They do sleep...
Here is concrete proof that they do, in fact, sleep. We call this “Ned’s Couch” and we find him here late at night when he’s tired out. He really sleeps like this…it’s a little weird.
A fellow Border Collie owner put it really well the other day. “This breed seems to do everything full out.”
It’s true, when these guys are awake they are AWAKE and ready to go, go, go. When they sleep they don’t mess around…they really sleep.
The resting puppy above is a result of a steady steam of exercise and stuff to do but it really is not all that horrible. Yeah, it can be a challenge but it’s well worth it!
]]>I looked back over a few articles and was embarrassed to see tons of glaring typos and spelling mistakes. Proof reading is, to put it mildly, not one of my strengths. So I’m scanning through and trying to correct these things. For example in about four places I had “gat” rather than “got.” This was not picked up by the spellchecker? If I can’t rely on spell check then I’m totally up the creek! (Apparently the word gat is a real word and means one of the following: 1) A narrow passage extending inland from a shore or channel. 2) A pistol. 3) A past tense of get. Who knew? Sigh.)
Anyway as I’m reading through the posts I start to realize that, pretty much, everything I’ve written on the subject of Border Collies to this point could be seen as pretty grim. The articles drone on and on about exercise, the energy level, they are too smart at times and more. While all this is true I don’t want a negative slant on things here. When I first got the idea for the site I would write an article or two here and there and then stick them in a folder on my desktop. Once I had a bunch I decided to go ahead and get them online. What I did not intend to happen was for this to be dark and gloomy nor something that could, possibly, turn someone off from wanting to own a Border Collie. The intent is to prepare someone, not run them off!
As I’ve mentioned around here in a few places I am a total fan of this breed now. Our two year old Border Collie is literally a part of our family and a constant source of entertainment for my wife and I. We have a ton of fun with him and he gets us out of the house more than we probably world normally.
For example yesterday afternoon we went to see a matinee and got home around 6:30ish. My wife grabbed the leash, I grabbed a tennis ball, Ned the Dog got fired up and we went out for an hour to play fetch at the Marsh. We live on a little island off the coast of SC and when the tide is out there is a huge open marsh area perfect for running our dog about a 3 minute walk from the house. It was beautiful late afternoon with the sun beginning to set, about 70 degrees (thank you South Carolina spring weather) and the perfect way to spend an hour with our dog.
So! The point of this rambling post is I’ll be making a concerted effort to put the fun and good stuff on this site as well in the category of “Fun Border Collie Stuff.” Our dog is a big part of our life and we would not have it any other way. And, for the record, feel free to call me out on the typos and spelling errors (there is probably at least one in this very post I can’t see)! On top of that I have no intention of having a “my dog is so cute/smart/good looking etc” site so if I start to bend that way call me out as well! Thanks for reading and more to come!
]]>I’ve talked with a few Border Collie owners and they have said their dogs also respond to this as well be it flash lights or those laser pointer things. It seems that the common assumption is that this is yet another manifestation of the herding instinct. As our dog went crazy, and I do mean totally nuts, I had no idea what the problem was, not realizing that the darn flashlight was still on. So as I moved around the light flashed across the wall, over the couch and onto a Lazy-boy chair in the living room. Like a rocket Ned shot over to the couch and bounded onto the chair knocking it clean over backwards! By this point I had finally figured out what the issue was and quickly turned the light off.
The strangest thing was that even after the light was turned off he still continued to look for the light for about 15 minutes! Very alert and excitedly running around the house looking at walls, checking the couch and examining the chair he had knocked over intensely. It was like his Shadow Chasing obsession from his puppy days but far worse. Now, Ned is normally a pretty laid back dog, considering he is a Border Collie, when in the house. Not a lot of running, barking, whining or anything along those lines. When that light hit the wall and flashed around the room he “snapped” into a totally different dog. His pupils dilated, his tail was up and he was at a dead run…not a trot or a lively step but a wide open sprint. It was surprising, shocking and actually pretty funny as well…but something that could be potentially dangerous.
Several months later the wife and I were out at night meeting and it was running very long. I stepped outside and called my father, who lives close by, to ask if he would not mind going down to walk the dog. About an hour later, as we were driving home, I get a call. It was dark outside by the time my father got down to walk Ned and he grabbed the flashlight to take with him on the walk. As he and Ned were walking down a dark road a car approached and, thinking safety, my father flicking on the flashlight so the car could easily see him.
Ned went crazy! He turned from a calm dog out for a walk into a manic chasing after the light on the ground. He bolted so fast that the leash popped out of my fathers hand and ran into the street after the light, right in front of the oncoming car! Luckily the car slowed down, Dad switched off the light and Ned came right back over to him. Moral of the story? Just be aware of this little behavior possibility with your Border Collie. I never thought to mention it to my father and we almost lost the darn dog because of it.
]]>I don’t really have a lot of need for our flashlight but I keep it right by the front door just in case. Weeks or months will go by but the second Ned sees me pick it up, not even turn it on, he gets very excited, begins to whine and look frantically around. He knows the flashlight makes that ball of light that drives him so crazy. The same goes for our CD folder. He can be upstairs and asleep but the second I open the CD case he comes bounding down the stairs. He hears the noise of the plastic sleeves coming apart! We keep a lamp close to our stereo and sometimes the light will reflect off the CD’s and onto the ceiling, which Ned finds irresistible. His ability to “connect the dots” between an object or a noise and the little spots of light they produce has been pretty impressive to see.
It took us a bit to figure this stuff out. It would seem that suddenly, and randomly, our little Border Collie would become wildly excited and agitated for no reason. While this behavior can be sort of amusing at times it also causes some annoying issues. For example we were having a few friends over for dinner one evening and one of the wives brought a desert ,a fantastic apple pie, covered in tin foil. As she walked past a lamp the light reflected off the tin foil and onto the wall and our well behaved dog bolted past the lady, almost knocking her over (we almost lost the pie!), and bounded up onto the couch barking like a demon possessed and scratching at the wall. Nice. Another time I woke up in the middle of the night to hear our Border Collie whining and scratching at the wall of our bedroom which had never happened before. The power had gone out at some point during the night and my alarm clock was blinking “12:00am.” Ned saw it flashing on the wall and was going a little crazy.
At this point we’ve yet to solve this little behavior. It happens at random times and under random conditions. To say the least we do not use the flashlight around him if possible! The redirection tricks we used to get him over his shadow obsession just do not seem to work for this one. If anyone out there has any ideas on a fix for this I’d love to hear it!
]]>The Butt Poke is just what it sounds like…the darn dog started poking us in the rear end! It typically would happen immediately after we came in the door and walked quickly to somewhere in the house (like when Nature is calling - you enter the house, walk past the dog and head directly to the bathroom). Ned would follow closely behind us and then rear up, not really jump, and jab his nose firmly into our butt! The first time this happened it got one heck of a yelp of surprise from the wife. While doing this he did not try to bite or nip us however I have heard that this can happen with some Border Collies so be aware of that.
We never hit or yell at our dog (it will do you no good with a Border Collie anyway) so, again after some training book reading, we came up with a pretty decent system to stop this. We’d entice the behavior by intentionally getting him a little excited through playing and then walking briskly by him. As soon as he started to follow closely, and before he had a chance to poke us, we’d stop dead in our tracks, spin around, firmly tell him “No.” and then have him lay down. After he was down we would walk past him quickly once or twice and then reward him for not chasing or poking with a treat or two. This behavior did not stop overnight. It took time and we need to consistently be aware and ready for it.
After he got the message that he should not poke the wife or I in the butt he started doing it to house guests (now that is embarrassing!). We used pretty much the same tactic to solve that behavior as well. We had to keep in mind that this is not some random annoying behavior but a deep seated instinct in the Border Collie. You simply can not train that instinct out of the dog and therefore you must redirect the energy into something else (like a trick, or a lay down, or have them go get a ball, or whatever). As time passed he would do the Butt Poke less and less. This is something to be ready for if you are considering a Border Collie puppy!
]]>The first step in grasping this concept is understanding that a job is simply something for them to do. This breed is intelligent, alert, perceptive, energetic and bred for work. All of that leads to a dog that simply must have something to occupy his mind and body on a pretty consistent basis. This does not have to be a huge thing, like herding 300 head of sheep into a corral. What you will find yourself doing is coming up with many smaller jobs for your dog. A job can be something as simple as a trick, a task or obeying a command or series of commands.
One of the first jobs we gave our Border Collie puppy was having him go and get a ball. We found out very fast that tennis balls and Border Collies go together like Velcro. Randomly we would say “Ned, go get your ball!” and he would take off in search of a tennis ball. When he brought it to us we would play catch or fetch for a minute or two. Another common task in our house is for our Border Collie to go find my wife or I. One of us will tell the dog to go find the other. He will search around until he finds us. See? Pretty simple stuff. These dogs simply need something to do. Not all the time, mind you, but they need to know that at some point they will have a task or job that they will need to perform. They are kind of like work-a-holics in a way.
After reading a few training and trick books we started off with getting the newspaper, leash, slippers and toys. After he got those down, pretty quickly I might add, we moved into more complex tasks like getting a beer from the fridge. Even very simple things can count as jobs such as simple tricks. For example we never give him a treat until he has preformed at least a few tasks like sit, lie down, and spin around. As you progress you can move onto more interesting jobs like teaching him to put his toys away into a box.
Once we got the hang of giving our Border Collie a job to do we saw a marked improvement in his overall behavior. He seemed happier, slightly calmer and generally better behaved. We have continued teaching him new things to do and it has become another fun fact of life for living with our dog.
]]>There were two major points that we needed to fix with his chewing. The first was his desire to chew on our fingers and toes which is the subject for another article. The second and more expensive issue was his need to chew on furniture, shoes, books, cigarette packs (I’ve since quit), tissues, his leash, rugs, one very expensive pair of high heels, purses, a nail polish bottle (that was a scary one) and just about everything else you can imagine. The interesting thing was, especially as a puppy, he was very rarely left alone and never in an unsafe or uncontrolled environment. When we got our Border Collie puppy we had just been married, and had no kids yet, so you can imagine that he was the center of our attention! Anyway, he would be sleeping in a corner while we made dinner, for example, and not 1 minute later he was up and had torn a book to shreds…not 10 feet away from us!
Enter the Kong Chew Toy
Our trick to packing these things was as follows. Take one really good smelly treat, like a liver treat, and put it all the way at the bottom. Fill the majority of it with puppy kibble and then wedge a larger treat, like a bone cookie, in at the top. Once our Border Collie got a hold of this he was set for a long time. As a very young puppy he would chew on that thing until he fell asleep. When he woke up he would go straight to the Kong to chew rather than a book or a flip-flop. Some people have suggested using peanut butter as a packing material and I can see that this would be great. Our Border Collie, unfortunately, seems to have a rather unpleasant reaction to peanut butter so we just used the kibble and treat combination.
Once we started using these chewing aids our life around the house was much better. Very few times after did our dog chew on something he was not supposed to, our flip-flop collection was safe and, thankfully, we lost no more expensive high heels! Check your local pet store or click here -Kong Chew Toys
I think the first time that this really showed itself was when Ned the Border Collie was around 8 months old. I was in the middle of a kitchen remodel at our home and I was using one of those battery operated finish nailers. These are amazing handy tools to have around! So it was a Saturday morning, the wife was out at the store and Ned was supervising my work. While putting up a piece of trim I managed to shoot a finish nail right through my thumb. I shot the nail through the trim and into the wall where it struck the head of another nail in the framing. The tip of the finish nail bent around and came out the side of the trim, entered the tip of my thumb and stuck out through the thumbnail. This was, to say the least, shockingly painful.
I roared, yanked my thumb off the nail, dropped the finish nailer onto the stove (which made a hell of a racket) and went to the sink to clean the wound. If you have even done something this dumb you may know how amazingly painful it can be. My thumb felt like it was the size of a soda can and was throbbing to beat the band. Of course the wife comes home right about this time, sees the blood all over the place and sort of freaks out a little bit. Long story short we cleaned it out and bandaged it up (and yes, I lost the thumbnail) and figured it was time for a break from the remodeling project.
We found our Border Collie upstairs, in a corner of a room as far away from the kitchen as he could get. We had never really seen him in such a state. I figure it was because of the noise from the tool hitting the stove that scared him however not so. As time went on we realized that he was so intone with our moods and emotions that we could correct his behavior simply using our tone of voice. For example on the rare occasion we caught him chewing on something, after he got out of the puppy phase, he was not supposed to we would say, not yell, “Awww…Ned.” in a sarcastically disappointed voice. His ears would drop, and he would slink off to a corner. He knew he was doing something incorrect and responded to our tone of voice. This trend has continued to the point where the dog knows and responds to happy, sad, approving, disappointed and excited tones of voice.
]]>If you are thinking of getting a Border Collie puppy and have some of the same feelings I did about crate training I encourage you to look deeper into it and learn more about the practice. After several talks with the breeder and other owners of the breed (and the fact my wife wanted to do it) I decided to give it a shot. Looking back now, a couple years after we got our puppy, I am very glad we did the crate thing. The dog was happier, we were happier and it turned out to not be that big of an issue at all. (We used one like this…Folding Metal Dog Crate
The first thing I had to understand is that the idea of the crate is not as a place to stick the dog when they misbehave. This had always been my impression of the process. The crate is basically a stand in for the den in the wild (like a wolf den). It is a safe place for the dog to rest and sleep in. It gives your puppy a place within your house that he can call his own, it is his spot and no one else’s. The crate must never be used as a punishment and I highly recommend reading up on this in a puppy training book from a professional trainer.
Secondly I was pleased to learn that instinct will not let the dog relieve himself in the crate. This is very handy! Once we got Ned the Border Collie accustomed to his crate he would sleep in there at night. When we got up in the morning (very early) we’d take him directly from the crate to outside where Natures call was answered. This process made house training the dog really very easy compared to other dogs I’ve had.
Thirdly it was interesting to note that the dog actually liked the darn thing. Once we adopted the crate method very often our Border Collie could be found napping or simply hanging out in his crate. If he could not find a particular toy we would check in his crate and sure enough he would have a stockpile of tennis balls and bones in there. In his chewing days as a puppy, before we redirected him to Kongs, we would find all sorts of things in the crate from shoes and flip-flops to paperback books.
If you have been thinking about crate training really do look into it. It was a great experience for us and for our Border Collie. Look online or grab a puppy training book to get the details on the method. I can tell you one thing; the next puppy we get we will without a doubt be using the crate method. Check it out!
]]>Bite inhibition is, simply put, a system of training that will reduce the chances that your puppy will someday bite someone hard enough to hurt. Even the best family dog can be the source of a bad bite at some point. For example, Spot the family dog, who has never bitten anyone in his life, is sleeping by the door. Someone walks by Spot and accidentally steps on him. The animal instinct in Spot is going to cause him to lash out in surprised defense possibly biting the person which could result in a nasty wound (and maybe a lawsuit). Bite inhibition can train the dog to bite much gentler than otherwise, even in this situation.
The training starts at a very young age when puppies tend to be chewing on everything, including their owners. The whole world is a chew toy as far as puppies are concerned! The idea behind the whole thing is two fold. First off to train your puppy not to bite or chew on people in the first place. Secondly the point is to “soften” your puppies bite. Very much like small children puppies do not know their own strength, how could they? You need to teach the dog that their bites “hurt” and in doing this you will effectively lessen the strength, and possible future damage, of those bites. You effectively are making your dog think that his bite is far more powerful than it really is.
When your puppy first starts biting or nipping you, say on the fingers, and it hurts a bit you respond with “Ouch!” in a somewhat high pitched voice and a bit loud. This somewhat mimics what another dog would do if they were hurt. Over time you say “Ouch!” more often even when the puppy only lightly bites or nips you. It gets to the point where whenever the dogs teeth even touch your skin you “yelp” loudly. This does not happen overnight however I have been simply amazed at the results. Now, it will feel a bit weird at first crying “Ouch!” even with the slightest touch of the tooth but it really, really works!
Our Border Collie now has the softest mouth I can imagine. A great example…my wife was at the beach one day with the dog and a family came along. She put Ned into a sit position so they could walk by but they stopped to chat. (Ned is still astoundingly happy to see anyone and, as far as he is concerned, everybody is his long lost best friend. We used to have to put in him sit to redirect his attention to us and off other people close by.) This family had a toddler and while my wife was talking with the parents the kid wanders over and sticks one hand in Ned’s eye and the other in his mouth! It all happened in a split second. The amazing thing was Ned sat there like a stone and basically “froze” his mouth open. The kid, and I’m not joking here, literally grabs Neds’ tongue and was playing with it for a second. No problem. Wild.
Little disclaimer here: I am by no means a professional trainer, just a guy with a dog, and have learned everything I know about bite inhibition through puppy training books. This is simply a little summery and if you are looking to teach this to your puppy (which I highly suggest!) it would be in your best interest to do your homework. I went from never hearing about this practice to thinking it is the best thing out there. Grab a book (check your local library or hit Amazon