jami74

Ooh that is vey positive. We have the tree up. Only the tree, no lights or baubles yet. Being the clever dog he is, he mostly ignores it. Unless he wants our attention, then he siddles up to it and gently starts chewing it while watching us out the corner of his eye . I think he's going to be okay though, it was left untouched overnight (no-one available to offer distractions and attention so no point going near it). Lights will go on tomorrow.

What do your dogs typical day look like? (Looking for ideas and a bit of comparision)

It's hard with the chewing isn't it. Our boy is now eight months and wants/needs to chew a lot. What he'd happily chew all day are sticks, but these are bad. Rawhide chews would satisfy his needs, but these are bad, knawing on a beef leg bone helps, but these are bad. He likes tearing up foam balls or tennis balls but this is messy and costly (and probably bad). He did have some nylabone style chews but once his adult teeth were through and he ripped them into pieces, they were discarded. So it's Kong's with frozen dog food in, kibble and hopefully some thawed raw chicken pieces for the moment.

Right, I'll get rid of the bones then. Thanks. What about thawed though? I was all set to buy some the other day but the person I was with said no chicken bones under any circumstances and I started doubting myself. Sorry for the questions.

Ah okay, never thought about that. They're hollow leg bones stuffed with his normal food as I only have 2 Kong's and it adds variety as they're a different shape. Will get some more rubber type stuffers, there must be more than just Kong's. I wondered about raw chicken pieces. I'm never likely to switch fully to raw feeding but can buy bags of chicken pieces, drumsticks and wings I think they are. Are they okay? Or can buy boneless chicken pieces.

Phew! Our boy eats from stuffed Kongs and bones straight out of the freezer. Sometimes he eats room temperature food and occasionally he'll have something warm for his meal. He especially likes drinking warm (bath ) water. Actually thinking about it, he'll take carry-out food (stuffed Kongs, bones, eggs) away and settle down to chow, outside if possible, but as they're not messy I never gave it a second thought. As a smaller puppy he'd take a mouthful of biscuits to a different location and then spit them out to eat but now he's older he eats bowl food out of the bowl. Maybe it's because carry-out food needs holding and working at to get the food whereas bowl food just needs chewing and swallowing. dumbbird7, I know it might go against the reasons for your feeding choices but do you think if you chopped his meal up small he'd eat it out the bowl? Maybe you'd only need to do it a couple of times and then he'd realise that was the place to eat.

Thank-you! Yes I'll make sure to discard food wrappings securely. I never even thought about baubles looking like balls! That could be our biggest challenge. It might be a bauble free tree this year

Any tips? Suggestions? Horror stories? Our day to day routine won't change much over Christmas (no visitors or crazy big meals) so the biggest challenge will be the extra 'stuff'. I thought we'd put the Christmas tree up in stages, first the tree on it's own for a few days, then if all okay the lights, then if still okay the baubles. That way if he can't keep his paws off it (open plan house so no option to shut the tree in a different room) at least we'll know before it's connected to the mains and covered in delicate decorations. Presents? Think I'll avoid leaving presents within his reach, I don't think he'd be able to resist the temptation of a wrapped parcel. Anything else I should think about?

Our boy will bark if he hears a dog barking, either on the TV or outside. I've started playing a dog barking YouTube video very quietly for just a few minutes at a time while keeping him busy with tricks and he's okay for a short time if I keep him busy but if the tricks don't come quick enough then he will bounce around and bark. Has anyone had any success teaching their dogs not to get excited and bark if they hear another dog barking? And is there anything else I can do additionally or instead? It didn't feel like a thing that I needed or expected quick success with, but tonight there's a barking dog outside. Hopefully it's just visiting for one night only because I can't spend every evening doing non-stop tricks.

I second the hand gesture. Plus, you can probably do it nice and discreetly and maybe they won't notice. I also think though that these dogs are clever enough to realize that they can get away with different things with different people. One example with our boy is that I use 'Down' to mean go into the down position and 'Off' to get off the furniture whereas my partner will tell him to 'Get down, down, down' when he's on the furniture and he doesn't have any trouble working out who wants what from him. Do you think if you persevere, maybe having to go back to the beginning and keep on reinforcing it, that he'll learn that when you say it, it means something different than when everyone else says it? I use quite a lot of hand gestures alongside the word. If he's very focussed he'll respond to either, if we're in a distracting environment I need both.

It's such a pity there aren't border collie specific classes, I'm sure they would be so different to the standard anydog classes.

Aw he is so cute! My boy is nearly eight months, I am no expert but I can tell you how things were for us. 1. Think about the big dog that he will become, when he has a mouth full of adult canine teeth will you mind if he nips and bites in play? I strongly discouraged it, at first it didn't seem to make much difference but eventually he stopped. I found the nipping and biting tended to get worse when he was probably due for a nap. If he started I'd end the game and if I recognised that he was getting to that point I'd encourage him to sleep. Mouthing, where it seemed he was feeling my hand with his mouth and seemed to happen when he was more relaxed rather than hyped up, I allowed because I read somewhere that it teaches them to be gentle. It was cute when he was very small but after a while I didn't really want my hands all slobbery so I discouraged it. He doesn't do it at all now. 2. There seems to be a general guideline of about five minutes per month of life for outside walking type exercise. There also seem to be different vaccination rules in different places. Some recommend that they don't have access to public grass until their vaccinations are complete. Personally, I wanted our puppy to have as many different experiences as possible so I carried him places and let him down in areas where I could see there was no dog poo or dirty water. We are just now (at nearly 8 months) having outside walks/runs/plays that last about an hour (with plenty of chance for rests). Ours got tired quickly when he was small and when he was tired he behaved in ways we didn't like. I made the mistake of trying to tire him out so he'd be more settled, but I realised after a while that he became more settled with less exercise. 3. Our boy was responding to his name within a few days of having him. You can start practicing recall right away by calling him and giving him a treat or his meal or lovely attention when he comes. I'm sure by 3 months our boy could do sit, down and come. Have a look on YouTube, lots of people have posted videos of their border collie pups doing tricks at a young age. Border collies aren't just any dogs, things that other breeds are still struggling with months down the line will be no problem for a border collie pup.

George is beautiful! I wonder what it is about flies that he hates so much, do you think he got stung or something once? Our boy was launching himself off the furniture when we had a fly trying to catch it. His quirk is hiding things under the sofa. It's more annoying than amusing though as he'll then be digging and scratching at the underside of the sofa, I'm not sure if he's trying to shove it further under or retrieve it, but I have to get on the floor and stick my arm under to get the bone/toy back again. He also hides things down the side in a small gap between the end and the wall. Sometimes as he's hiding one item, he finds another that he hasn't seen for a while. In fact, if anyone has any ideas how I can satisfy his need to bury or hide things indoors that would be great.

Nooo, don't do that.

We've had that embarrassing experience of another dog owner having to catch our puppy and return him to us. Our boy used to be all about other dogs, but now he's becoming more about us and has got very good at either having a quick sniff and moving on or if a playful dog, a quick play and then coming with us when it's time. Is there any way you can not leave food on the counter? I can't think how to discourage a young dog from trying to pinch a steak if he thought no-one was looking, there can't be many rewards greater than a raw meat.

Thank-you for saying it though <3 These boards have made me feel more confident to put ourselves first. It is so reassuring to see people having, or have previously had, similar experiences. Especially when all the other breeds of puppy seem to be behaving just nicely.

Maybe Jack did it. Some of these intelligent dogs can be really controlling.

Thank-you both for your reassurances. All the border collies I see here in real life look very 'classic' and people have actually asked me if he's pure bred. He isn't registered with any authority/organisation so I wasn't really sure how to answer, other than to say that both his parents are border collies.

Our boy seems to be very short and stocky. I don't think he's overweight, I can feel his ribs and some of his spine knobbles (and he never runs out of energy!). I'm just a bit surprised as everyone else's collies seem to be lean and leggy. The mother was small and narrow with classic black and white colouring. I didn't see his sire but he was apparently a working blue merle (and 3 of his litter mates were blue merle as was his aunt who I saw). He's now seven and a half months and weighed 35lb a couple of weeks ago. He hasn't started cocking his leg yet. I've never seen him stalk. He'll walk slowly after the cat but doesn't crouch low or creep up on things at all. It's not likely that he'll ever be used to work stock so it doesn't matter although I had hoped one day we might have a go as a hobby. He has seen sheep and horses in a field and completely ignored them. Is the stalking thing something that develops at some point, learnt from other dogs, or just usually in them? Anyway, we adore him exactly the way he is, he is wonderfully intelligent and we have so much fun together, but I wondered if these things were normal. Might he grow upwards and look leaner and leggier over time or is short and stocky normal too? Might he suddenly start stalking things at some point or has that moment passed? And is it normal at this age to not be cocking his leg yet? He will be neutered at some point but we are not rushing into it.

Does she have bad leash manners though or is it anxiety? I answered earlier in the thread about our boy and how he can walk very nicely on the leash round our home but would pull the minute we stepped out and how we've been working on that. We're now at the point where we go to lots of different places and practice leash walking. It still takes loads of treats but he's getting the hang of not trying to drag me, unless we find ourselves too near to a road or in a scary/loud place and then he'll start pulling. This is my cue to move back to safer territory. I posted a similar thread months ago and said exactly the same thing about the classes not reflecting home progress. I wanted to show the world how fantastic and clever he was, instead I cringed in the corner trying to calm him down and get him to do something right. Anything. Our classes were all about positive reinforcement and very anti aversive training which was lucky for us, instead of being offered a prong collar we were offered higher value treats. They didn't really help, any that were swallowed were regurgitated whole after the class. We did finish the classes but didn't enjoy them, they seemed to get worse not better. Since then I've been training in as many different places as we can, but gently and slowly. Starting with just going somewhere new to look and watch and feed treats and progressing to following commands and focussing on me in busier places. We started in an empty field we found, progressed to an area where other people walk their dogs and have now just upped it to the quiet end of a supermarket car park. He's still nowhere near ready to return to a class environment. Yes! Me too! People leave us alone, we know what we're doing and our puppies aren't bad. They're just youngsters who haven't learnt to control themselves and behave like adults yet, but it will come with time, patience and training.

I can tell you about our experience I live in a terrace house with a small garden. I thought this would be plenty of space but now our puppy is close to full grown he can bound from the front of the house to the end of the garden in about ten strides. He loves being outside so much that during the day when he's having down time he often asks to go outside and naps, even though the temperatures are getting colder. This works out okay for us as we can see him easily from our living room when he is outside. I live in the UK. He was born in Spring and we had an unusually long warm summer so he's never known cold. It's now Autumn/Fall and while we're wearing long trousers and jumpers he is still panting a lot. I feel a bit bad that he is always hot. I'm out about 9 hours a day three or four days a week. Our boy isn't alone because there are always other family members at home who interact with him, they play fetch down the garden, hide toys for him to find, teach him new tricks and take him for very short walks (literally just out the front door to do his business and spend some time watching the world go by). Some days they tell me he was hard work to keep out of mischief. Now he's older (7 months) he has a couple of longer naps of 2-3 hours during the day but as a small puppy his cycles of needing to pee, play and sleep were very short. Your Mom will be kept very busy looking after a puppy, it's like having a toddler. This is how I was thinking before we got ours. I thought two one hour exercises a day plus some games at home would be good. However it turned out that my puppy couldn't exercise that long in one go. At three months old our outside jaunts would be about twenty minutes, and often I'd end up carrying him back. At seven months old we'll now often stay out for an hour, but that isn't a whole hour of running, it's broken up into paying fetch, leash walking and just sitting watching the world go by. Also, don't forget that these dogs are bred to work in large open rural places and some (mine especially) find roads and parks very busy and over-stimulating. I expected within a couple of months to be happily walking around the block but this isn't the case for us. We are working very hard on traffic and people reactivity and making great progress, I'm hoping by the time he's 18 months old we'll be able to walk around the block. For now our walks/runs/jaunts are carefully thought through to avoid busy roads and large numbers of rude dogs, walkers and cyclists. The other thing I have found is that it's not just the exercising that takes up time, he needs other attention. When I get home from work, even though he hasn't been alone, he is very happy to see me and wants to sit near me being petted etc. He doesn't sleep all evening, although he is sleeping more now that he gets older. I think I expected our puppy to be an adult dog very quickly, one who needed lots of exercise twice a day, slept/relaxed the rest of the time and could walk nicely on the lead not getting stressed by traffic and people. I know that we will have a dog like that one day, but it's going to take much longer and much more work than I expected.

I'm not sure she's 'converting' other people and it doesn't seem to be her intention to try. I'm sorry I asked questions. I was just trying to understand it, it's not a training method that is used where I am and I try not to form strong opinions about things I know nothing about.

Thank-you Yes I agree about practicality. Our boy happily accepts a treat but often spits it out again. Thank-you for explaining it so openly and honestly. I hope it turns out to be a short term intervention which produces long term results for you and I look forward to hearing more updates.

Have you de-wormed him recently? Our boy gets 'starving' and starts scrounging when he needs doing.

They must have special cups for measuring, like we have jugs with markings on to measure say 250mls, 500mls etc. Or maybe all their tea/coffee cups are made to an exact specification and hold the same amount.