Loki is a purebred Border Collie, and as of today he is 5 months old.This is what most Border Collies look like.  As you can see, Loki is a little different.  His coat color is called “blue merle” and is rarely found in Border Collies.

One result of the merle is multi-colored eyes.  Loki’s right eye is almost completely brown with just a sliver of blue, while his left is half brown/half blue.  Another (and by far the most popular) result of the merle is his nose.  At first glance, almost everybody says to me “That’s not a dog – that’s a possum!”  From what I can tell, a nose as pink as his is almost unheard of.  It’s also considered a defect according to breed standard: “Lack of nose pigmentation is a fault according to degree,” says the American Kennel Club breed standards for Border Collies.  According to degree?!  Sounds like he’s pretty defective…

But I don’t want a show dog.  I got a border collie for two reasons: 1) they are commonly considered to be the smartest dog breed, and 2) they are freakishly athletic.  As of right now, Loki is still a very awkward puppy.  I’ll have to wait a little longer before I can enjoy his athleticism – he can’t even get down stairs comfortably.  However, he’s really smart.  Like, REALLY smart. He has an especially impressive capacity for picking up on routines.  For example, before a couple nights ago he had always shoved his face into the food as soon as I had the bowl low enough. So, I thought I might start teaching him some better table manners. I made him sit and leave it until I said “okay.”  I repeated the process yesterday morning for breakfast.  When I went to feed him dinner last night, he sat down next to his bowl immediately upon me asking “Do you want FOOD?” (his favorite word in the world) and left the bowl alone until I said “okay” – I didn’t have to tell him to leave it. Training over.

It is not uncommon for him to learn to do little things like that in less than 24 hours – my friend Stacy taught him to shake in less than 5 minutes. Seriously… we timed it. Right now I’m working on having him catch things.  Yesterday was the first time I ever tossed him a treat to catch, and he cowered away like I was throwing a baseball at him.  After a few “goods” when he would at least try to catch it, you could see the light bulb go on that this was a game and that the scary things I was throwing at him tasted delicious. Still, his mouth-eye coordination is terrible…

He also displays symptoms of severe ADD – an unavoidable trait of all puppies. As I was saying, he learns things extremely quickly [when you have his attention]. However, he is so easily distracted it is ridiculous. New sounds, smells, and anything moving – he’s in La La Land. That will just take training and time…