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Don't despair. This is normal for a six month old border collie, and for many other breeds at this age as well. He is still a youngster.....think maybe a 4 year old child with lots of energy. It sounds as though you are doing the right things. You don't say how long you make the Time Out. Have you tried making it long enough for him actually to settle down and take a nap?  Are they in a crate or X-pen? And Riika's suggestion of a Kong is a good one. Stuff it with a mixture of pulverized kibble and a little bit of peanut butter and he will have to work at it for a while. Even longer if you freeze it.  Make sure that you are not giving him reason to be demanding. In other words, be sure you are fully controlling the times that you play with him, and the number of times you do it each day. Hang in there, he will grow up eventually. And, by the way, he sure is a good looking dog.

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2 hours ago, Riika said:

Well, he may just need those kongs or chew toys. But you can teach him to settle by teaching him to hold a place on his bed, gradually increasing the duration until he learns to just take a nap when he is told to go to his bed. 

We are working on place as well as impulse control but unfortunately we have a way to go because after a while he uses so much focus to be calm he starts barking and getting cranky.

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2 hours ago, D'Elle said:

Don't despair. This is normal for a six month old border collie, and for many other breeds at this age as well. He is still a youngster.....think maybe a 4 year old child with lots of energy. It sounds as though you are doing the right things. You don't say how long you make the Time Out. Have you tried making it long enough for him actually to settle down and take a nap?  Are they in a crate or X-pen? And Riika's suggestion of a Kong is a good one. Stuff it with a mixture of pulverized kibble and a little bit of peanut butter and he will have to work at it for a while. Even longer if you freeze it.  Make sure that you are not giving him reason to be demanding. In other words, be sure you are fully controlling the times that you play with him, and the number of times you do it each day. Hang in there, he will grow up eventually. And, by the way, he sure is a good looking dog.

He has enforced naps as soon as we realise he is tired and needs one normally after being out for a few hours. Thank you I am despairing quite a lot because all of his siblings from his litter don't have this issue nor any other puppies we know or have looked after. Sigh hopefully soon.

EDIT: I agree he is gorgeous, he gets lots of compliments.

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Don’t despair. Ours is ten months and although he has gotten much better at settling, when he gets over tired I still send him to his crate which we now have in our bedroom so he can have quiet off duty time. 

When ours starts on the sofa we know he’s struggling. He has toy pigs that we use as behaviour pigs because he doesn’t like them so when he starts on the sofa we put a pig there. Sometimes he is so tired he scratches on another sofa so off to his crate he goes. 

Oddly, if I go and sew he sits outside the room i’m Sewing in which has a child gate up and happily naps! 

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19 minutes ago, ShellyF said:

Don’t despair. Ours is ten months and although he has gotten much better at settling, when he gets over tired I still send him to his crate which we now have in our bedroom so he can have quiet off duty time. 

When ours starts on the sofa we know he’s struggling. He has toy pigs that we use as behaviour pigs because he doesn’t like them so when he starts on the sofa we put a pig there. Sometimes he is so tired he scratches on another sofa so off to his crate he goes. 

Oddly, if I go and sew he sits outside the room i’m Sewing in which has a child gate up and happily naps! 

Omg are the behaviour pigs the ones that are like rubber and make the weird pig squeak? Our guy hates those too! He barks at them and runs round them. This is hilarious I might use some behaviour pigs.

 

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Our 9 month old has only just in the last couple of months, learned when to settle. The one place he does settle is when I am in the kitchen, but unfortunately he usualy decides to plonk himself down in front of the fridge. I know exactly how you feel, we have 4 adults in our house, so we try to each spend time with him. We are still shattered when we go to bed, partly due to the long walks we are now doing.

The only thing which Harry liked on his own was a nylabone, which I got for extreme chewers, they are expensive, but last longer than the others.

I meet a lady on our walks who has had border collies, and every time she tells me I am doing well and it gets better, which it has.

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I have to agree with the others about it getting better with age. The settle was something I didn't think we'd ever master and if felt like we were the only ones with a crazy hyper puppy that couldn't just be popped away for a nap when we needed some down time. And the more tired and drained we got, the worse he got. I remember despairing that I might not get another relaxing evening for ten years or so.  No amount of training, playing, attention etc bought us the amount of quiet evening time that we wanted. Fast forward a few more weeks/months and suddenly he is taking himself off to bed of an evening instead of chewing the furniture. It was sudden, one evening last week I realised I hadn't seen him for a few minutes and I felt that wave of panic that comes when you've lost a big dog in a tiny house. And then I found him, on his blanket fast asleep in the corner of my bedroom.

At six months there were so many areas I felt that I had failed so badly at, I read and read what I should be doing and practiced consistently but for a while it felt like it didn't make any difference. Then slowly things did start improving. I am now starting to see the Border Collie dog that I hoped we'd have emerging from the freaky monster puppy that we started with.

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9 hours ago, BorderYogal said:

Omg are the behaviour pigs the ones that are like rubber and make the weird pig squeak? Our guy hates those too! He barks at them and runs round them. This is hilarious I might use some behaviour pigs.

 

I did a whole thread on here about the pigs - should come up if you search pigs! He’s gotten a little more confident around them now but I can still use them to ‘guard’ areas. If he’s doing that annoying thing of lying by the sofa and scratching underneath ‘pretending’ that he’s lost something I just pop a pig on duty :) 

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21 hours ago, BorderYogal said:

...He has enforced naps as soon as we realise he is tired and needs one normally after being out for a few hours...

It might behoove you to learn to recognize the signs that he's tired much earlier than you're doing now and acting on them before things escalate. ;)

Like many children, there are lots of puppies who just don't know when it's time for a nap and/or they fight it so they need help from the grown ups till they're mature enough to figure it out.

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7 hours ago, GentleLake said:

It might behoove you to learn to recognize the signs that he's tired much earlier than you're doing now and acting on them before things escalate. ;)

Like many children, there are lots of puppies who just don't know when it's time for a nap and/or they fight it so they need help from the grown ups till they're mature enough to figure it out.

Problem is I feel like he's crated far too often because of this and I worked out in a 24 hour period he will be out his crate 6-8 hours because he works himself up and becomes a brat. I would enjoy nothing more than an evening cuddle with my boy after a decent walk but hey what you gonna do.

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Hang on in there! Ours went from a pup who couldn’t cuddle without being a monster to gradually working up to a minute with no biting and finally at about 9 months he started happily being on the sofa next to us and just relaxing. 

It started with us scratching his back near the base and he realised he liked it so he stopped his nonsense. Now he loves his back rubs! 

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15 hours ago, BorderYogal said:

Problem is I feel like he's crated far too often because of this and I worked out in a 24 hour period he will be out his crate 6-8 hours because he works himself up and becomes a brat. I would enjoy nothing more than an evening cuddle with my boy after a decent walk but hey what you gonna do.

Try not to feel guilty about this. It is not at all unreasonable for a puppy to be crated 6 to 8 hours out of 24. Often people crate the pup all night to keep the pup safe and to let themselves have some rest, and that is usually 6 to 8 hours. As GL said above, you would benefit from seeing the signs of his starting to get near the brat point, and put him down for a nap before he reaches that. And, don't worry. This stage won't last forever.

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On 2/25/2019 at 4:36 PM, D'Elle said:

Try not to feel guilty about this. It is not at all unreasonable for a puppy to be crated 6 to 8 hours out of 24. Often people crate the pup all night to keep the pup safe and to let themselves have some rest, and that is usually 6 to 8 hours. As GL said above, you would benefit from seeing the signs of his starting to get near the brat point, and put him down for a nap before he reaches that. And, don't worry. This stage won't last forever.

No I meant he is only out his crate 6-8 hours a day.

2 hours in the morning half an hour for lunch and then he comes out for 2 hours after work then nap then another 2 before bed give or take.

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All of you are making me feel better that I’m not the only one. Quinn, now 8 months as of this week, is essentially in the same place. He’s no longer crated and does well in the house by himself when I’m at work. But after we’ve had play sessions and trained and are in at night, I don’t catch the signs of being overtired soon enough and am now thinking maybe I could bring his crate back out. It truly is his safe place and his bed can go right in it. 

Related to the calming chews, I’ve settled on Himalayan Cheese chews which are expensive, but he will sit and chew for hours which gives me some of the downtime needed. We’ve Werner off of peanut butter Kongs at night finally too. But I feel like everything is just trial and error. 

I’ve enrolled us in a puppy training course mostly to help me handle better. He knows sit, down, stay, wait, etc. But it needs better re-inforcement and I’m struggling with him going through a pushing boundaries / dominance phase. Will post something on that shortly. 

Thanks again for posting. Was feeling weary tonight and got on here. Gave me a little boost. 

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I promise this too shall pass.  I was at my wit's end with Gracie, even thought of giving her away ( A LOT!!!!! ) everyone said that around a year and a half she would be like a new dog, these people knew what they were talking about, it was like magic! I kid you not.  I struggled like you for a way to make this dog understand that she was abnormal and needed sedatives, either she needed them or I did.  Gracie was like no other dog I have ever owned!  These dogs get bored because they are so intelligent,  they can predict things, they can figure out problems, their minds wander and their energy level is like something out of a Sci-Fi movie. Be patient and just know that one day ( that day is coming I promise ) this dog that is driving you insane will turn out to be your best friend. This dog loves you, remember that, it's looking for you to understand.  I love my Gracie and I wish I had it to do all over again. Look in this dogs eyes, you will see it just wants YOU.  On the good side, tricks come easy for these animals, Gracie knows every trick in the book.  OH, don't forget that BC are creatures of habit if a walk is at 3 and 3 comes and goes with no walk, all I can say is....don't let 3 go without taking the dog for a walk. LOL.  Lighten up darlin.

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