December 17, 2006: Holly, the tree climbing dog

Meet Holly. The full Ananova story:

Officials at Spetchley Park Gardens, near Worcester, hope Holly, a short-haired collie, will swell the number of visitors to the seasonal walk.

Holly, whose owner Kate Portman is the head gardener at the park, has opted to enter the spotlight in recent weeks by climbing trees at the 30-acre site.

Ms Portman said: "She climbs trees in the garden at other times of year and has her favourites, such as cedar, pine and evergreen oak, but when the illuminated trail is on she just goes crazy, climbing anything and everything in sight.

"You would think she would go for the easy ones which have branches hanging down to the ground, but if it's a tree she particularly likes the look of, it doesn't seem to matter if it has low branches or not, she simply runs and accelerates straight at and up the trunk.

"Then she sits in the branches for a few seconds, admiring the view, and then jumps down to repeat the process."

Sheep dogs.:rolleyes: Man, if you don't keep them busy they'll amuse themselves.... chances are you won't like what they choose to do, though.

...How?

By tearing up every nonliving thing you own. :D

Ah you can fix that... You train them to herd school busses.




I cures them of living.:hide:

My dog is a bearded collie: they're bred to herd cattle. Supposedly, a well trained Beardie was able to drive cattle from farm to market town(sometimes a long way) without the farmer being there. I definately know about it if my dog gets bored:P

a friend has a collie - it's fun to watch the dog herd the family - and it does. It was sort of trained to - he has a daughter with Down syndrome who has a tendency to wander off - the dog is trained to let my friend or his wife know if the daughter starts to wander

That's a cool application of an ability!

SPUCK wrote:

That's a cool application of an ability!

Yeah - the dong is just NOT really happy unless the whole family is in one place - very strange - come over to vist, YOU get herded too...

Yo, Humans ... Get IN that bunch over there - yeah, that means YOU - woof....

Wanna see a nervous breakdown? Get an Aussie to try to herd ferrets. :smack:

CharlieG wrote:

Yeah - the dong is just NOT really happy unless the whole family is in one place

Paging Dr. Freud...

my sister had a bull terrier mix that all you had to do was to look up and it was up a tree in a flash... wayyyy up.

I used to have a longhair German shepherd that would swim around us in the river to herd us into the island.

arf