Remembering Lady Valentine

I had a funny thought this morning about a name that rings the bells of memory - a little off track from what you might expect on a Valentines Day morning.  Of course, the name "Lady" is in the papers and on the web everywhere this morning after the Grammy's, but that's not the topic of the post either. 

See, the name Lady Valentine was Gracie the border collie's name when our relatives and in-laws first adopted her.  Now that the kitchen remodel is in its final stages, we're going to be moving forward with finding a new rescue dog.  So we'll start out with a mention of Gracie and Sofie this morning, our forever canine valentines.

Here they are at the beach with us in North Carolina back in the spring of 2001.

A few months ago we had encountered a guy with his border collie at the Luray Triathlon.  We saw those recognizable behaviors that we missed in the four-year old, and agreed that it was just about time to start looking.  Meanwhile, we enjoyed each new encounter with our friends' dogs.

Last month Mary and I decided to put in applications with the rescue organizations that work here in Northern Virginia - Blue Ridge Border Collie Rescue, Bimmer's Border Collie Rescue, Atlantic Region Border Collie Rescue, and also Glen Highland Farms in upstate New York.  They're all easy Google finds if you are interested in checking them out.  Also of note, there is a Bimmer's dog here in the neighborhood; and I love checking out the Glen Highland Farms site - both to look at the available dogs and also for the other information they keep up on the site about the breed.

Then you have this television feature that has been on recently about the border collie who has been taught 1,100 words, nouns and verbs, and can react appropriately when given a command or phrase.  It's all reminding me of some company I miss.  Gracie and I had a word game we used to play too - that's what we were doing in the second photo here.  I would whisper something and she would react - usually the panting would stop, the tongue fold back and the mouth would close, and the border collie eyes would flash.

After the applications went out, each of the organizations got back to us telling us they'd be happy to work with us - that was a relief, since we'd heard that one of the rescue organizations (not listed here for obvious reasons) had turned down a friend's request...this friend has owned border collies for 30 years, and even has had the current dog out to the farms for sheep herding training and outings!  "Your situation isn't right for border collie ownership" our friend was told.

The next step after applications is to get a house visit, and we have that scheduled.  But to my surprise, we also got a note last night about a dog that's available.  So this thing could be moving along a little faster than we thought.  We'll keep you posted.