She loves to play queen of the mountain, as you can probably tell, always heading to the highest point up any hill or mountain we are climbing, which makes for some cool photos. That’s Dakota, my now almost 2.5 year old border collie, and I didn’t realize it when taking the picture, but it looks like she’s got a tennis ball she found nearby in her mouth, also typical...
And sometimes if I’m really patient and take enough pictures when she’s bouldering above me, I can get some really epic shots, too.
The title of the post is actually a nicknamed she earned herself as a puppy, prone to dig holes often whenever she got bored, or was going after a mouse, or burying her bone, leaving her almost looking more like a raccoon than a dog with a dust or mud mask on her face, but I never did get a good picture before she shook it off.
As far as border collies go, I feel blessed to have found this one, unusually mellow for the breed, but still able to run for miles without getting tired, and as friendly and sociable a canine as you’ll ever meet. It took me a good week after I got her to settle on the name, but ‘Dakota’ is Souix for ‘friend’, and I’m pretty sure the most fitting name I could have picked. While enjoy showing off my best pictures of her, she’d much rather meet you in person, so she enjoyed my recent January stay at a commune in California, making friends with all of the girls there.
She is especially fond of females, probably because she was raised for her first weeks of puppyhood in a family with 6 girls! And she was the only female of the litter, but also the last remaining puppy to be taken, and since I was looking for a female border collie, I took that as a sign we were meant for each other. Looking back, I’m so glad I took her home that day, in the middle of a Montana blizzard.
But much more than people, she absolutely loves other dogs, probably more than any other dog I’ve had or known. Which is ironic, because she was initially scared of the other dogs in the house when I brought her home, and then sad to leave her canine companions for the road when I sold my business and embarked upon a journey to live the nomadic camping style. She’s made plenty of puppy friends along the way, still, and though temporary, has lots of fun playing with any pup that has the energy to keep up with her.
I think the camping lifestyle is about as good as it gets for a dog, I know Dakota loves it, being able to run free, not stuck at home alone all day while I work, plenty of new and interesting smells and terrain to explore, and critters to chase, with every new area we visit, but if she could get only one more thing to make her life perfect, I know she wants me to get her a puppy to play with for a Christmas present. Until that day comes, if it ever becomes possible, she’s still plenty happy, like most dogs, always so happy just to be alive, living in the present moment, such a good lesson for us humans to learn from them.
If she disappears while I’m working or camping somewhere, chances are there’s a dog or two nearby that she’s found, and she’ll be plenty happy hanging out with them until I go find her and bring her back to camp, that’s how much she enjoys the company of fellow canines.
Another fairly unique quirk of her’s is that she’s always loved to hide in small spaces that she can barely fit in, quite the opposite of claustrophobic, so naturally she tends to gravitate to the back of my car when we’re on the road, despite being so full of stuff she has just enough room to wiggle her way up there and then lie down with hardly a couple of inches between her and the ceiling...
As far as fun goes, like most border collies, she loves playing fetch and is a natural at catching a tennis ball in mid-air, can’t get enough of her frisbee, and loves mountain biking and backcountry skiing, although haven’t done any skiing since we embarked on our camping journey almost two years ago now. And herding cows when she gets the chance, she is naturally drawn to do too and fun to watch sometimes.
If she’s anywhere around and I get to biking, she’s there in an instant. She’s also really good at hiding in plain sight, so I’ll be calling her and looking all around and five minutes later notice that she was sitting behind a tree, giving me that look like I’m insane for yelling for her when she’s been there the whole time!
And she really loves to swim, always jumps straight into any lake or pond we run into, creeks too, but hates baths, figure that one out.
For the life of me I haven’t figured out how to keep her from chasing deer or rabbits, and she has a crazy bark when doing so, so I (and the deer she’s chasing) know exactly where she is. But she gets along great with most other animals, and we’ve even had encounters with black bears and Mexican wolves, neither of which seemed to scare her all that much, to my surprise. Below is a video I made of her on the day we met those wolves, immediately following the incident, so my followers could meet her, upon request of a friend on BitChute. At the time I thought they were just big coyotes, because I had no idea there was a such thing as Mexican wolves...
Besides rocks, she also likes to make herself at home on stumps and giant logs, which makes for some really cool pictures.
From Montana to Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Washington and California, she has made a wide variety of terrain home, and more soon to come this spring and summer, but everywhere we go, a true mountain dog she remains, at home roaming the hills, forests and rocky mountainsides, a new adventure to be found every place we go.
Though the breeds and personalities differ, one thing is for sure, they definitely are man’s best friend.
