Jump to content
BC Boards

I Concede the Point . . . Border Collies are Easy to Train . . .


Recommended Posts

I agree with every word. I don't always want "easy" though, but it is nice to have an easy (but not perfect) dog for a change.

 

I was in the exercise area at a show today and talking to someone with a youngster of 7 months like mine. She said it was the first time for about 15 years she had been in an exercise area because her previous dogs would chase, weren't good with other dogs, had iffy recalls etc. And yet even now she couldn't let hers off lead because she was at the stage of running off. But her dog is not working bred.

 

Chalk and cheese compared to ours that had been happily working on foundation skills and even formal obedience with other dogs chasing balls, running around and even coming up to say Hi. On the odd occasion he did go towards another dog or person he could be called back.

 

And we have reached that level with a fraction of the amount of training that I put into my previous dogs. I think it's more than the fact that he was a young pup when I got him, rather the result of going for likely working ability and good temperament.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't always want easy, either. I often say that it's not that I want it to be easy - I want it to be possible. I'm willing to work as hard as I have to, as long as whatever we are trying to do is possible for that dog.

 

I do wish that more non-Border Collie people would recognize that having a Border Collie doesn't make everything easy. I know that it's neither here nor there what people think, but I do get tired of hearing and reading such things. And yes, a lot of people who don't have Border Collies do know that. :)

 

So far with Bandit, things are much easier. And I think that over the long haul, things that were incredibly difficult for Speedy, Maddie, Dean, and sometimes even Tessa, are going to be a lot easier for him.

 

And that's a combination of him being a well bred dog, me having experience, and the fact that I've done this for so many years with dogs who had serious challenges.

 

On the other hand, I hope we are going to go far beyond where I've gotten with any of my other dogs, and when we get there, we will face our challenges, too. We will hit our brick walls!! And I'm cool with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first dog was very difficult in that he had little interest in people and a very strong prey drive. My second dog was a quivering, terrified wreck. My third was similar to the first but not to the same degree. Numbers 4 and 5 OKish except for hating each other. No 6 was the first collie and fear aggressive towards people and dogs that invaded his space.

 

They were all rescues but I must make clear that many rescue dogs do not come with baggage. Even with their issues mine were great dogs for me.

 

I have learned so much from each one and am grateful for it because it puts any minor imperfections in my youngster into perspective and makes them so much easier to deal with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I sit amazed when I watch Bandit at Agility class. Yes, he's super excited to be there, and he can be . . . . squirmy . . . at times. But I often see something catch his attention and he locks in on it visually. And then, after a second or two, he disengages, and goes back to looking around or whatever.

 

Speedy . . . well . . . one dog running across the room or jumping or whatnot, and he was gone. Eyes glazed over, barking, lunging, and he wasn't "coming down" any time soon.

 

Dean started out rather crazed, but was able to learn, through CU games, to take it in stride. Speedy never could.

 

But, of course, Dean has the noise phobia. :( And the generalized anxiety.

 

Tessa actually is super simple compared to the two of them. In spite of starting out semi-feral, she actually adores the training/competition setting. Her issues have been with learning itself, likely because of holes in her development as a youngster (a friend who is a speech therapist with young children has been of great help to me with Tessa, as her learning can be dealt with in ways that are similar to dealing with children who were neglected as babies).

 

I learned (and am still learning with Dean and Tessa) so much from them. I wish I could write it all out. I've tried and keep hitting a brick wall when I try to organize it and put it into words. Working with Bandit now keeps reminding me over and over that I need to be grateful for the dog he is and the opportunity that it is to work with him! We will have our challenges, but they will likely be with high level sport skills that aren't easy for anyone!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Root Beer, I LOVE your blog post!!! I've printed it out and I'm going to hang it up.

I've had three BC's that were fun to train, had some challenges and snags but with some "outside the box" training were very good. Then I had another one. I love him but he is very frustrating at times. When people tell me how "easy" BCs are I just roll my eyes. He is super intelligent but FAST FAST FAST. Sometimes I swear he reacts to what I am thinking. He is fun to show but people (friends included) don't really understand what a challenge he is.

I especially like the "healthy sense of humor." I laugh more at Logan than any other dog.

I've also come to realize that the reason I train and show is to spend time with my dog. Their lives are so very short that as long as he is safe and doesn't interfer with another dog "it's all good" and will be another memory of him that I will cherish and laugh at.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Root Beer, I LOVE your blog post!!! I've printed it out and I'm going to hang it up.

I've had three BC's that were fun to train, had some challenges and snags but with some "outside the box" training were very good. Then I had another one. I love him but he is very frustrating at times. When people tell me how "easy" BCs are I just roll my eyes. He is super intelligent but FAST FAST FAST. Sometimes I swear he reacts to what I am thinking. He is fun to show but people (friends included) don't really understand what a challenge he is.

I especially like the "healthy sense of humor." I laugh more at Logan than any other dog.

 

Thanks! I appreciate that! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

 

 

I've also come to realize that the reason I train and show is to spend time with my dog. Their lives are so very short that as long as he is safe and doesn't interfer with another dog "it's all good" and will be another memory of him that I will cherish and laugh at.

 

I concur. Some of my favorite memories of my dogs have been from times when things didn't go quite right, and were actually very funny. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a lot of people are framing 'easy' as compared to other breeds, and I've got to say that I agree with them on that point. Even the hardcore resource guarders and socialization basket-case border collies I've worked with have been more tractable than other breeds with similar issues (usually terriers).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a friend who is training a Beagle. People keep telling her how difficult Beagles are to train. This Beagle works exactly as "all Border Collies" supposedly do. He's biddable, eager to learn, and she rarely has issues with him sniffing. She worked for years with a Border Collie who had some pretty significant issues. She often says that she doesn't understand why people keep telling her that Beagles are difficult to train. Compared to her Border Collie, he really is a piece of cake to train. She's competing with him. The Border Collie never made it that far, and would have had big trouble doing so, even with a skilled and experienced handler.

 

It is really interesting seeing her responses to people telling her that her dog is supposed to be "difficult to train". She actually doesn't appreciate being told that Beagles are difficult to train any more than I like to be told that Border Collies are easy to train. She would prefer that her dog be considered for the individual that he is. And that's what I would like to see more of, as well.

 

I think there is a danger in categorizing any breed of dog as "easy" or "difficult". They all have their perks and they all have their challenges. And individuals within the breed are going to vary in "ease" or "difficulty".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're not willing to make breed generalizations, what's the point of breeds except for looks?

 

The border collie breed was developed to work stock. Beagles were developed to scent track game. JRTs were developed to kill vermin.

 

The complexity of stockwork and the need to work at a distance semi-independently but in concert with a person predisposes border collies as a breed to be more biddable and focused than a lot of other breeds.

 

Once you have a specific dog in hand you should be working with that dog. However, breed informs where I start and what jump size in difficulty I think is appropriate until I get more specific information.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Certainly there is a place for breed generalizations.

 

I would say, however, that when it comes to ease or difficulty of creating a good sport performance dog, breed generalizations are a lot more limited than most people realize.

 

Sure, having a Border Collie will give you an idea of jump height.

 

But that will not tell you exactly what training is going to have to go into training your Border Collie into a fluent jumper. You could have a Border Collie with low drive, who needs a lot of value built into jumping and you could spend years building that value! You could have a Border Collie with so much natural handler focus that you spend a long time creating a balance between handler and obstacle focus. And the opposite can happen - you can end up with a Border Collie so independent that it can be a long work in progress to build enough handler focus to get the dog through a jumping sequence. You could have one that is so high drive that you have a serious challenge in getting that Border Collie to think instead of plowing the jumps over (I've seen many jump sequences demolished by Border Collies like this!) and you could spend quite some time trying to build that thinking ability in that particular dog. You could have a Border Collie who gets so overstimulated by jumps that Agility is not even an option! (I had one of those!). And you could have a Border Collie who is an awesome natural jumper with a nice balance of drive and thought who will train up easy and be very successful with no more effort than one would really expect to put into it.

 

The fact that you have a Border Collie actually tells you very little about how much work you are going to have to put into training to create a competent competition jumper. Some are quite "easy" to accomplish that with. And some are at the other end of the spectrum of difficulty. And then you have everything in between . . .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For every low drive or over-the-top border collie I see in agility classes, there are at least 5 that are easy to train and two of those are naturals. This is a better ratio than I see in almost any other breed of dog I work with - with the possible exception of miniature poodles, but my sample size is a lot smaller and miniature poodles aren't built for the fastest course times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My own ratio hasn't been that high.

 

I started with one who was most likely brain damaged. I mean that literally. He started out highly fearful of dogs and people, but that wasn't his biggest challenge. He was overstimulated by his own motion. Never did get to the point where he could actually take a jump and manage to stay in his thinking brain afterward. (After a lot of work, he did get to the point where he could do Freestyle, as long as I kept the crazy jumps and weaves out of it).

 

My next had zero drive whatsoever. She used to just wander off the floor to go hang out with the people on the sidelines. That was before I knew how to use that to our advantage. She did eventually become a nice jumper, but it took a ton of work.

 

My next had no issues with jumping per se, but dealt with both generalized anxiety and severe noise phobia. He would often just fall apart mentally in the ring, and have a deer in the headlights look on his face. Sometimes it would happen as we were coming to the finish, as he was facing the people. Bye bye last jump! There was no lift off when he was in that state of mind.

 

Finally, I got an "easy" one. Although she started semi-feral and she did have to learn to stop trying to survive for a few seconds to actually play a game in order to learn jumping, once she got past that, she actually was pretty easy to train as a performance dog.

 

Now I have a youngster that I think will also fall on the "easy" side, although I won't know until we get there!!

 

So, out of 5, I have had three that were extremely difficult, one "easy" once she normalized mentally, and one who has the potential to be easy, but who knows.

 

Now, I will also say this. Agility . . . way easier than Freestyle. Take Freestyle into account, and I have yet to have a single easy performance Border Collie. They are a lot fewer and further between than a lot of people think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been in... 4 agility foundations classes now, with different dogs and have one dog ready to hit trials (so higher levels), making for a total of about 70 weeks worth of classes + show and goes, semi-private lessons and practices.


Most of them have had a lot of border collies in them/been about half border collies.


At that starting level I can tell you that, in my area, I've seen dogs (Border collies) who are reactive, dogs who are terrified of some of the equipment/spook at or on it, dogs who were terrified of the other dogs, dogs who were afraid of the other handlers and/or instructors, dogs who will not stay with their handlers, dogs who will not move more than 2 feet away from their handler for anything, dogs who are excessively distracted by the other dogs and handler in a positive way (not reacting but 'hey, you've got food, lets play', dogs who had NO equipment drive at all and were very 'meh' and had to be cheerlead, dogs who get over excited and blow everything.

 

Spread out amongst 4 classes, with at LEAST 4 BC each (so 16), in that time I have seen 3 dogs I would describe as getting it very quickly and being a natural. And one of those was a golden retriever. The other 2 were dogs over 3.

 

They were all GOOD in their ways and all of them were bright, but every last one had training challenges and required different coping methods and approaches. Because they're dogs, not carbon copies.

 

I saw more consistency with the less plentiful but present and represented in each class MAS and ACDs.

 

My own BC isn't quite 9 months old. We're in our first foundations agility class. Last week at class 4 of seven sessions was the first time she was able to keep her crap together well enough to participate at all in the course work. We'll be retaking this class.

 

Is she easy to train? Sort of. In as much as it isn't difficult and doesn't take long for her to understand what I want, and she'll do her very, very best to give it to me. Is she without training challenges? No. She's sharp, dog reactive, and won't let the trainer or assistant within 10 feet of her.


She can do one heck of a tunnel, 2o2o, target, and various crosses, sure, but she's sure as HECK not point and shoot!

 

My little fluffy mutt is closer to that than my BC. I mean, she's kind of pokey and doesn't like stopped contacts much and sometimes acts like she's never seen a weave pole, but mostly she figures out what I want, gives it to me, and there are no real hurdles to training her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I cannot figure out why my text is the wrong size.

 

Anyways, I think people generalize a bit too much about breeds. Some of the wildest dogs I've known are BCs and some of the calmest, softest, most sensitive dogs I know are BCs.

 

When I showed up with my mutt (terrier x ACD???), I got 10001 comments about 'wow, that's different from your other dogs!' Or 'wow! you're going to have your hands full.' Or 'terriers are hard to train'.

 

Hank has been easy to train. Beyond easy. He was a little motion reactive at first but broke that very fast. He's a lot of fun. The worst thing for us is hiking off leash because of prey drive issues but agility has been easy. He's high energy but also turns off well and is fun to live with. He's the most biddable dog I've had and picks up tricks about 10x faster than my other dogs.

 

My most difficult dog I've ever owned is my younger papillon. She's the most hard headed, most high maintenance, stubborn, sharp as a tack, brilliant, slightly evil, and just plain destructive dog. (I love her. Best dog I've ever had). My other pap is sweet and easy and lovely and kind. I've lived with 5 other paps and a couple have been mushes, one is crazy, one was very quiet and sweet and smart. Etc all different in temperament and capabilities.

Our BC/collie/mutt was not very bright. Our sports bred sheltie was really really stupid. Very sweet and devoted though. Just lacking in trainability and had less than zero common sense. I know that's kind of taboo to say but he was very off. I really believe he had a mental issue. At any rate, he was far too timid and shy to ever make a sports dog. My other shelties were very smart dogs.

 

I do think breed gives you a good starting point but I see it backfire especially with BCs sometimes. I have seen people start agility with the family dog then get a BC because BCs are easy agility dogs then end up quitting when they hit a road block. Sometimes they're just not that talented or are too reactive. I wouldn't say it's uncommon for people with BCs to hit these kind of performance road blocks. That said I think the breed as a whole is obviously one of the most solid performance bets.

 

But in the end of the day they're all dogs and all dogs are individuals. It annoyed me to no end when people acted like Hank would be too much for me based on my other dogs. When in actuality Hank is much easier than my other dog in almost every way!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really, really, wish about 98% of the world would stop getting dogs for agility. Get the dog you want, and then do agility with. Unless you are among the best of the best, you can accomplish what you want with the breed or individual you already love.

 

I add the disclaimer that I'm not super serious about agility, but neither are most of the other people doing agility!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't say I've ever gotten a dog "for Agility" but whether or not a dog is likely to be suitable for a sport is something that I consider.

 

Shut down as Tessa was when we were fostering her, somehow I saw Agility potential. It's not the only reason we adopted her, and if it had not panned out, it would have been OK, but it was a "selling point" in my overall decision.

 

And Bandit is going to be my Freestyle dog. He is going to love it. He is going to rock at it. We are going to accomplish everything I have ever wanted to do in the sport together.

 

OK, that's what I want. He is making it clear that he has chosen Agility as his sport. We'll do both and go where we end up. I love both sports and it is perfectly OK with me if he does, too.

 

But sport potential was in my mind when I decided to look for a puppy.

 

I think when you are involved with a sport and you want to continue, it is difficult not to consider suitability for sports in the overall decision.

 

But I would say that shouldn't be the only thing to consider. Most of their lives aren't about sports.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not saying not to consider suitability. I got Molly in part because I wanted the potential to do agility with a dog who would maybe love the game for the sake of the game, instead of playing the game because she just likes playing with me. One who wouldn't go flat if asked to pause on a course or hold a start line stay, and who wasn't so inclined to stick close to my heels that send outs were difficult.


But I wanted a border collie anyway.

 

If I'd wanted, I don't know, a golden retriever, and loved golden retrievers, I would have looked for a golden retriever with those traits. Maybe a breeder who bred sports dogs, maybe a breeder who had dogs I thought just had the potential, maybe an adult rescue who already showed that potential.

 

Not loved golden retrievers, wanted a golden retriever, and decided to get a border collie because they're purportedly better at agility.

 

Heck, if I wanted a COONHOUND, or a poodle, or a chi, or any other breed I'd do the same thing. Easy to train does at least in some part require you and the dog mesh.

 

I guess my original post wasn't very clear, but waaaaaay too many people live with dogs they got 'to do agility with' that they don't particularly like (at least around me), and don't much want to live with before the dog's career, after the dog's career, the 20+ hours a day they're not training.

 

And they're people who are never going to do more than earn a title or three locally anyway, because they don't want to go further than that, and they aren't entirely sure they want to go that far.

 

What in the world is the potential benefit in that, for the owner OR the dog?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Five rescue dogs have had a home with me because I got them to do agility. Doesn't matter that some of them didn't like it. And I bought my pup as a potential agility prospect and also to do other things with as well. I would never have had 5 dogs if it wasn't for agility. The last 2 have been collies.

 

All the dogs who come to our classes are well loved pet dogs, whether they are first timers or competing internationally. I can't think of any that are considered as a piece of sporting equipment even if they were acquired with the express intention of doing agility. Anyone with that attitude wouldn't last long with us.

 

Going back to the comments about Beagles - I've spent 3 hours taking training this evening and we have 2 of them in one class. They both run off if not sufficiently engaged but give them a tricky enough challenge and they are both fine. They have a low boredom threshold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

"On the other hand, I hope we are going to go far beyond where I've gotten with any of my other dogs, and when we get there, we will face our challenges, too. We will hit our brick walls!! And I'm cool with that."

 

 

Isn't that what we always hope to achieve? Achieve more with your next dog than you have with previous dogs and hit that brick wall(s)? I always smile when we finally get beyond what I've done with previous dogs and have hit the new challenges. The challenges may seem impossible but what you learn is unforgettable!

BTW, I want to hang that blog post on my wall and post it on my car windows. Yeah, Border collies are easy to train if. . . a, b, c, d, and e line up in perfect synchrony.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...