Living with Collies ~
Building lifeskills for your Collie in your world.
Walking side-by-side: a connection whether you are negotiating busy environments, casually exploring quietly or strutting across the hills of Border country.
Quality rest time is essential for Collies when their waking time is so extraordinarilly busy.
Learning the disciplines of NOT throwing one more toy, NOT playing when you need the rest or you must be prepared to wake up with a soggy toy crushed into your face. Clear boundaries between Time for Games: Time for Rest: Time for Spectating whilst I clean, cook, work, sleep.
Observation Station
To feel safe, a Border Collie will scan and process where they are and what is happening around them. For dogs young and old, long-termers or recent residents an observation station set up near the house is ideal to develop these skills.
I know mine will often spend long periods of lying near the back door just watching whatever - birds, movement in the distance, racing clouds. Occasionally prompts from me are needed as to what they consider I require alerting to and this is often a gauge of their stress/anxiety at that time.
For instance a lorry reversing and off-loading nearby will leave them a bit too alert for a while afterwards. The crows on the lawn may then need intervention whereas previously this was not consider alarm worthy.
This is their TV time. A pen leading from an open back door can give a dog the perfect observation station from which to learn about their world at their choice.
Make sure they begin to become familiar with that station with you in it – a coffee and a good book for you! The policy of "be nearby and visit often" is recommended.
Todd's early Observation Station:
Touch
Trust is decided by the dog, you cannot tell them to “trust you, this won’t be uncomfortable”. They will make a decision based on their experience.
Affection is a range of contacts that are pleasurable for different reasons by both participants. We enjoy the sensation, we enjoy giving pleasure to the dog and we enjoy the closeness of the relationship that it brings or refreshes. It is also our Best Trust situation. This is never going to be undone.
Without preparation a dog that is handled in a way that is unfamiliar AND uncomfortable will not forget and seek to avoid the conditions.
We need to build familiar hands-on.
When the dog is in the Best Trust situation these are the required conditions:
- Fully relaxed
- There by choice
- Able to leave
- Can ask for more or continuation or redirection
This may occur in more than one place, with more than one person.
With your Border Collie, you may notice that they prefer to face away from you during tactile contact. Face-on tends to be their working orientation and this is often brings confusion with hand contact (in particular for the dogs that solely view hands as launching equipment: you want to TOUCH me with a Trebuchet???)
Training an Over-Aroused dog
by Jill Breitner
This article is about an Australian Shepherd, but the situation is very similar for living with a collie.
"There is a widespread notion that the ideal way to manage hyperactive dogs is to try to tire them out, with treadmills, endless games of fetch, paid dog-runners, and so forth. I tend to disagree. I think less is more when it comes to dogs like Indy."
Read more ➤