Recovering from my fear of dogs took a while. When I finally did, it was a Collie-cross called Jess who was responsible: a dog who lived for physical affection and with whom I went on many adventures around the village in which she lived with my sister. But even after deciding I wanted to live with a dog, the only dog I ruled out was a Border Collie.

“Any dog but a Collie.” I told the shelter staff when I phoned up making enquiries. That would be a difficult ask: shelters here in the West of Ireland teem with Border Collies, and many people who phone up to make enquiries seemingly utter the same words.

As a child of working class Dublin, the only Collies I knew were the ones kept in small gardens, barking at anyone or anything who passed; the ones who walked on lead like they were looking for trouble; the ones who gave you the death stare or who spun loops around themselves while barking in a high-pitched shriek.

Any dog but a Collie.

I finally found my puppy: advertised as free to a good home in a local convenience store – a gorgeous, pudgy black thing with a white blaze on her chest. Mum was a Golden Retriever. Dad was…some kind of black dog, the people told us. I brought my beautiful Black Retriever to the vet for a check-up. “Oh, what a beautiful Collie cross,” she exclaimed.

Oh no, not this.  Any dog but a Collie. Those ball-obsessed frantic dogs who need hours of exercise every day. She had to be wrong.

Four Collies later, and none of them of known lineage, I realise just how desperately unfair and inaccurate are our claims about Border Collies, and how new. The sheepdog described by shepherds and those who move among them is historically one filled with reverence and awe. John Herries McCulloch, for instance, writes in Sheepdogs and their Masters of a type of dog who is “pure” and …

It is, undoubtedly, these traditions that define them; their “calling” the most notable thing about them, and often the most contentious. You see, the first mistake we make when thinking about our Collies is of seeing their strengths – the tendencies for which they were bred – as troublesome. The common “breed specialist’s” claim to teach a Border Collie an “off-switch” for example, is often made in the context of suppressing the very traits – environmental sensitivity, fast reaction to certain movements, a tenacity in the pursuit of rewards – for which they have been bred and cherished.

So, while the owners’ guides and breed books may attempt to invoke the work for which sheepdogs were bred as a way of “contextualising” the dog, they do so only superficial way: this is what the dog was bred for, so these are the things that, in modern life, should exist as relics, but that still come to the forefront in other ways, and that can become troubing if they are not suppressed through training and activity.

Off-switches and outlets can therefore both signal a desire to control and regulate to suppress and repress, the very things that make Collies who they are.

For Kay Laurence, however, it is precisely the continuation of that inheritance that underpins all that is great about the Border Collie and Sheepdogs. For her, history serves more than merely an aesthetic or exculpatory function:

History is certainly relevant, but unfortunately it is a contested site for the Border Collie: one which, in the dog business, marks them out as particularly troublesome dogs and which creates a niche in the market for those who claim to be able to “fix” common Collie problems. Rather than increasing our understanding, in these cases, though, history if often treated as the root cause for the symptoms that are perceived to have arisen in the pet dog home. The dog’s innate skills are therefore pathologized as they come to be diagnosed with “reactivity,” “impulse control problems,” “frustration.” Their heritage is feared as misguided debates rage about whether they should even be allowed to experience the innate rewards of controlling movement in a safe and regulated way.

Working with, rather than against our Collies, on the other hand, means embracing their heritage, understanding why they respond the way they do, and finding ways that are congruent with those two things to help channel their learning. It does not mean finding “outlets” to let them be who they are from time to time while asking them to suppress it the rest. It means being thoughtful of what we ask of them, and of the expectations we set for them, all while accepting everything that makes them who they are.

The second mistake we make is in our categorisation of these dogs: just as “herding breed experts” often neglect the significant distinctions between a German Shepherd, a Border Collie, and an Australian Cattle Dog, for instance, so too does common parlance treat the Border Collie as a breed. In fact, these dogs are not a breed so much as a landrace type: a variety of dogs developed over centuries, adapting to local niches and demands of the work. To claim a one-size-fits-all approach to “Collie behaviour” is therefore a nonsense, reducing individual heritage and learning down to received (un)wisdom about these dogs.

The third mistake we make regarding Collies, though, is to endorse the myths and superstitions about them with how we talk about them. Promotion of Collie-specific training often focuses on perceived flaws and problems; offers solutions; promises things that it can’t possibly deliver. This language permeates the dog business; the long lists of behaviour problems are accompanied by perceived traits that are a miscategorisation of working tendencies such as bullying, pushy, manipulative, obsessive, and manic. These descriptors do nothing to extricate the dogs from unrealistic human expectations; instead, I would argue, the authority that the specialists are perceived to carry reinforces them, and so these descriptors present life with a Border Collie as a battle of wills.

While the Border Collie may be underappreciated by many, their remarkable set of inherited skills and tendencies leads to a dangerous anthropocentrism that views them in human terms, assesses their worth along these criteria as well all that we most revile about other humans. At once valorised as stoic, tolerant, intelligent and the most loving and faithful of friends, and yet derided as “type A,” “needy,” “control-freak,” the expectations and anthropocentric judgement placed on these dogs will always work to their disadvantage. This is the tragic legacy of their centuries of close partnership with humans: that we seem to want to mould them in human image and in doing so fail to see how truly wonderful they are in themselves.

“Are they a lot of work?” is a question I’m frequently asked when out and about with my two. No matter how many times I’m asked, it still takes me a while to process and respond. We live together; we share our lives; we adapt and communicate to make room for our own and each others’ needs. Some of their needs are such that they demand I make changes to how I live, but these changes are significantly less than those my life demands of them. When their learning goes off course, I channel it (and oh boy do they do the same for me!). This is what I’ve learned from working with Kay. They’re not a lot of work, but unpacking all the baggage of how I grew up believing life with Collies would be certainly is.