ladybandicoot

Hi all! If this isn't the right place to post this, please let me know, or move it. I'm still pretty new! Anyway, onto the topic. We have had out boy for not even a year yet (he was born around June, so he is close to a year now) and we haven't had any particular problems yet, but as of late he sort of has adopted a fairly tedious one. He has started getting very aggressive towards us (that being my household) with anything that has to do with water! Ok, so this really has only escalated more recently. He will drink water from his bowl with no issue, and falling rain oddly doesn't seem to bother him either, but anything else water related? FORGET IT. I never thought a border collie would be so against water, we havent been able to bathe him in about a month now because of this new attitude. He will snarl at us, and literally snap and bit at us. He won't outright ATTACK us (yet...), but while his bite don't draw blood they do hurt. Thankfully we have no children living here or it might be a bigger issue, but I honestly don't know how to go about fixing something like this. Before we got Baymax (thats his name btw!), we had a yellow lab. Obviously yellow's are BIG water dogs, so he was always in the pool and has no issues with baths in any way, so with such a big change I just think we are overwhelmed with this attitude. But it's something we really want to fix. Another example. Whenever we water the plants outside, he KNOWS what the hose is now, so he will run around the side of the house and hide, and we will have to go get him before he even shows his face again. And another, just today actually was his worse little snappy attitude, he had some sticky gunk on the side of his face from being outside, so my sister got a paper towel with a little water on it to wipe it off and he got SO mean, I have never seen it before. He was actually growling, which we have never heard him do before. So, any advice about this will help so much. If he can't even get a bath from us, I don't know how he will be able to even get one from a groomer or anything. Oh, and also, we have been giving him baths since he came home to us, and while he never really LOVED it, he was ok with it and stood there with no fuss. But now he just feels like he can overpower us and fight back I think, so he takes action. But, really other than this negativity with water, he is an absolute ANGEL, it's so strange. He will be so angry with us one minuet, but once the water is gone, he completely forgets anything happened and is back to his normal self! Is it a puppy thing? Will he grow out of it?

So first off let me begin to say I am sure I would be able to find all my answers within this forum, I just feel better when I ask them myself and have them all in one place. If that makes any sense. Ok, so I will wholeheartedly admit that I am bran new to the BC scene. For some reason or another my younger sister has wanted one for the LONGEST time, and since a few years back our yellow lab passed on, we finally found reason to get one. Mind you, we didn't just delve into it blind, we knew how intense BC's could get and I also did my fair share of research before getting him home to us. His name is Baymax and we got him at 8 weeks, he is now 11 weeks. So still pretty fresh. While before we got him I was all ready and knew all the important stuff, after he came and got used to us I just feel like now all that has gone down the drain and I feel completely clueless as to how to go about making him behave a little better. I know he is still very young, is that the only reason he is like this? If so I would feel better, but I somehow doubt it. So I'll say the few things that have been bugging me lately... 1. Probably the most frustrating thing about him is that I feel like he doesn't respect either me or my sister (us being his main owners). Like I mentioned above, I don't know if this is just because he is a puppy still and doesn't really listen to anyone, but he doesn't listen unless I raise my voice (even so, he sometimes still won't listen), and honestly I do NOT want to be in situations where I have to YELL at my dog to get him to listen, we very much want a positive household here for him. Any tips on the whole "showing them who the owner is" thing would help a lot, unless of coarse its simply puppy attitude, in which case I suppose that would also make me feel better if I knew that. 2. We are trying to crate train him. Every night I am the one who stays up with him and puts him to sleep, and my sister has morning shift because he will usually wake up between 8am-10am, so she lets me sleep longer. He always cries when he wants to come out, which I know is normal, at least right now. But the main thing I wanted to know about it was where he have his crate. We have it in a separate room that no one goes in. I read somewhere that you shouldn't crate your dog in a place where he feels isolated, but I feel it's the only way he will get a decent, peaceful amount of sleep because we have WAY more cats than we do dogs. We only have Baymax and Miki (our older, chihuahua), the other 6 are all cats. If I crated him out in the living room the cats are up all night making all kinds of noise. Not really a question now that I realized, but I guess opinions are welcome on the subject. 3. Back to the cat subject. I just wanted to know If anyone on here has any with their BC, and how they act with them. I know I have a more unusual amount of them than normal, but even so. I just don't know if he would be any different with them than he is now? He is pretty good with them now, all things considered. He's a pup with them. For awhile none of them came out of the bedroom out of fear, them they all slowly came out and checked him out. As of now, all of them come out but most of them avoid going on the floor, because Baymax see's them and naturally, he wants to heard them! They usually just brush it off and run away from him. One of my cats though, he is younger and a very big tom cat. He knows this is his home and he fights for it, lately he will just sit in the middle of the living room floor and literally TAUNT Baymax, then Baymax will bark at him, but not get too close because if he does the cat will bat at him. It's funny, I don't know if it's good or bad though. 4. And LASTLY (sorry for asking so much from you all!), one of the main reasons we got Baymax was because my sister has a lot of anxiety issues. They can be very mild sometimes and other times they can be very extreme, so we got him in hopes that he would help soothe some of her anxiety. We very much want to make him a service dog when he is older, we have only done a bit of research on it as of yet since he is so young, but I guess I wanted to get some opinions on it. Our goal is probably to get him to be able to travel with up because that's one of the bigger issues. We want to make a trip to Scotland in a few years to come and we are planning a trip to Japan this coming spring. My sister is terrified of flying. She claims if Baymax is with her, she will be able to do it. So, whether that is true or not is another thing in itself. So, does anyone have any experience with BC service dogs? Or service dogs in general? Once again, thank you all for listening to my many questions. I hope to make a good home here on the BC boards with all the other fellow BC lovers!

I would really love to know about this as well. I'm having the same problem with my pup at the moment, he's about 11 weeks right now. When he gets over tired or excited (which lately seems to be ALL the time), he is nothing but teeth to anything he see's. I also would love to have a very positive environment, but alas I have not had a border collie before, and I will admit I get a bit frustrated at times with him on this issue. a VERY MOUTHY puppy. So, any opinions or help on this subject would be amazing.