Hershey update 2009!

I totally suck for not blogging at all.
Hershey has been just great! She's really matured recently, not being as much of a spazoid as she used to be. She still loves playing rough with her toys, and is very excitable if we say a trigger word ("would you like to go for a walk?" "car ride" "pussycat" "Brian & Ariel") but mostly she's mellowed out.

She's still not 100% great with strangers, but when we have people over at the house, she tolerates them. Carlen in particular was not a welcome guest before, Hershey would take all of her toys away into her room in case Carlen would want to take her precious Ozzie. But she's gotten much better even with new visitors. She won't bark as much, and she'll be happy just observing them from a few feet away.

She still has her favourites though. Chris' parents spent last Christmas with us and she remembered them right away. We drove all the way to Toronto this Christmas, and she remembered Tess! The two dogs had a grand old time wrestling and just hanging out. Hershey even let Tess smell and chew on some of her toys! She remembered David a bit, but not as well. She enjoyed visiting his place in Ottawa but kept looking all over the house to find out where his dog was... none to be found - at least for now!

below: Hershey and Tess in Toronto - Hershey's always curious.


We've had Hershey stay over in the kennel a few times recently too - like in Summer during our horseback riding trip, and October when we went to Saskatoon. She spent 2 weeks there in February while we were off in China. She's really taken to the staff at the Animal Medical Centre, which is great. They love all of her tricks (we've printed out a page of them!) and there are a few staff members there she is especially sweet about. The fact that they seem to overfeed her each time she's there may help a bit too!

Her roadtrip across the country (and into the states) for Christmas was great. She was a total star in the car, sleeping, wanting to hold hands, eating cold kibble and being squooshed up in the back seat when we had to unload the contents of the trunk due to a blown tire (long story). She was even pretty good at toll booths and the border crossings (she should be a natural, given that she's a border collie - haha). She got lots of toys for Christmas - including a squirrel, a Mittens the cat (from Bolt), a four-some of organic cotton softie toys, lots of big chewy cookies, a backpack for camping, a water bottle for the summer and car rides, and more treats! She also finally got her own Jub Jub toy from our trip to China - something she's been "wanting" ever since we found a Jub Jub in a geocache last summer (which she could *not* have because it was part of a tracking bug!)

Here's a video of her (sorry it's sideways) of her falling asleep while sitting up in the back seat.


We've got no big travel plans or anything for the rest of the winter, so we'll just be taking it easy at home. She's actually been quite lucky that it has been so cold this winter - her room is freezing so we have let her sleep upstairs on the bed a lot. We find her cuddling next to the heat register during the daytime too. Pathetic.

I'm running out of ideas for tricks to teach Hershey too - she's mastered "360" (spinning around in a circle), "circle" (where she circles around you), "touch" (where she touches a treat with her paw before getting to eat it). She's also enjoyed a crawl tube we got at a garage sale, and is learning to put up with a mini helicopter toy Chris bought in China.