Nala ~ 1yo Border Collie (on trial 3/5/21)

Meet Nala, a stunning 1 year old blue merle Border Collie with the most beautiful eyes. She is only a petite girl weighing in at 15kg and is a little pocket rocket. For size comparison, she fits into a harness sized for a Whippet! She is extremely affectionate and smart but is going to require a very specific home and ideally a home with working breed experience.

Nala is a great companion and loves to be by your side at all times and will be your little shadow where ever you go. She will even have a little sleep on the bath mat while you have your shower. She is extremely smart and in only one day she learned how to shake and lie down. The day after she learned how to drop the ball so that fetch wouldn't be so exhausting for her foster carer. Fetch isn't so fun when the human is having to do the fetching! She still sometimes forgets that she needs to drop the ball near you but at least we don't have to pry it out of her mouth anymore!

While Nala has great baseline training and knows all the basic commands, she is still very excitable and highly strung and has also been medicated for anxiety. This little lady needs a LOT of exercise and supervision so that she doesn't get into mischief. She is quite the escape artist so will need an extremely secure yard and even then it is probably wise for her to be supervised whenever she is outside. She likes to take herself on adventures! She is toilet trained but still has the occasional accident. Nala is very food focused which is great for training but her manners around food definitely need working on.

As mentioned, Nala loves fetch and she also loves a game of soccer and playing in her shell pool. She loves the company of other animals and has lived with both dogs and cats. We would love her to go to a home with another young and energetic dog to play with but if her future owner had a lot of free time on their hands or works from home we think she would do fine as an only dog as well. She is cat friendly but is a little pushy with them as she would love nothing more than to herd them around the house. She would do fine with a confident cat who can set some boundaries or a cat who is used to energetic dogs. She has lived with young children in the past but due to her ample amounts of energy, she would accidentally knock them over so she would be best with children over 8 years old.

Nala is great on the lead and loves walks/runs but she does need a fairly good harness as she is very petite and if triggered by something she can wriggle out of a standard harness. She doesn't pull on the lead and is very happy to be out and about meeting people and other dogs. She definitely needs a lot of work on her recall before she could be taken anywhere off lead and due to her anxiety, she will need to form a strong bond with her owner first.

Nala is also medicated for what is believed to be epilepsy as she started having fits a couple of months ago. Since being on the medication she has only had one small fit so the medication should continue to manage it.

With all of that out of the way, Nala is an amazing dog who just wants to be with you all day and would make an amazing companion. She is so affectionate and loves laying on the lounge with you at the end of the day while you watch TV and she loves to cuddle in bed with her humans. She is a good girl and sleeps on a dog bed next to the bed but she loves to start out in the bed with you.

If you can provide an active home, dedication to on-going training, lots of supervision and you are in a financial position to pay for her medications, Nala will repay you with a whole lot of love and entertainment.

Nala's adoption fee is $600, which includes desexing, microchipping and vaccinations. If you are interested in adopting Nala, please contact Sarah at sarah.debenham.drn@gmail.com for more information. You will also need to fill out the adoption questionnaire here https://tinyurl.com/drnadopt