Border collie owners

[Runningdownthathill]

Please tell me what made you get one and is it as bad as is made out? Is your collie hyper and incredibly hard work? Or your best friend? I love the breed and really want one but know the challenges.

Do you have huge amounts of time to train and exercise it? (If not - then it's not the dog for you)

And do you have children? (If yes - it's not the dog for you).

Lovely in theory but immensely more complex and demanding in reality.

Ours is an angel. Never destructive. Will sit in her bed until you say let's go. But does get about 3 hours off lead 6 days a week and all day and I mean about 20 miles day 7. Loyalist dog ever. Love her to bits.

I have 6 border collies. (and dc's)

Amazing, wonderful, empathic, intelligent , loyal, sensitive, gentle dogs. They respond to gentle kind handling with positive reinforcement.

They ought to come with a warning that once you have a collie you will never want another dog again.

But my life is my dogs, I work them on our sheep, I do search and rescue, and scent detection.

Collies live to do a job, they need adequate exercise mine get 2 hours but that is from choice but they do need to think and use their brain to keep them happy. If you are not prepared to give them regular time everyday get another breed.

It is a privledge to own a collie and the least owners can do is to give them the life they deserve which is a life with brain work.

Collies can come with some "issues" eg noise sensitivities, may not love other dogs, can be sensitive to environments, may be a bit herdy, nippy (this is usually seen in frustrated collies) all usually very easily treated by experienced collie owners but can be overwhelming for novice owners.

Agree with previous posters. Two older (9/10) collies here. Both need walked 3 times a day, approximately an hour each time. I normally average 16000 steps weekdays and more at weekends. Both have different "issues" in terms of anxieties. Both dogs are very loving and are also both hyper/ best friend.

When I was choosing a breed I had wanted a Labrador but my partner wanted a collie... I’ve had labs before but not collies and was really concerned I wouldn’t be able to handle a collie. In the end we compromised and agreed on a collie/lab cross knowing full well that we may not get the a 50/50 cross and one may dominate.

We have ended up with a dog that has the brain of a collie, the stomach of a lab and from what I can gather a real cross of their natures... loving and questioning in a good mix.

He’s only 4 months so long leash walks are not really an option... so we keep him busy with taking him to places he can sniff, doing a lot of scent work (at home and classes) and he has to work for every meal...either training, sniffing it out or different ways of presenting it(frozen kongs, large snuffle mats etc).

The long term plan is to look at agility when he’s old enough but will start with Hoopers when we can.

He’s a lovely dog, who is energetic and chilled in equal measures... we work from home and now I can put in a full days work with him sleeping or chilling near me... as long as he gets an outing at the beginning, middle and end of the day and a couple of training/play sessions every couple of hours.

Please tell me what made you get one and is it as bad as is made out? Is your collie hyper and incredibly hard work? Or your best friend? I love the breed and really want one but know the challenges

Mine isn’t at all hyper no, she can easily walk outside all day if required but sleeps the day away indoors.

She typically gets about two hours walking 5 days a week but 4 hours isn’t unusual.
She isn’t even slightly bothered about missing a walk.

I only take the ball thrower with me rarely as she gets way too obsessed with it, to the point of walking into things because she isn’t watching where she is going!

I don’t do agility or fly ball or much trick training with her because she gets very frustrated very easily.

She is very, very sweet and kind with young children but the breed isn’t imo always the best choice with young children because they can be noise sensitive (mine isn’t) and get stressed and want to control/calm down the kids if they are too lively.
Although mine has been here before my two youngest and is really great with children, I don’t think they are an ideal breed choice for very young children.
But then I don’t think any dog is ideal with children under 4 or 5 really.

The biggest challenge I have found with mine has been that being from working stock she has quite a strong ‘eye’ and herding instinct, I couldn’t walk her reliably near cars for at least a year because she would go crazy trying to herd them.

I find that other dogs can find her threatening and that has meant we have had a fair few very negative experiences with other dogs and she is wary.

She will pretty much never approach another dog but sometimes if the dog is small, particularly if they are quite un dog like eg pugs she will choose to approach and try to instigate a game of chase with them.

Bigger dogs she will growl/lip curl, sometimes air snap at if they come within sniffing distance of her, ditto jumpy puppies.