Good Golly Miss Molly, the Farm Collie girl ~ Adopted
This lovely little girl is a Farm Collie and came to us from the Atlanta area.
Miss Molly’s family had recently lost their other dog, a border collie/Labrador retriever mix, to a neighbor’s gun. The dog got out of his enclosed pen and chased the neighbor’s chickens. Fearful that Miss Molly might suffer the same fate and knowing just how lonely she was without her companion, the family decided to find a more suitable home for her and placed an ad on craigslist.org.
Here’s the text from original ad, which tells more of Miss Molly’s story:
“I have a year old, unaltered female Farm Collie that needs to be re-homed. Her companion Border Collie mix got out of their kennel and was shot by the neighbor while chasing his chickens. Molly is now very lonely and is looking for a good home where she can be worked. Our yard is not fenced-in and she really needs a fenced-in yard; she is in a kennel right now. She comes from very good herding bloodlines and when we got her at 3 months old, she was already trying to work the goats. She would be wonderful for herding if worked with properly. I just do not have the time to properly work her. She is very sweet and eager to please. And very playful. She craves attention and was house trained until we moved and had to keep her in the kennel. I’m sure she would snap right back to the house training with no problems. If interested, email me.”
I happened to be in Atlanta visiting family on a two-day layover from a recent vacation and saw the ad on the area’s craigslist. (As you may be aware, we sometimes get dogs from craigslist.org – deaf/blind Aussies Kiss, Irwin, and Dundee, crippled Aussie Sparrow, and English Shepherd Sonnet, for example – and help them find more suitable homes.) This was Monday night and I was leaving for Florida on Tuesday a.m. Thinking I probably wouldn’t be able to speak to the owners myself before my scheduled departure, I passed the information on to Kathy Keith and Khaz Brooks in the hopes that one of them could make contact.
Kathy responded within five minutes: “I’m on it right now!” Imagine my surprise when Kathy e-mailed me 20 minutes later to say she’d just gotten off the phone with Miss Molly’s owner, Amanda, who was interested in surrendering her dog to The Dog Liberator so that we could find a more suitable home for her. Even though it was already 9:30 p.m., I decided to call and see if it was possible to swing by and meet Miss Molly and her family on my way out of town the following day. Amazingly, Amanda agreed to my offer to stop in at 8 a.m. the next morning. Great!
Fast forward to 6 a.m. on Tuesday, and my truck is loaded down with two large suitcases (I don’t travel light!) and Lady Truelove, who I’d picked up from Sherrie Ford the previous afternoon and was transporting back to Florida for TDL. I had just enough room for one more dog! Thankfully, my mapquest.com directions were accurate and I drove right to the Clark residence without issue.
Amanda and her girls met me outside and immediately took me to see Miss Molly, who they’d bathed earlier that morning. And what a lovely, squirming bundle of joyful energy she was! It was obvious just by looking at her that she’d been well-loved and well-cared-for. And, although letting Miss Molly go was difficult for the Clarks, they knew it was the best thing for her in the long run. I promised them I’d take great care of their girl and TDL would find her a wonderful forever home. That is what we do, after all!
Now for the particulars: Miss Molly is a year old and weighs approximately 35-40 lbs. She is very people-friendly (including children) and gets along fantastically with cats and other dogs. Playful and energetic, she’d do well with an active family with a large, fenced yard or even a hobby herder (she was trying to work goats as a 3-month-old, after all!). Miss Molly is crate-trained and has yet to have an accident in my house. She has a spay appointment next Wednesday (July 20th), so she will be completely vetted, spayed, and micro chipped prior to adoption. She is being fostered in the Ocala area.
Miss Molly’s photo album can be viewed on facebook.
If you think you might be interested in adopting Miss Molly, please read our Dog Tips and then review our adoption process and e-mail amyb.thedobliberator@gmail.com.
A Farm Collie is a mixture of breeds, including Border Collie, English Shepherd, Collie, and sometimes Australian Shepherd. According to breeders, their goal is to create a multi-purpose farm dog that not only herds livestock, but protects the farm and its residents, much like a farm dog would have done on the small family farms of the 19th century. For more information on the Farm Collie, you can visit these two sites: http://www.farmcollie.com/ and http://www.farmcollie.org/.
Miss Molly originally came from Fair Meadow Farm, a working goat dairy farm in Texas. To find out more about Fair Meadow Farm, you can go here: http://www.fairmeadowfarm.com/.
Thursday, July 21, 2011: Miss Molly was vaccinated on Tuesday and spayed yesterday; everything went well at both appointments. The vet’s scale said she weighs 36.4 lbs., so I was pretty close when I guessed around 35 lbs. Yay, me! The vets and all the office staff loved Molly. They even gave her cookies when she put her front paws up on the reception desk and asked politely (as any Southern girl would do, of course). A few days of recuperation from her spay surgery and Molly will be ready to go.
I’m really impressed with how far she’s come since arriving at my house a little more than a week ago. Initially, I thought Molly was a high-energy dog because she’d pace and run around the house and never really settle down. Then I started paying attention to how she acted when she went outside with my dogs. She’d run and roughhouse with them for a while, but eventually Molly would find a shady spot and lie down. The problem wasn’t that she’s a high-energy dog; the problem was that Molly had spent enough of her life as an outside dog that she didn’t exactly know how to behave inside. What should she do? Where should she go? Would I pleeeeease pay attention to her? I imagine these were the questions running through her doggie brain as she paced around from room to room. Once I started ignoring her and concentrating on whatever I was doing (reading a book, watching TV, working on the computer, etc.), she finally gave up the pacing and settled down. In fact, Molly’s asleep at my feet as I type this!
Sunday, July 24, 2011: ADOPTED! Good Golly Miss Molly was adopted today by the wonderful Goff family, who adopted Twitter (now Buckley) earlier in the year. Molly is sure to have fun with Dena, Mark, and their twin boys, Parker and Tyler. Of course, Molly and Buckley are already great pals!
