Sunday

I did notice it seemed to be more of a thing with raw feeders.

Does anyone fast their dog for therapeutic reasons? I recently spoke to someone who did a weekly fast.. and I was curious so I looked up some more information on it and apparently it's very beneficial for a dog's system to be able to detoxify itself regularly. Even just giving your dog a raw bone once in a while instead of a meal is among one of the options I found. I've never seen this topic come up anytime food is discussed.

Sekah, Do you have any suggestions for good self control exercises that would help?

One of my main problems is I live alone with no one to help me and I have really bad anxiety so asking strangers for help is out of the question. Even then, Like Camden's Mom said, who wants to stand around helping me train my dog when all they wanted to do was quickly pet him? I had a trainer once who was so incompetent it honestly seemed like the behaviors I went to him to fix were made worse. And I don't have the money to hire another one right now, especially another cluess one.

He is two years old. I've had him since he was a baby, and he's had tons of training. We train just about every day or work on things. He's a champion trick dog, does agility, disc, musical freestyle. We live in a big city so the people are quite unavoidable. He can walk through crowds and stuff and keep his composure. It's just if someone pays any attention to him that he suddenly goes nuts and nothing else exists. I just checked out the Protocol for Relaxation, and I wonder if that would be something to try. A conditioned relaxation technique? Is there a way to make a dog be uninterested in strangers? Hahaha. I can't believe I would ever want an aloof dog, but it's sounding quite nice.

I could use some advice. My dog gets way over excited when he is around people. If someone ignores him then he is fine and will either ignore them as well or will try to greet the person, but then run back to me when he realizes he will get no attention. The problem is, if the person does so much as give him eye contact, he goes absolutely nuts. He jumps around, sometimes jumps on the person, races back and forth, and just acts like a wild idiot. Pulling him away takes care of the situation, but is not teaching him how to behave. He just doesn't listen to me at all if a new person in in the picture. Sometimes a stranger will just say something to me quickly, and that flips on his psycho switch too. None of this is aggressive, he wants the whole world to love him and play with him. But his excitement level is so high all manners and training go out the window. Even if I can get his attention for a second to give him a command, it doesn't register much in his mind. A "sit" only works for a matter of seconds before the energy builds up too much again. At best, I can put him in a down until the person walks away, but he remains fixated and whines loudly. That is also not teaching him to be calm. What to do?

Mine still loves to grab his leash when he gets excited. You could try putting it on command. We play tug and I encourage him to take the leash, then when I am done playing I tell him 'that's enough' which means drop the leash and walk nicely again. That way he still has opportunies for leash tugging, but only when I allow it. You can buy soft leashes for this game too. Or you could just work on 'drop it' and use that for anything she picks up.. toys, food, leash, your shoes.

I wonder if him being intact is adding to the problem? I do want him neutered and I wonder if it would help calm his mind.

My pup wasn't reliable until he was 5 months old. And with that I mean he was confined to one room with no rugs to potty on plus his crate, no access to the rest of the house. Two things- The puppy should be either be in her crate/play pen, or out playing but supervised 100%. Not 99%. Not with you watching tv, or on the computer, or making yourself a sandwich. If you have to do something which requires you to take your eyes off her, into the crate she goes. If you follow those guidelines, there will be absolutely no opportunity for her to have an accident without you being there to intervene immediately. And as for night time, yes you will have to drag yourself out of bed once or twice during the night for a while. I don't think the potty box is doing her any good either.

Mine was crated with the door closed every night until he was one year old. Then I started sending him in his crate at bedtime, but left the door open. Now he is free to sleep wherever. If he's laying on the floor he will head to his crate on his own when I turn he lights off. He loves his crate. He sleeps in there for most of the night, but in the morning when he wakes up he wanders around other places and a lot of times I wake up in the fetal position because there is a dog pressed against me.

My dog and I are partners. We're a team. I don't see him as my co-worker because like Camden's mom said, the co-worker relationship stays on the job site. My dog works, plays, and lives with me. When I hear someone say 'family dog' I don't think of any type of working dog. I picture a nice suburban couple with kids and a fat, spoiled house dog who runs around the backyard and plays fetch a couple times a week.

Thanks for the responses. He is actually pretty remarkable at controlling himself around everything except people. I can put him in a down stay at the park with dogs sniffing him and running about and he won't move. But if a person were to approach all bets are off. It's been very hard to work with him because I live in the city where idiots see us coming and start calling or making noises from a mile away, or just run right up without warning and it sets him off. Strangers are also not helpful if I ask them not to pet him until he sits. They stand too close, or they keep petting after he breaks his sit, or they baby talk him as I'm trying to give him commands. Anyway, that's only half of my problem though. It just seems like his head is in the clouds most of the time I am trying to work with him. He can be sitting calmly, but looking all around and giving me the cold shoulder. I swear sometimes he turns his head just to say "I'm not listening!" like a stubborn child.

I have heard that mental maturity comes between 2 and 3 years of age. Is this generally true of border collies? My dog will be 2 in August, and I'm having a hard time with him - mostly a lack of focus when I ask him to do things and absolutely no self control around people. He goes nuts trying to get pets and attention if someone so much as looks at him. I'm kind of at my wit's end trying to cope with these things. He is highly diciplined otherwise. I'm wondering if his age might be adding to my struggles, or should he be old enough now to keep himself composed? I've had him since he was 9 weeks old.

Eh, I still think my version is a full name/nickname comparison. My dog doesn't have a call name. He has a shortened version of his name, just like a Matthew would be called Matt. I wouldn't want him to get laughed at by the sheep, so it's a good thing Sun is a city dog.

I like both views on the whole name thing. My dog has a formal registered name that I actually use quite a bit on social media and when I have to list his name somewhere. I compare it to a person's full name. You're not going to say someone's first/middle/last name every time you speak to them, but the entire name does get used often in various ways. I also wanted to choose a longer unique name so he stood out from the millions of "fido's" out there, if someone where to look him up. It's not ridiculous like AKC show names though. However, I like the short one syllable names that are traditionally given to border collies too. So his everyday name is just that. Sun.