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Hi everyone. I just wanted to say first that I am so thankful for the insights offered here constantly. Reading other people's issues and solutions really helps me to put Jax's behaviour into perspective and helps me to be thankful for the things he is good at that not every pup is. Thanks to everyone's previous help, Jax settled beautifully for day naps and now self-settles at about 9/9:30 almost every night. He also sleeps in the living room without us, which behaviour he led himself and he's very relaxed with it. His barking is better and he has stopped getting so overstimulated. We have two problems I could use help with, one more urgently than the other. He has discovered the wonders of humping in the last 3-4 weeks: dog, person, and inanimate. 95% of the time he will listen to me and leave a person alone when we are walking, but the 5% that he sees someone he 'likes', if he is allowed to (it goes without saying I remove him from the situation immediately if he does) he is completely focused on humping and is quite rambunctious about it. He has to be taken away because he will not calm. If it's in the house he has to stay in another room the entire time that person is there. Humping dogs is our real issue, though. He has very, very good recall, and I was confident in having him off lead for our very rural walks before this, but now he is on lead at all times. Around known dogs he is allowed to play, but with stranger's dogs I stopped allowing free play, as there was one occasion when he started to play hump another dog and quickly became manically overstimulated and they had to be physically separated and I felt he was distressing the other dog. I wanted to keep allowing greeting, but recently he has tried to hump other dogs during greeting and they have been let's say, pee'd off by this, but he doesn't moderate behaviour, and so we have stopped allowing greetings so as not to put other dogs in this position, which feels awful for his development. I need to know how to move forward with this, but I don't know where to start. His bed is a real issue now for this. I tried to let him work it out himself at first -- new hormones to get used to, teenage stuff, and all that. But he can't really hump it, he just flips it over and over and quickly becomes frustrated so he progresses to trying to rip it, and he rips things -so fast-. I then tried requesting "leave it", which worked the first week, then quickly escalated to him leaving the bed for shorter and shorter periods (even though leave with other things remains successful). Now I remove the bed from the room the first time he starts to fuss with it, and only bring it back in when he has calmed down, but it's at the point where I take the bed away within a minute of bringing it back. At night I have to wait for him to fall asleep on the floor or chair before I can reinstate the bed otherwise I'm worried he'll just have to sleep on the floor all night or shred the bed. Speaking of destruction -- I feel this is where I'm totally lost. He has started to destroy everything he can. There were a few months where he seemed to get that only toys were fair game but in the last few weeks he has destroyed countless objects and he now destroys the van when left alone for short periods. (We have a camper for work, he has always been more comfortable in that than left at home before now, and usually would mainly sleep or watch the world go by calmly) I left him yesterday morning for 30 minutes with a tripe filled bone (early when he is normally napping) and he chewed through a leather seat cover and a seat belt, leaving the tripe untouched. I did very nearly cry. I can't afford to replace these things and I need the seat belt. Already in the last week he's chewed through the dashboard plastic, the window opener, the rubber runner for the window, bits of the woodwork in the van... I took furniture out of the rooms we use because he started to annihilate anything that he could, so he just pressed his face to walls and chewed them, dug the carpet... We haven't changed routine in this time except he's now allowed longer walks, so I assume it's linked to his hormones, but I'm at the stage where I can't afford to replace the things he destroys and I'm out of options for where to leave him. I He's in the office with me today and we stop once an hour for 10 minutes to play tug or simple training and I treat him passively for relaxing or choosing his own toy/settling on the bed, but he will try to tear up bits of the floor even when he's right next to his favourite treat if I stop watching for more than a minute. He's on his lead now as I can't let him back in the van and he can't be left at home. I know these things are never a quick fix but I need to start doing something I feel will help as now I feel very helpless and it is definitely putting strain on my attitude to one-on-one puppy time which was up until recently a joy for me.

Hi, I am glad that I found this board, it has already been so helpful and I love reading the posts. I hope that you guys can offer some reassurance and advice based on some of my worries, concerns/questions Background: I live in a village with my husband, close to woods and not too far from the Lake District. My husband and I love going on local walks and enjoy going for hikes in the lake district. We have always said that we'd like to get a dog, and a border collie is my favourite breed, so when for health reasons I decided to take a long career break, we decided to get our puppy - I have lots of time to be with her and train her. We bought our black and white border collie puppy home on Saturday (9 weeks, now 10 weeks), from a local farm. Initially I wanted to do lots of research and carefully select a breeder but when we visited this farm, owned by very welcoming family, we fell in love with our puppy and generally got a good feeling about the place. Unfortunately, although she was chipped, flea and wormed, their vets advised against giving these puppies their first vaccination (as they had with previous litters) until they went to their new homes. I was told that this was due to different vaccine strains. Also having lived in a barn with her litter mates and her mum, seeing very few people or traffic she has had very little socialisation. After a few days of settling in, I took my girl for her first vaccination on Monday. It wasn't a good experience for her because she was scared due to the traffic on the way in, scared by a large dog that came too close in the waiting room, causing her to bark, and then because she was so spooked she barked at the vet aswell. Overall a stressful experience, and one that I so wish had gone differently for her. Generally I have been amazed by her, at how fast she has seemed to settle with us and how quickly she is picking up toilet training. I have a crate for her, so at night (or during the day when she's tired/ needs to calm down) I place her in it, close the door and cover it over with a blanket. I leave her with a night light, and although I feel now she could go through the night, I do get up at about 3am to take her out for a wee. I wouldn't say she is "crate trained" as she doesn't go in there of her own accord to go to sleep, but I do feed her in their for positive reinforcement and when placing her in I always reassure and praise her. Putting her in her crate is met with some whining now, but she soon settles down. In the day time, over the last few days, I have tended to spend most of my time with her. At the moment she is confined to one room, and I have a blanket that I have placed at the foot of the settee where she plays either by her-self or more often than not with me. She has soft toys, chew toys and he odd ball, but I tend to only allow a few toys out at a time and rotate them so shes not bored or over-stimulated. When I feel she is calm I do some basic command training like sit and down, with treats, which she has picked up quickly, and we have a good routine for toilet training, where at the same time I'm teaching her to sit on a mat to wait whilst I put my shoes on, and not bite the lead when I attach it. She is doing really well. My worries/anxieties are first her lack of socialisation, especially with other dogs (I have had people over to meet her and she has been really happy and affectionate), and cars. I have started carrying her down my quiet road every day, giving her reassurance but she does get very scared as we approach the main road. Is this normal for this age? Also I'm not sure how much time to spend with her. She goes in her crate when I am not there and have to do other things for myself and chores in the house. I feel that the crate gives her a safe place to be when i'm not there, and she can't be destructive when not supervised, and also at times I feel that she does get abit overstimulated so I feel her crate is good for calming her down. When I'm not giving her attention, she has started to push the boundaries and chew on things she shouldn't - like chair legs, and furniture. I tell her No firmly, or say down and place her down. I do also distract her with something else but its like its something that's stuck in her head that she wants to repeat again and again to test me. Is this normal, and am I doing the right thing with preventing her from being destructive? I would appreciate your advice going forward. I love her, she is a lovely pup, I just want her to be happy, and grow up confident with good manners. Thanks

I walk Blue—my 8 month old smooth coated male—twice a day in a nearby public park where he has amassed an embarrassingly large fan club. Most of the time, I walk him on what started out as a 16’ long retractable Flexi Leash. Blue loves to play with the leash while we walk. This involves wrapping it around his snout, his legs, and his body all the while nipping at whatever part ends up close to his apparently razor sharp teeth. I know it’s not the best behavior and we do have obedience laps on a short lead from time to time but, frankly, it is cute as hell and he really enjoys it. Needless to say, this activity often results in the lead being severed in the middle of our walk. After taking the Flexi assembly apart and reattaching the bolt snap to the remaining webbing a couple of times, I started doubling the webbing up and putting it inside a section of heat shrink tubing on the section nearest his head to protect it from his teeth. Pretty soon, he learned to pirouette a single turn catching the lead under his tail and bringing the unprotected part in range of his treacherous fangs. Not to be outdone by a mere stupid dog, I purchased an inexpensive six foot lead from my local big-box pet store. I cut it in half and fastened a bolt snap to one end and a D-ring to the other end of each half thus creating two “sacrificial” sections I could fasten to the end of the Flexi and simply replace when his teeth had done their job. This morning, in a first real-world test, I fastened one end of the sacrificial section to Blue and the other end to the Flexi and loaded the whole affair into my car for the five minute drive to the park. After arriving at the park, I opened the back door of the car, reached in and grabbed the Flexi handle, and watched Blue go streaking through the parking lot before making a victory lap around his waiting and delighted fans. He had chewed completely through the “sacrificial” link in the space of a five minute car trip and was still proudly wearing the tag end of it fluttering from his collar. I’m new to Border Collies but am very much of the opinion that this whole leash thing is a game Blue has devised to keep both of us busy. I spent the rest of my morning investigating high tech webbing material like Kevlar® and Dyneema®. I think there is just a little bit of goat in both of our DNA.

Hiya! A few months ago my partner and I decided we were going to get a puppy! Where to start, what breed do we want, do we want a purebred, do we want a shelter dog, what! We decided on a Border Collie after deciding we wanted as close to a second Kasha as possible. Kasha is my first baby, she's 12 years old and she's a Border Collie, Corgi mix we love her to death and he has a pretty serious heart murmur but she has been and is a great dog. So we got a pure bred border collie from a breeder who does AKC shows, herding, agility, rally, everything. We met our little boys parents they were great dogs, happy dogs well taken care of, energetic they were great! So we took this little boy that we now call Tyrael (like cereal but with a T!) home on September 11. So far he has been amazing! He's learning very fast, has manic nights and the cutest bark! My old lady isn't sure on him yet but she's slowly getting used to him as she teaches him doggy manners. As a puppy Kasha hardly chewed on anything other than maybe a rope or a plastic bottle but Tyrael(!) this little boy will chew on anything he can put in his little mouth! Cords, bolts, metal bed frame, shoes, doggie dishes, the other dog(!), our feet, clothes, wood, I'm sure the picture is clear. We have presented him with ample toys, he has a nylabone, kong wubba, two ropes, a tennis ball on a rope, a tennis ball, a dogobie, a squishy strawberry toy, a squeaky skunk, a plushy squeaky, a piggy ear(not imported) and a bone(not cooked). He will chew on any one of those for a few moments then go for something metal or a cord again. What the heck can we do! I'm not used to all this chewing! He's driving us just a little crazy with those puppy teeth. We have tried ice cubes, carrots, potatoes, apples, and frozen wash cloths. Anyway, thank you in advance for suggestions! Here is my little boy ;>