save the pit bull, save the world.

When I made the decision to get Steve, I was terrified. I was so worried that I wouldn’t be enough owner for him. I believed most of the stereotypes to some extent- that BCs are nuts (and Sporter Collies, which is what Stevie is, are worse). They’re hyper, they need to run and run to stay sane. If you don’t exercise them 24/7/365 they’ll eat your house and every piece of furniture you ever bought. I don’t have acreage. I have a little postage stamp of a yard. But I’m a pretty hands on owner, and felt reasonably competent and up to the challenge of Border Collie ownership, and dog help me, if he was too much, he could always go back to his breeder.

But that nightmare puppy, of course, never arrived. Oh we’ve had some rough spots, and there are times when he’s annoying as all hell and I could cheerfully wring his neck. But that’s part of being a 14 month old puppy. It’s written in his contract. I checked. It’s not even in the fine print.

Yes, he needs a job. Yes, he needs exercise and mental stimulation. Possibly he needs more than other dogs, but he’s still just a dog. He doesn’t get out to run hard more than a few times a week now that it’s cold and ugly out. He runs a little bit around my tiny yard and I try to get out to play flirtpole with him most days over lunch (in the mud), but mostly we do obedience and a little bit of agility in the house, and we play fetch in the house for awhile every evening before bed. He wrestles some with the other dogs, but really he’s not a hard dog to live with.

He’s extremely challenging in other respects right now- the motion sensitivity is killing me, and his occasional extreme softness is hard for me to deal with- but the struggles I’ve had with him have not been at all what I expected when I emailed his breeder for the first time. Even this week when I’ve been stressed to the max, ending up at work late, and generally hands off and limited in the time I’ve put into the dogs, he’s been sane and reasonable to live with.

As with every dog, expectations and training are so much of it. I know that if I left him to his own devices, expected him to entertain himself all the time and didn’t bother with him, he’d be a nightmare. He’s not a casual dog-owner’s dog. But nor is he the extremely high maintenance monster that I was led by some to expect.

He’s a fascinating creature. Sweet, smart, dorky. He makes me smile. He makes my head spin around. He crawls onto my chest in the morning and presses his cheek to mine and melts me. Which is his only saving grace in the mornings, since he insists upon getting me up to take him out an hour before my alarm just about every single day. Doh.