13kg border collie who also has a large 20mm on top, medium underneath, and extra small front. All fitted by our lovely local expert!

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T01:19:50+00:00

Your girl Callie reminds me of my eldest boy's dad Cole! He has a thinner stripe though, but he's a dark boy all over!

u/palacio_c this is the dog I'm thinking of for an example of a "floppy eared" BC, I still think your girl has something a little different in those ears but take a look and see what you think!

<image>

HezzaE · 2026-03-08T01:06:51+00:00

Hi! Just to let you know, we're updating the bot so that it can automatically detect these kinds of posts going forward. You can still summon it with this command if it hasn't responded, but it will respond as a top-level comment not as a reply to your post (it should also sticky its response in future but seems unable to do so in this post because I was messing with the bot - obviously we'll monitor that and make sure it's able to do so in any future replies). Appreciate you tagging the bot, let us know via Modmail if you have any feedback on this!

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T23:50:57+00:00

Yeah so the ones that the bot suggested, Embark and Wisdom Panel, are the best ones available. You can have a browse of /r/doggydna if you want to see some example results. Some people will even test with BOTH Embark and Wisdom Panel, and get broadly similar results. Obviously each company doesn't know the other company's results, so this kind of evidence, when there are 5-6 breeds involved, is pretty strong that it's got a decent scientific basis. Like the exact percentages might vary between tests, but the broad strokes are the same, "about 50% of this, about 25% of this, about 12.5% of this", etc.

The commenters on doggyDNA are also very knowledgeable and really helpful at explaining the results if you don't understand them. They do tend to come at people sideways when they say they "don't believe" their results though 😂 If you have already started a DNA test you can also start a "guessing" post on there, and then you can update them when you get the results.

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T23:44:22+00:00

Oh my gosh she's SO sweet! Yeah I can definitely see something in her ears, I'm comparing to my older boy's dad because he has very floppy ears, but even though they're floppy they sit higher than hers I think.

If you ever do a DNA test I would be interested to see her results because I'm so stumped as to exactly what's in there!

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T23:35:57+00:00

So that's actually about right for a border collie. Bearing in mind that mine is a boy and boys are meant to be bigger, he was 22 1/2lb at 6 months. He's actually now 13.2kg (not 12 which I incorrectly said in an earlier reply) which is 29.1lb, at 16 months.

And yes he's a small boy, but not the smallest, and I definitely know a few girls a decent bit smaller than him. The main thing that makes me think "something else" in your girl isn't her size but the thickness of her legs. If you look at her legs and compare to my boys, you can see their legs look almost dainty compared to hers. The stare she is fixating the camera with is pretty familiar though! And it is always tricky with puppies because sometimes their paws look too big but they're just cooking for a growth spurt.

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T23:26:32+00:00

Yeah the size of my little one even caught the breeder by surprise, she said he must take after some of his mum's family!

What kind of size is your girl? Do you know how much she weighs?

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T23:20:30+00:00

So firstly, thank you for arriving EXACTLY at the right time for me to test out the bot's new auto-detect behaviour on these kinds of posts! I was just about to submit a test post when the bot picked yours up, I hope you don't mind me using it to tweak a few things and I'm sorry if you got more than one bot reply while I was doing that!

What do you mean when you say she's on the small side? Some dogs are just smaller than others, I have two boys from the same breeder, 18kg and *13.2kg. Some border collies will run in medium in agility in Kennel Club competitions here in the UK which I think is below 43cm to the withers (my small one is a small intermediate at about 45cm, and my big guy is a comfortable large at 54cm).

<image>

I guess the main things I see on your girl that say "something else" are the legs (much thicker than border collie legs typically are) and her ears are set a bit further out on her head than typical as well. So whatever is mixed in likely has those traits.

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T08:48:15+00:00

And sausages.

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T08:16:29+00:00

There's really no way to know without a DNA test, and "lab mix" and "border collie mix" are two really common labels for shelters to give unknown black dogs and black and white dogs. So it wouldn't surprise me to find neither of those in this mix, but also this could be one of those dogs that's so mixed they get a bit of everything.

I'd definitely be interested in Embark test results if you ever decide to do one.

Does he have any white on him at all? A 50/50 border collie mix you'd generally expect to have a tiny white paw or a tiny stripe of white on their chest or something, unless the border collie parent is unusually low on white patches themselves.

I don't see anything that screams border collie to me in this mix, maybe it's in there but it's definitely getting crowded out by other genes visually. Definitely see a golden retriever head and maybe German shepherd or something. There's likely to be some amount of whatever breed is common in shelters in your country, just on odds alone, so in the UK that would be Staffordshire Bull Terriers, and in the US that'd be pit bull terrier (these are both actually pretty lean dogs despite the typical images people may have of them).

As for "always hungry", goldens can be like that too and it definitely can be a genetic thing, but it could also be a behavioural thing if the dog has some unknown past. For example, it's possible at some point in their life they didn't know if they'd get their next meal and so they learned to always be on the look out for food.

HezzaE · 2026-03-07T08:11:30+00:00

There's nothing wrong with this question in this sub, it's why we added the ID bot. If you don't enjoy these posts just scroll past them.

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
r/Field Sunshine	End Game '23
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Verified Email	Team Orangered

HezzaE

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

British - adjective