Jambuel

I had only seen your advice after my client left yesterday, at the time I was following the rule that I had been told to keep him restrained and tell people to ignore him so he settles without any attention. You get different advice from different people and I only saw your post about him self rewarding afterwards. I am changing all my routines and following the advice here. I've moved his crate into the quiet lounge and getting him to go in there every time he gets over excited, stressed or misbehaves etc. I just have to train the rest of my family to do the same too now which in some ways is a harder task, I think the children are more likely to stick to it now though as they don't want him to go to another home.

Thank you for all your advice. I had a client around today, she has been before so I texted her to say I would have him on a leash when she arrived and for her to ignore him which she did and went straight through to the therapy room. I locked the cat in the bedroom because he sometimes runs around with clogs on which sets Alfie off. Alfie barked a bit when my client arrived but was pulling on the lead lot so as it was raining so put him in the lounge with a nice new bone and I put some relaxing music on for him, I didn't take his crate in though so I suppose I did that wrong but although he is getting good at going to his crate when instructed by me, if I where to lock him in it makes him more anxious during the day, but I will work on it more. I have been training him towards going to the mat every day this week and the look at that training when we are outside. I am committed to training him every day and will take onboard all of your advice. As for training the cat, that's a different matter. He does get chased back upstairs when he starts. He is a very old cat who should have died two years ago from heart failure but keeps on going, I really don't think he can change to an obedient cat at his age now and his food and litter tray are kept on the upstairs landing so he is confined to those areas which probably pisses him off.

Thank you for your advice, I really would like to be able to get him to stay in a safe place but at the moment he is so fixated on whatever he fears, i.e. the cat (who loves to wind him up) or visitors thati can't get his attention,mi will keep working in it though.

Hi thanks for your reply, the problem is more with new visitors, post delivery men and clients etc. When friends visit they are understanding and patient and he is fine after the initial contact but I need to address his fear so it won't happen at other times. I can't leave him alone in the house because he would start chewing things up or go after the cat. The only thing I can do is leave home outside, he has an access to an outhouse for shelter and olentynof space, I give him a new bone and a treat filled Kong but last week when I had a client he barked on and off through the whole treatment and even though my client didn't seem to mind I was conciliation of it and not everyone would be so tolerant. Hence me thinking of giving up work for a while. I'm hoping that my continuously trying to train him and with maturity it will settle down but because he's always been like this Im worried he will never get better.

I last wrote on here when Alfie was four and a half months old. For some reason the original post showed hear instead of this so I have edited it. Since my last post we had been on holdiay and had some very good house sitters who looked after him, at the time he was still sleeping outside and we said he would be OK being left for a few hours if they wanted to go out without him. But they took him everywhere with him, to café etc which was good for socialising but they spent all their time with him so that made it difficult for me to leave him afterwards because he didn't like being on his own. He moved into the house shortly after and sleeps well in his crate all night, we do keep it locked though. The problems I'm having is his reaction when people arrive at the house, he runs to the door jumping up at the window going berserk and barking etc. If they are friends he settles down quickly when they enter the house, he always tries to jump up at them wanting a cuddle though and we are doing our best to stop this. We make him get down when he jumps up at us and only allowed a cuddle when invited but he gets so excited he doesn't seem capable of controlling himself. We tell our friends not to encourage it but some don't listen so we have started to put him on a lead until he calms down. Then he is great and everyone loves him and is impressed with how obedient he can be when given instructions. The problem is mainly when strangers come to the house, he has jumped up aggressively at neighbours visiting or delivery people, it is difficult to explain to them what we are trying to do because of the language barrier, and living in the remote french countryside most of our neighbours are farmers who have a different outlook on training, eg beating them into submission. One has already told other people that he bit her, which he didn't although he tried to and we stopped him. We also have an old tom cat who has never been friendly to him, from when he was a small puppy he has hissed and growled and tried to attack him to the point that Alfie is now afraid of cats, our cat mainly stays upstairs but does sit at the top tormenting him and now Alfie tries to get to him and I really think if he does he will actually kill him. I work from home but feel that I have to put this on hold until I can train Alfie not to react this way as I have clients coming to the house for complementary therapies and they would feel threatened by his behaviour rather than relaxed by treatments. I also feel that I am now becoming more isolated because of my fear of him attacking strangers, even going out is difficult because I have to leave him outside in a fenced off area but he has started to find ways to get out and into the rest of the garden which leads onto fields, he always seems to stay in the garden but I can't be sure what he gets up to when I go out. My husband is going to try and make the fence more secure but he works away during the week and doesn't have much time at the weekend. Our garden is quite big and would be a huge and expensive job to fence the whole area properly. His solution is that we will have to find a new home for him if he's causing me so many problems, but I think the only people who would take him would be farmers who do not treat their dogs like pets and beat them during training. At the moment I am working through the book 'Fired Up, Frantic and Freaked Out' the training is in stages and so far over the last few days he is responding well to training. I've returned to training him on the lead in the garden again as my husband and children have just let him pull on the lead when they take him for walks. I walk him around the garden at times when I expect the post or visitors so I can try to get him to stay calm, this isn't having much effect yet but I will persevere. He is reacting to a lot of noises that didn't bother him before and I'm aware he is in his adolescent stage and the vet has advised castration but I don't think this will help. I am just upset that he may never be able to calm himself and will always be reactive to people. He is fine with other dogs, so far, he likes to get to know them and cries if he can't get to them. I just feel like I've let him down and made a mistake taking him in, but I've made the commitment now and we all love him. He is very intelligent and likes learning/training etc. not too hyperactive, he happily lies around when I'm busy in the house and after exercise and after a few minutes of meeting people, even strangers he calms down and is friendly and affectionate. I worry though that the initial fear reactiveness may result in someone getting hurt eventually and because he has been like this since we got him at eight weeks old, he may never change. Is there any hope?

Thank you for your replies and advice. I've started putting him in his crate for time out when he is disobedient, I haven't had the chance with visitors yet because I haven't had any. The next time the post lady came I had him on a short leash on the lawn away from the gate, he still barked but not as bad and each time he stopped after me saying 'quiet' I gave him a treat. He is very clever and has worked out what 'quiet' means as sometimes he'll bark, whilst looking out of the corner of his eye at me and when I say quiet he does then runs up to me for a treat. I understand about consistency and how important it is to do the same everytime he misbehaves and I continue to stress this to the children and my husband and they try but they are not always prepared or forget and it's so frustrating and difficult. I am with him all day during the week though so it's mainly me in charge and I try to get the kids to play calmly with him, not easy with a hyperactive eleven year old boy but he's learning too.

He can calm down if we keep him separated, eventually. But his barking is very allarming to people. He did it with the vet and tried to bite her who was very annoyed and said we had to stop that happening as it would be a major problem for us, she stipulated she wasn't allowed to hit him herself (again the farmers around here beat their dogs which I would never do, one even advised us to use a stick and not your hand) so getting help locally with behaviour isn't very promising). He calmed down after a short while though and giving injections and examination went smoothly. At the moment it is unpredictable how he will act outside the home, so we will make sure he's restrained. I've seen people say train them to bark so that you can train them to be quiet but that isn't as it sounds. I can lock him out of the way but it's not solving the problem and if we have unexpected visitors I can't be prepared in advance. I will try putting him in his crate every time this happens but would welcome any other advice.

The children take him out on a lead for walks around the local area, and with my husband. They have visited neighbours and sometimes he barks at them but only for a short while, nothing like he does at home. If I'm in the house he can't actually get to visitors because he has an area fenced off. For example yesterday a friend pulled up on the drive and I first knew because he was barking but when my friend came to the fence I gave him some treats to give to the dog and he calmed down quickly as we just talked, occasionally barking again when my friend paid attention but not for long and he responded to me telling him to be quiet etc. This has been the case with all friends, he eventually settles down and very friendly with them. When we are not outside with him (either with him in his area or ours) he is very quiet and usually finds a shady area to sleep, sometimes in his kennel and sometimes in his crate. We haven't locked him in his crate as I thought this would seem like punishment that they don't understand. Maybe this is something we need to do. We have taken him out to the river and lake etc. but keep him on a lead if people are about, if there is no one around we let him off and so far he's been very good. When he was younger in the holidays we even took him to cafes and he was good and slept under the table, I'm not sure he would do that now. I don't know of any trainers or behaviour experts and living in France there would be a bit of a language barrier for me.

Hi, this is my first time as a dog owner. Initially I wanted to get an older dog in a few years when the children left home (they are young teenagers) but a friend of mine's border collie had puppies unexpectedly and I agreed to take one thinking the children would enjoy his younger years and then he'd be my companion and walking buddy later. A week before we were to bring him home I broke my ankle and we couldn't put off taking him because his owner was quite old and needed homes as soon as possible. This meant that I couldn't be the one to initially train him or be the leader etc. That role went to my husband for the next few months. As he works away from home during the week I had to rely on the children walking him etc. This hasn't been too bad but from the start he has barked at any visitors we have, during the summer we've had friends stay and at first he'd bark on and off for about half an hour then he'd be fine and happy to be around them, this happens with visitors too. We have a fenced off area where he is secure and safe and cannot wander the whole garden but he will constantly bark aggressively at visitors, we try reassuring him and stroking but he is fixated . Today he was in the other part of the garden with me when the post lady tried to come in, he was uncontrollable and I think he may have bitten her if she came through the gate. I'm still on crutches and not able to run after him etc. I am training him with a clicker, to fetch and recall etc and this is going well but nothing is working with the barking. I need to find a way to control this as I work from home normally and don't want him to scare off my clients. We live in rural France and the locals and vet tell us we should hit him as that's what they do here but I do not agree with this at all. I've been reading a lot on border collies so I'm under no illusion that they require a lot of work. I just need some advice on how to deal with this. Apart from this, which I think may be down to fear and maybe territorial too, he is a lovely affectionate dog who is slowly becoming more obedient in other ways. He has a crate in an outhouse and also a kennel outside to sleep in, it's still very warm here and we haven't brought him into the house yet as we have an intollerant cat and I wanted to wait until I'm fully mobile again so I can be in charge. He is good during the night and rarely barks then even when you can here other local dogs howling etc. He isn't too bothered by tractors but if a car pulls up he's on the alert. I would be grateful for any advice anyone can offer. Thank you