My Collie Here

Meet our Archie

Every cat needs a collie, and this is Cleo's new wee brother, Archie.

"Wee" brother is right. Although he's grown to double her size, in the 4½ weeks he's been with us - compare the picture on the right with the one below, taken 4½ weeks later - he still gets "Wee Archie" due to his determination to cover the whole house in a uniform coat of wee!

Actually, that's a bit unfair. When he came to us at exactly 8 weeks old, he was already trained to go on the puppy training pads, and had more or less a 100% record on those. But that was only for wee; anything more demanding would be deposited instantly and immediately, just wherever he happened to be, as the mood took him. Now that we've started trying to take away the training pads, the result - with apologies to Kevin Bacon - has been a return to Everything Everywhere.

End of the Tunnel

Yesterday he attended his first puppy socialising class at The Dogs Trust, where he did us proud with his precocious knowledge of the Sit, Stay, and Down commands. All credit to Linda there, for her decades of experience training very intelligent border collies.

Socialising per se was less successful. Archie has had to be kept away from other dogs for longer than is usual, because his breeder failed to immunise him against deadly diseases such as Parvovirus. We didn't find out about this until we took Archie to our own vet, for what we thought would be his second and final inoculation, but which turned out to be a complete restart at day one.

So yesterday, two weeks later than he should have, he finally got to meet other pups. He was timid and reluctant, and basically failed to do so. However the instructor expressed his confidence that this delayed development can be put right over the coming month.

Archie and Cleo, everybody!