9 month collie & im stressed 😫

[Ilikewinter]

So weve got a 9 month collie and Im about to give up. He did go to training as a young pup and was with other dogs with no reaction but now (and last couple of months) hes sooo reactive. I think its fear as hes very timid, if hes off lead and hes another dog he will lie down and wait for us to put his lead on but we then cant walk past that dog without him lunging and barking. Its sounds like he wants to rip the dogs head off but im sure its fear not aggression. When I can im crossing the road, walking long way around the park etc trying to get him comfortable then shortening the distance but its making no difference and sometimes thats just not possible and Im at my wits end. Ive stopped taking him to any high traffic areas but thats not how i envisioned spending the next 10 years or so. I just want back my happy go lucky puppy 😫😥

Following have no advice but dpup barked really aggressively at builders we had in the house this week but I know it was due to fear but not sure why

Is it a border collie you have?

Yep a border collie and hes living upto his breed! We're also working on not chasing cars, it feels like 1 step forward 10 steps back, he didnt lunge at a car this morning although still very alert to it so i was dead pleased with him...but then he lost the plot with the dog we saw that we couldnt avoid. DH keeps saying it will pass as he gets older but im not sure, i dont think I can see the wood for the trees at the minute.

@allgreythings.... yep been there to with the gas man, winterpup escaped the room id locked us in(!) and steamed upto the gas man but then he just rifled through his tool bad and knicked a spanner...... all the while im saying no, stop, come back here like a completed knob 🙈

She's a teenager. Challenging time. Hang in there.

Try to make her sit, reward when quiet for sec. Short leather lead. Reward x100000 for every bit of good behaviour. Don't afraid of a firm no / down, however.

it iis really hard when your dog is on lead and other dogs are roaming and approaching your dog. sympathies!

many collies do end up aloof with other dogs.

Car chasing is really common with the breed. Also got this with my current collie. ugh! Don't know why they think they can herd 1.5 tons of speeding metal. And they're supposed to be the most intelligent breed.

This sounds really normal behaviour for a collie and she's still growing and learning so be patient. Don't give up. That how dogs end up damaged being passed to different people. She will settle down. Ours hated being on the lead and needed 2 off lead runs a day. We found her much better with other dogs off her lead but she was still a bit grumpy with dogs she didn't know. I'd say persevere with off lead exercise and if your worried she will bite another dog use a soft muzzle which takes the worry away. She needs to meet as many dogs as possible. Most collies hate the lead and won't be friendly while they are on them that's why they are a working dog bred to run across fields

Never ever use soft muzzes on dogs as they prevent panting and breathing.

The worst thing you can do at the moment is to introduce her to as man dogs as possible

This behaviour will not go away as your collie gets older. It will get worse. The more opportunities your dog has to practise the behaviour the better they will get at it.

So in the short term increase distance between anything that causes a reaction.

However it is pretty straight forward to treat if you have knowledge.

You do need to get in touch with an experienced trainer used to collies and one who uses positive training methods.

I can explain how to do the actual training but you will need help with timing and using markers and clickers in the correct way.

Your collie is doing what collies do but as they do not have their preferred way of herding they are transferring this onto other items.

It is important that you also add a natural outlet for your collie and your trainer can help with this. It is not ball throwing or retrieving balls though.

@PollyRoulllson

Never ever use soft muzzes on dogs as they prevent panting and breathing.

The worst thing you can do at the moment is to introduce her to as man dogs as possible

This behaviour will not go away as your collie gets older. It will get worse. The more opportunities your dog has to practise the behaviour the better they will get at it.

So in the short term increase distance between anything that causes a reaction.

However it is pretty straight forward to treat if you have knowledge.

You do need to get in touch with an experienced trainer used to collies and one who uses positive training methods.

I can explain how to do the actual training but you will need help with timing and using markers and clickers in the correct way.

Your collie is doing what collies do but as they do not have their preferred way of herding they are transferring this onto other items.

It is important that you also add a natural outlet for your collie and your trainer can help with this. It is not ball throwing or retrieving balls though.

That isn't what worked for us. My experience was to get her used to other dogs not keep her away. And she could breath with a soft muzzle just fine otherwise I would t have put it on her

Your dog is doing his job. You don't understand his intentions.

Something comes near you and you bring him closer to you. So he understands that he needs to protect you . That's what he's learning.

Please find out more about a border collie's instincts. Read about them because, honestly, they really want to do the right thing.

I have one who was doing what yours is doing right now. A border collie trainer showed me that I needed to stop making my dog sit in front of me when someone approached. I was giving her the wrong message. As soon as I stopped and asked the person in question to just ignore her and to let her sniff around and suss out if everything was ok , she stopped getting barky and defensive. Now, she's really easy going.

Remember, over many, many years border collies have been bred to guard . It's a big part of their makeup.

Also though, because border collies are bred to work for shepherds, they really want to please people. I bet your dog is wanting to do their best.

@PollyRoulllson could you post how to do it? Im interested too. Thank you.
OP I have no advice but watching with interest.

@WitchWand speaks sense.

Btw I haven't found it to be true that "most collies" dislike leads. All of my collies (5, now training a sixth) quickly assoiated them with walks (urban, nature reserves, shops etc) and got excited.

Collies are not guarders at all they are herders - it is a totally different thing.

@ThisisMax Initially you need to get your dog to focus on you. Loads of rewarding eye contact whilst stationery and when on the move.

Introduce your dog to a clicker or marker word eg mark the behaviour and reward/reinforce. This is important that the dog understands the clicker and what happens.

When under threshold have the dog look at person/dog/car and click the clicker and feed the dog whatever the dog does. You may have to take food down to the dog. IF the dog does not eat the food the dog is overthreshold and you need to increase the distance. If the dog is barking lunging, or over staring they are too close .

Initially the distace may need to be huge eg across the other side of a football pitch.

Very quickly if you click and reward every time the collie sees something they will look back at you for the reward. At this point you can say Look at that. From this point on you can say look at that the dog will look and turn to you.

The dogs emotional response to the trigger has changed and their behaviour to the trigger has changed.

Do this on things the dog does not react to as well as things they do react to to prevent look at me becoming a precursor.

You can over time decrease the distance so that you can now walk past anything that you want to - if you want your collie to interact with dogs it is now easier for them to do so as they are in a calm state at meeting and greeting.

Your collie now has a clear job to do when walking past things, seeing things that nove etc.

If you want more info look at Controlled Unleased book by the amazing Leslie MCDevitt

Remember, over many, many years border collies have been bred to guard . It's a big part of their makeup.

Collies have been bred to herd, not guard.

@PollyRoulllson

Never ever use soft muzzes on dogs as they prevent panting and breathing.

The worst thing you can do at the moment is to introduce her to as man dogs as possible

This behaviour will not go away as your collie gets older. It will get worse. The more opportunities your dog has to practise the behaviour the better they will get at it.

So in the short term increase distance between anything that causes a reaction.

However it is pretty straight forward to treat if you have knowledge.

You do need to get in touch with an experienced trainer used to collies and one who uses positive training methods.

I can explain how to do the actual training but you will need help with timing and using markers and clickers in the correct way.

Your collie is doing what collies do but as they do not have their preferred way of herding they are transferring this onto other items.

It is important that you also add a natural outlet for your collie and your trainer can help with this. It is not ball throwing or retrieving balls though.

Why not balls? My collie's ball obsession actually worked in our favour, initially distracting her from cars and other dogs so that now at 3 she ignores both. It made her training easier as she's not interested at all in food, but even just holding the ball makes her extremely focussed on me. It has been a really useful tool.

We do have to restrict it's use and make sure to throw it gently so she doesn't go mental chasing it, and it's put away in the house unless I want it repeatedly dropped in my lap.

Nothing wrong with using balls in training just how you use them.

Collies need to stop movement - they are not retrievers.

If you throw balls for collies their adrenalin goes sky high they get over aroused and you have a highly charged collie.

Of course a few balls throws are fine and sending them to sniff out a still ball is perfect.

Also you can so sheep balling which is having the dog opposite you and gently moving the ball for the collie to stop it. Tires collies out with the herding motion but does not create an adrenalin charged collie from ball chasing (also protects their joints etc).

As an aside tennis balls will wreck their teeth so other choice of balls is better.

I use balls for training but ever throwing it for lon full on chase games.

@PollyRoulllson thanks so much for this. Hopefully it will be useful for OP too. Thank you.

Ive been working in a 'look at me' cue and have this pretty nailed on the street UNTIL he sees a distraction, so ive got higher value chicken as his treat today, we saw 3 cars in quick succession and it all went out the window. Cars that go past us on the road are too close for him yet, hes stopped trying to chase but will pull and goes up on back legs as they approach- ive got him on a front and rear clip harness. He has no reaction if we are on a side street.
We saw no dogs today so i just kept calling him back to me and he was more responsive to the chicken than his normal treats - he normally takes his treat and runs, but today he was hanging around obviously for more!
We take a tug rope with a ball on and if hes off lead and we see a dog we'll clip him on and play tug to try and distract him, that does work aslong as the dog if far enough away, but sometimes its not possible to keep that distance. Hopefully over time he'll feel happier with a closer distance. He has done clicker training and he responds to the clicker so i might go back to it and see if thats better than 'look at me'.
I guess its frustrating because upto about 2 months ago he had no issue with cars or dogs so its a problem that I didnt anticipate.

OP it is really important that you do not distract him from the trigger.

This teaches them nothing.

You want them to see the trigger and then realise good things happen.

If you use a toy although I wouldnt as it can be too overarousing when the dog is already in a state ready to be aroused - so initially would stick to food and calm delivery but make sure the dog sees the trigger and then looks back at you for the reward. Food is better to start with.

If he is reacting he is too close and not ready for that stage yet.

Frustrating but you need to increase the distance.

Also make sure you do "look at that" on things that do not put him over threshold. If you only look at that on triggers it will actually make him more hypervigilant - which is the opposite of what we want to happen.

The fact he takes his treat and runs again shows he is overthreshold.

Spend days/weeks on a side street and start to click on the sound of the car not the passing by. The first indication he has clocked on to a car click and treat.

I do strongly advise a trainer to help with the subtleties of this and it is also so much easier for a person with distance from the dog to be able to interpret the dogs body language. It is hard to do this at the end of a lead.

is there a particular 'clicker' that can be recommended?

No not really . I like the box clickers as they are louder.

For noise sensitive dogs you can use the clicker with a button on top they are a bit quieter.

Do make sure you charge the clicker up for your dog if you have not used on before so have your dog with you in a quiet place
click and treat and repeat for 10 15 times.

Your dog will then understand click means treat is coming.

If you click accidentally or not you must always treat!

10 - 15 times not 1015 times (although your dog will love you if you did do it 1015 times!)

I would not recommend the clicker that comes in a cheap colourful two-pack from Amazon. It is far too loud IMO and my puppy flinches if within 10m of it.

Collies and tennis balls have a very special relationship IME.

OP, I hear you frustration but it will get better. It is age-related too as they do go through several stages of extra caution and fearfulness, just like human babies. She may actually grow out of it, though the suggesions on this thread can't hurt, either.

@PollyRoulllson, thank you thats some great advice that seems obvious now, i thought the tug ball was like see a dog, play with the toy as a reward, but can understand why it would be stimulating him.
Im definately going to go back to the clicker, he repsonds to that and its better than my frustrating tone which I know he picks up on.
He doesnt respond to a stationary car when the engines running but i wouldnt click for that, but i will do now, and i need to click when he ignores cars from a side street.
Hummm back to the beginning and baby steps for me 🐶