Hattie the Border Collie

We rang Sally as we had an 8 year old, beautiful and extremely intelligent Border Collie who showed classic traits as trying to be the pack leader in the absence of us assuming that responsibility. We had fallen into the simple trap of letting her do her own thing, sometimes pampering her, certainly giving her a lot of affection but without the necessary discipline or direction that we, as pack leaders, should have given her. She had assumed responsibility and thought she had to do all the thinking both in the house and out of the house. It wouldn’t be fair to say we had a problem dog with behavioural issues, rather we wanted to optimise our enjoyment of our dog and her of her life. This manifested itself in being quite a worrying dog. For example, she was a major lead puller, anti other dogs, cars, bikes and went berserk at the ring of the doorbell. We decided that for what was probably the remaining 50% of her lifetime, we wanted to enjoy her to the fullest and hope she was doing the same, i.e. to stop worrying on our behalf. So, we rang Sally. It is from Sally that we better understand the psychology of our dog and that enables us to describe the above scenario with better insight. Furthermore, on a practical level, we have had now 7 lessons of circa 90 mins, in order to get our dog to unlearn some of the bad habits that she has been forced to undertake. Sally is patient, directional, insightful and terribly pragmatic in her approach. We talk as much as we practice. She demonstrates as much as we practice ourselves. And as you’d expect, Hattie has risen to the challenge and loved it. No longer does she have to worry - -we are the pack leaders. It is hard work, and Hattie has learned at greater speed than us, which means you have to keep up with being in charge or she will go back to thinking she needs to! We are on journey but with Sally’s instruction, we are well on our way. Hattie is less interested in passing cars, is no longer anti dogs and certainly knows who’s boss. We still have some work to do on her lead pulling, but as Sally would remind us, we are undoing an 8 year habit. We recently took Hattie to a dog friendly hotel in Wales and walked up Snowdon with her. This was a breakthrough experience with lots of other dogs, great walking on and off the lead and far more passive behaviour. Our experience in our village has also improved immensely with daily training sessions backing up our instruction from Sally. We now had a calmer, more passive dog without any loss of her personality. We are going to continue on the journey.

Chronology

Lead pulling Has gone from shocking to better, always best when she is surprised at the direction and no idea where we are going. Going in a left turn, anti clockwise wider circle keeping her back works. Walking alongside parked cars or walls, keeping her back or trapping her against the wall if she gets ahead works. All used using a check chain.

Cars - keeping her occupied works and praising works better than checking

Dogs - praising and being confident with her, facing up to dogs has worked.

Door Bell - practice practice practice, putting on the lead and checking when the bell rings is the answer, and putting her on her bed in down position, praising also when the bell rings and she doesn’t react works.

Visitors – see above, as well as ensuring everyone ignores the dog

Down position and Stay/Wait - complete success, will wait whilst we walk away at large distances, always best with less other distractions, nearly going down on command without a pull from the lead. Can let go of the lead and walk round and round at our leisure.