PuppyMavis

I am also a first time Border Collie owner, and our girl was born a wild child. She's now 11 months old and we have had several waves of maturity in the last few months that make me very hopeful for the dog she will become.

I don't know if this helps with your decision, but I recently went through a similar situation with our puppy Mavis. She is 10 months old and we are taking a 6 week pre-agility class with other puppies around her age. The first 3 weeks of classes were outside at 7pm and she loved it. With it getting dark earlier, the classes were moved inside an enclosed space for the 4th week. The first time she came out of her crate to train (while all other puppies were in their crates), she did fine. But the second time, she had a complete meltdown. I think the enclosed space, the puppies in their crates and all the people in such a small space were just too much. (She has become more reactive during adolescence and we are dealing with that separately using LAT and pretty soon BAT.) Luckily, our teacher helped us work through it. We didn't put any pressure on her to do the training, we tried to make her feel comfortable by letting her investigate the environment, gave her treats, and as teresaserrano recommended, tried to make the experience fun and engaging. I would try simple things she knows well like sit or shake, to see if she was in the mood to train. At the recommendation of our trainer, she'd go back in her crate while it was still positive. The next class we went to was better, but she was still worried. This last class, I was really debating whether we should go or not. I didn't want to put her in a stressful situation. I had also gotten stressed out during the last few classes and was concerned that she might be picking up on that. But I also wanted her to be able to work through situations. So we went and I was so happy we did. I was resolved to remain calm. She was totally engaged in training and behaved great while in her crate. We continued to keep the training short and ended it while she was still happy and engaged. Edit: I should have mentioned that while glad we finished the classes, we have decided to hold off on more obedience and agility classes until after we have worked on her reactivity. We are starting BAT with the same trainer this week.

You mentioned that you're currently in an obedience class with your puppy. You could see if anyone else in the class is interested in puppy play dates? We ended up working with a behaviorist (more to train us than the puppy ) and she was able to connect us with a few other people in the area with puppies of similar ages. Mavis is now 9 months old and we've had weekly 30 minute play dates ever since, and I think it really helped with her feeling comfortable around other dogs while allowing us to intervene when needed.

Thanks! This is good to know. She has behaved similarly. When at puppy classes in the pen, she ignored the other puppies and pretended they weren't there and wanted attention from the humans or stood up on the side of the pen to try and look outside of it. But she wanted to play with puppies when not in the pen. At the puppy play date, we watched on the webcams and she was playing and running around with the other dogs and seemed to have a great time.

Thanks! This sounds similar to what I'm doing as well, but I wasn't sure if I'm possibly spending too much time playing/training with her during the work day and if she should spend more time in her x-pen, so she can learn to entertain herself with her toys and chews without requiring our constant attention when awake. The doggy daycare does separate the dogs based on play style, but not size. For the puppy play dates, we've been mostly concerned with her socialization and learning to be around other puppies.

Thanks for your response! Sorry, this is probably a mis-wording on my part; I meant a regular routine. She wakes up and has breakfast at the same time each day, but her naps and lunch/dinner times tend to vary based on her level of tiredness and my work schedule. We let her out before bed at night and she sleeps through the night without any problems. She doesn't fuss at night to go potty, but has been restless in her crate at night for the last week or so. She also has not been wanting to take naps in her crate, so we have been enforcing nap time in her x-pen (usually when she has been awake for a few hours and her behavior starts going over the top). I agree; we don't expect to keep her in an x-pen long term. I assume we'd only use it during puppyhood while she needs supervision. Right now, she is only in there for naps or when we need to run errands/do chores. We do have a large fenced yard, but unfortunately, the fence (while intact) needs some repairs. She has plenty of outdoor time off leash to romp around and dig holes, but it is supervised. I usually use this time to practice recall and then send her back to playing. Coincidentally, I just purchased an outdoor x-pen earlier today for this purpose, but maybe I should order a second one so we can put them together! I've never done doggy day care, but you want to be sure the dogs she is with are appropriate in type and activity for her. Often border collies are sensitive and reactive to more in-your-face, overly-"friendly" types like boxers and labs, so you don't want her to be overwhelmed by such activity and develop a habit of snapping or growling at other dogs. And you don't want her to start "herding" other dogs, either. That's an obnoxious and rude behavior. We haven't either. If we do, we were thinking 2 hours a day, 2 days a week. I agree. Since I work from home, I spend all of my time with her except when she's asleep. We knew going into it that we would need to devote a lot of time and energy to her, both mentally and physically. Physically, she plays in the yard, we play with toys, rolling her Frisbees, leash training, etc. We rotate her toys to try and keep them interesting. For mental exercise, we use various Kongs for meals, use "Find it!" with kibble/treats to get her using her nose, use a flirt pole (without jumping), and train her with recall, sit, shake, down, stay, roll over, etc. We keep training short and sporadic. But we are definitely open to more ideas for mental work that is appropriate for her age!

Long-winded questions... We have had our puppy Mavis for 2 months. She is now 16 weeks old. I work from home and have remote video meetings throughout the day, emails to answer, and regular work to do. I get up at 4am and sneak out of the bedroom where our puppy is crated. I start working around 4:30am. She continues to sleep until about ~7am, so I can get at least 2.5 hours of work done. My meeting schedule varies daily, which also makes it difficult to create a good routine for her. It is stressful because I tend to be "offline" the times that she is awake so that we can play, train, etc., and this can be 1 to 2 hours at a time. She is house trained and crate trained. The crate training was a slow process for us, but she was eventually sleeping in her crate at night. Initially we would put her down for naps in her x-pen just after a potty break, but found that on weekends or days my husband was off work that she really didn't nap that well because too much was going on around her. Next, we were able to get her to (very happily) take naps in her crate. She would often sleep for 2+ hours or so with no barking. This was great for my work schedule too. In the last week, she became more reluctant to take naps in her crate, would nap for 30 minutes to an hour and then start barking, and has been restless at night. The times she barked, we'd wait until she stopped and then let her out. We figured that now that she's a little older, she may not need/want to sleep as long. We also didn't want to sour her on the crate, so we have again started having her take naps in her x-pen, but only for ~1 hour at a time. Her x-pen is in our den, and the den has baby gates to keep her in that area. For the most part it is puppy-proofed, but does contain rugs (to keep her from slipping, since we have hardwood floors) and a couch. She constantly wants to chew the outside of her x-pen, the rugs and the couch, even when we are playing, training, or stuffing a chew toy in her mouth. Because of this, she must be in her x-pen if not under our direct supervision. My questions: What is a suitable x-pen/play/training schedule for a dog her age, that will also allow me to maintain a reasonable work schedule? She's in puppy kindergarten and we had been taking her to puppy playtime at Petco on Saturdays for additional socialization. In both cases, they were put into enclosed pens with the other puppies and she was very shy and didn't engage in play. However, once out of the pens, she would try to initiate play and has also been more outgoing with our neighbors' dogs. So this weekend we took her to a 2.5 hour puppy play date at a local doggy daycare that provides supervised play. They have indoor and outdoor areas they can run back and forth between and webcams so we could watch. We figured she might enjoy this type of environment more, and she had a great time! We're considering taking her there for doggy daycare a few times a week to help with her socialization and my work schedule, but aren't sure how many hours/days a week would be appropriate for a puppy her age?

Our puppy Mavis is 14 weeks old and we've been going through the exact same thing. She is definitely a biter. She bites clothing, shoes, hands, arms, ankles and often jumps up to grab clothing - and hard too! We've been trying to work with her on this and realize she's still a baby, but we have had the same question several times - will this eventually end? At first we tried saying "Ouch!" and removing ourselves from play and then returning, but this didn't work. We also tried removing ourselves from the room for 30 seconds to a few minutes, but this didn't help either and when we'd return, she'd give us "the eye" and wanted to bite us even more. I taught her "leave it" and initially used this to get her to stop biting/lunging/growling at our legs, followed by a sit and a treat. But I think this created a negative behavior chain and she eventually equated biting/attacking, followed by a sit = treat! Her puppy kindergarten teacher recommended a rough collar/scruff grab and yelling "No!" We didn't feel this was the right approach (along with several other issues with this trainer/class). We decided to switch to a different training center and started off with a few private lessons before she starts her new puppy kindergarten class this week. They recommended a place/sit/extended stay/"yes!", followed by a treat which has helped a lot. We consistently use this to try and prevent the behavior before it starts, but once she gets going, it's hard to get her to stop biting - and it's very hard biting at times, not simply mouthiness. If she's going completely berserk, we will put her in her exercise pen for a nap. The sit/stay is also now her "default" behavior for treats/toys/walks/her small Frisbee, which has helped with our communication. Playing tends to amp her up too, so when playing I will get her to "leave it" with her toy, she will automatically sit/stay and then I return the toy to her. This seems to help with calming her. We use a crate at night and exercise pen in the day for naps. The naps do help. She is not super affectionate, but likes to give licks when she wakes up or when greeting you. She will start talking in her "crazy" voice as a warning and the licks turn to bites, so now I always end it while they are still licks. She bites when putting her leash on, so I've been working with some collar touches/yes/treat and it seems to be getting a little better. We started taking her to puppy playtime, hoping that the socialization/play with other puppies might help. But despite how much she bites us, she is very timid with other puppies. She is also very sweet and timid when meeting other people, often peeing a little bit. Her new puppy kindergarten classes include 30 minutes of playtime with the other puppies, so we're hoping this will help.