I have a border collie, working line.
They are and they aren’t a good family pet in my truthful opinion.
I love mine but I’m not sure I’d have another.
Firstly, it’s regularly thrown about they need massive amounts of exercise and stimulation.
I personally disagree with this.
Lots of high adrenaline exercise, like ball throwing or agility, particularly if mixed with mental stimulation on top makes my collie whiny, hyperactive, bitey, pacing, unable to settle down.
When i drastically reduced high adrenaline activities and mental stimulation she transformed into a very placid, lazy dog.
She will literally sleep all day and isn’t bothered in the slightest about missing a walk.
That said, once you get her out there’s no stopping her.
She can go literally all day.
The typical working collie often has large periods of time without work where it has to largely entertain itself.
In some respects they are very different to common ‘family pet’ breeds.
They aren’t gregarious and ‘love everyone’ dogs generally speaking like you’d expect from a stereotypical ‘family dog’ breed like a Labrador for example.
They are usually one person dogs, prone to jealousy and aloof (shouldn’t be aggressive) to strangers.
Mine is more bonded to me, she likes DH but he doesn’t get the same level of obedience that I do.
As an adolescent she did experiment with trying to break up any hugs etc between me and DH.
You need to be really firm re this behaviour, dog needs to know it’s unacceptable and consequence will follow it.
My collie will welcome guests that I welcome into the house warmly.
She is indifferent to everyone else.
Strangers on walks she will ignore.
If they stop to talk to us she’ll tolerate one or two strokes then back away and start pestering me to resume the walk by nudging my hand, looking at the route then back to me repeatedly, whining.
She likes children, she will be happily be petted by them.
They are usually very high prey drive dogs although often lack the instinct to follow through and kill, not always though and it can differ with different animals.
For instance, I am 99.9% my collie would kill a squirrel if she caught one but she used to herd up our chickens and never harmed one.
Don’t underestimate the problems a high herding instinct can cause.
I couldn’t reliably walk mine near groups of cars for over a year, ditto runners and cyclists.
Only groups, she didn’t react to singles.
The herding instinct is usually present from 6 - 8 weeks.
It’s really important not to allow it directed on people.
I used to interrupt her with a stern AH and put her in another room and ignore for a few minutes as a puppy if she tried to herd anyone.
It’s not funny and it’s not cute.
It’s dangerous.
Border collies are consistently fairly high on the bite scales.
Allowing herding to be directed to people is a bite waiting to happen.
I find that other dogs are often not terribly comfortable around her.
Even at distance when she doesn’t know they are there.
I think the way she carries herself/moves and the fact she is fairly hard eyed upsets them.
After many negative experiences she is wary now of other dogs.
Fine usually with small dogs, pugs are her favourite, she will avoid larger dogs.
If forced to interact she’ll usually growl and lip curl at them.
Allowing her to interact with other strange dogs to socialise her is my second biggest regret and it is the main reason that I don’t think I see another collie in my future.
The first regret is too much exercise and mental stimulation that I was told to do by absolutely everyone (who’s never actually owned a collie!)
These dogs need very careful socialisation with other dogs.
Calm, good natured dogs you trust.
If I had my time again, I would have trained her to walk, play, fed treats etc around other dogs to get her totally comfortable with the presence of other dogs, but I wouldn’t have let her interact unless I knew them well.
You need to be careful to interrupt herding behaviour like staring at them as other dogs don’t like it.
To a certain degree, high strung is a trait of the breed and potentially problematic for a family pet.
Collies are very quick to react to stimulus and they are very sensitive dogs, both to your emotions and to correction.
A mildly raised voice will have some collies cowering though mine is pretty ‘hard’.
There are border collie breeders out there, the Kennel Club show/Crufts type, who breed super friendly, placid, little to no herding ability, ‘Labrador like’ temperament border collies which although some may view as better family pets, IMO those are not ‘real’ border collies.
They look like them, but the personality is very different.
Think it would be tragic if you bought one and contributed to what is in my opinion the slow destruction of all the best loved working breeds by the Kennel Club.