As the self-appointed alpha dog in our pack of three Shelties and a Collie, Declan's responsibility is to protect and guard the den. Here's a shot of him taken by our semi-world famous Presto Dog photographer:

Deckie the Sheltie Lookin' Real Intense

We've recently seen him add additional duties to his job as the boss, but are not too certain as to whether we like them or not.

When we want to keep the dogs in a specific area, we put one of those kids' gates up to keep them penned in. This worked remarkably well until about two months ago when the little guy learned how to push it aside and scoot around it, with all the other dogs naturally following him. It's especially annoying when we feed Dougie, the Collie, as this guy isn't the fanatic eater like the Shelties are. In fact, we've seen Dougie not eat for the whole day, waiting until the evening to take a bite to eat. He's so darn different than the three smaller dogs!

As of this point in time we squoosh the plastic gate up against a piece of furniture so Deckie can't push past it, but think it'll only be a matter of time until he learns how to circumvent this minor inconvenience.

He's a regular problem-solving Sheltie.