Preparing for a BC

[Shanbyers]

We are considering a border collie for our family dog. We would get it as a puppy and we have 2 young kids (6 and 3). I want to be sure that we can handle everything that goes in to having one. I know they are energetic and need a lot of physical and mental stimulation. I'd like to spend a couple months acting as if we have one to be sure that our family is ready. What should I do? We have a fenced in half acre lot. How much will our BC need physically from us? I'm not much of a runner, but we could do brisk walks or bike rides. (Side question: How do you bike with a dog on a leash??) We can also do hiking. Physically, how much should we be preparing to do daily?

 

Mentally, what can we do to prep? Should we set aside time each day that would be devoted to obedience training or something? Set up jobs for it? I'm not sure what to do try to be sure we can give it everything it needs.

 

Would love some advice as we be sure that we are able and ready to give a border collie a great life!

 

Thanks!

 

 

[CptJack]

Young pups can't and shouldn't do lots of running, jogging, or biking - or any forced exercise on leash. Gentle walks, free play in the yard. Exercise wise, honestly, my dog gets class once a week, 20 minutes of training spread through the day and about an hour of something like fetch divided between a session early in the morning and late in the evening because heat sucks. Physical exercise isn't the biggest thing, it's that you have a dog up your butt and in your business 23.5 hours a day, forever, and 'helping' with the laundry and learning how to turn on your faucets, flush your toilet, and that if a clap of thunder goes off once while you're cooking they've become afraid of the stove.

The biggest considerations you're going to have are going to be, schedule wise, that the pup will need out early, late, and a couple of times in the middle of the night as well as frequently through the day and...

BC often don't do well with small children. Their fast movements, loud, high pitched movements can often be overwhelming and result in a lot of nipping, barking, overstimulation and sometimes fear. They also don't do well with 'rough' handling a good deal of the time. They're just not very... 'stolid' dogs, and not what I'd consider a good kids dog, at all. They're just too sharp, reactive, and high strung.

Not all, but if you get a puppy you're not going to know that until the dog is 6+ months old. IF you really want a BC with young kids you would do much better getting a young adult so you KNOW if it's going to be motion/sound reactive or not, and how it handles children before you've spent 6 months or a year raising the dog. No, raising with kids (or cats or anything else) doesn't mean it won't be an issue. Neither does being okay with it at 2 months old. Those issues often come along with maturity, and are genetically wired into the animal.

[GentleLake]

^^ This. Especially the part about kids.

 

Except that I'd say you won't know what the dog will be like till it's over 12 months old. One of my dogs didn't develop her reactivity until she was over a year old.

 

And I can't agree enough with the potential for border collies to be incompatible with young children. It's one of the main reasons they're relinquished to shelters and rescues . . . or worse.

 

I would consider going some places where you can get to know some border collies. Even then, you won't know what your dog will end up being like around your kids until they've had some time together. Wherever you get your dog from, whether as a pup or a rescue (though rescues sometimes have puppies, too!) make sure there's a plan in place that you can return the dog if it doesn't work out. Don't expect it not to (some border collies are great with kids), but it's always good to have that insurance in case it doesn't.

 

Another thing I'd add is to make sure the dog has somewhere to go where it won't be bothered by the kids if it needs some time away from them. The dog should be trained to use this safe place (an open crate, a little used room, sometimes even its bed is OK) and the kids should be taught to never bother the dog if it chooses to go there. Any dog, not just a border collie.

[Shanbyers]

I should have added that we are always home. We homeschool and are very very rarely gone for more than 2 hours per day. I figure puppy training should be pretty similar to having a newborn and getting up with him every 2-3 hours for the first 6 months and then a bit less frequently after that. Sound about right?

 

My husband absolutely will not get anything other than a puppy because of a bad situation that happened to his family with a rescue dog. I know, lots of people will say that you can tell better when they're older what kind of dog they are, but, unfortunately, getting an older one is really not an option for us.

 

Also, I know a puppy doesn't need that much exercise, but I'm more concerned with making sure that we can handle a puppy once it becomes an adolescent dog that is very high energy.

 

Also, I hear mixed reviews on the kid thing. We might consider getting a BC/lab mix...but we haven't really figured that part out yet.

[Shanbyers]

As far as kids go, mine are pretty calm and gentle. They are, of course, still kids! Good tip though to prepare and out of the way space for the dog. Maybe give him a bigger area of the basement where he can be totally alone if he needs to be?

[CptJack]

Like I said - The exercise is not that big of a deal. My dog does agility classes once a week, and about 20 minutes of training + an hour of fairly hard exercise on a typical day. Some days, especially this winter, all she got was a potty trip. You need to be careful to reward calm behavior and not set up an expectation of increasing activity and being 'worn out' all the time, but they're not as crazy in exercise requirements as a lot of people make them out to be. My GSD mix actually needs more physical exercise than my BC.

 

It's the WEIRDNESS and how common place sound/sight sensitive and reactivity are in the dogs. Weird fears, strange 'superstitious' behavior and the like that pose a bigger issue for most people.

[CptJack]

As far as kids go, mine are pretty calm and gentle. They are, of course, still kids! Good tip though to prepare and out of the way space for the dog. Maybe give him a bigger area of the basement where he can be totally alone if he needs to be?

 

Good plan! They tend not to like being secluded but even teaching the kids now NOT to mess with the dog's crate or space and setting that up and out of the way and making a hard and fast rule that if the dog retreats to that space they're not to follow or bug it would be helpful.

[GentleLake]

The exercise can be a mixed bag. If you go overboard and get the dog used to a lot of exercise on a regular basis, you can easily create a dog who then needs constant exercise.

 

Certainly you need to make sure any dog gets enough exercise. But border collies can be obsessive and needing constant stimulation is one of the things they can become obsessive about. Better to teach the dog an off switch, starting the day it comes in the door no matter what age it is. Even with a wee pup, when it collapses with exhaustion, as they do, I take a moment to gently stroke it and quietly praise. They need to know that being still is a good thing, too. Too many people overlook that.

[GentleLake]

Maybe give him a bigger area of the basement where he can be totally alone if he needs to be?

 

It's highly unlikely that your border collie will want to be that far away from where the people are. They've been bred for centuries to work with people, and they need to be around us.

[Shanbyers]

The exercise can be a mixed bag. If you go overboard and get the dog used to a lot of exercise on a regular basis, you can easily create a dog who then needs constant exercise.

 

Certainly you need to make sure any dog gets enough exercise. But border collies can be obsessive and needing constant stimulation is one of the things they can become obsessive about. Better to teach the dog an off switch, starting the day it comes in the door no matter what age it is. Even with a wee pup, when it collapses with exhaustion, as they do, I take a moment to gently stroke it and quietly praise. They need to know that being still is a good thing, too. Too many people overlook that.

 

^^This is something I have never heard before. Very interesting!

 

 

It's highly unlikely that your border collie will want to be that far away from where the people are. They've been bred for centuries to work with people, and they need to be around us.

 

And that I can do then. He could certainly have a spot upstairs instead!

[Cass C]

I'm not meaning to turn you away from BC's as I love them and think they are a great breed, but I'm curious why you would rather have a BC than a kid friendly breed like a retriever, or other well known kid friendly breeds.

[CptJack]

Wow, I wasn't seeing all the replies.

Gentle Lake is probably right in not really seeing the full picture until the dog is a year old. Up until that point, it's hard to say what might come out. Molly was getting reactive somewhat around 6 months old but thinking back it was pretty inconsistent until she was a few much older. WE caught it early, worked hard, and she's better but she's not a dog I'll ever trust in a situation with young kids running and playing - she just gets too amped up.

Since you need to get a puppy for your husband, I'm just going to second that you need to make sure you have an avenue to get the dog somewhere safe if it doesn't work out. Don't get into a mindset that it won't or whatever, do what you can, but make sure there's an outlet for everyone's good if the dog is just not wired to handle it well. There's only so much training can do, you know?

Like Molly's been around cats, other dogs, and young children since she was 7 weeks old -and cats and other dogs before that, at her breeder's. She's still a dog that, if I were in a position where she had to encounter lots of dogs on leash at close distances (like being walked on the street) or lived in a home with young kids I'd need to rehome for her sake. She's have a nervous breakdown, just from being overstimulated all the time. She's a sweet, gentle, smart, lovely dog - but she also flies over the top easily in response to some things (motion for her mostly) and then loses her mind. I've been bitten bloody more than once from her redirecting onto me or, worse, me being what's moving fast. I'd hate to see that happen with a 3 year old, you know?

 

Again: Some, many, BCs are great. It's just the ones that aren't, really aren't.

And definitely a crate somewhere on the main floor and making sure the kids know it's off limits should help. So will enforcing maybe 'quiet time' for the dog - ie: if you see overstimulation or nuttiness, put the puppy down for a nap in the crate, reward it there with a kong or whatever, and then have the kids stay away and stay calm for an hour or two so the pup can decompress. Or, well, those are the rules I would put in place if introducing a bc into a home with a preschooler.

[Tess's Girl]

I own two very different Border Collies. Both were well socialized and great as puppies. I got Tess at 10 months old. She wasn't crazy in love with new people off the bat but she warmed up quickly. After she turned a year old she began developing anxiety that progressed to the point that she had days where she refused to come out of my bedroom and out from underneath my bed. It didn't matter if we were at my apartment in my semi-urban area or at my parent's house in the country. We ended up putting her on anti-anxiety medication. She has gotten a lot better and is now off medication, but I don't let her interact with new people very often and I NEVER allow her around children, she gets very scared and I have no doubt that she would try to nip if she felt threatened.

 

Crow, on the other hand is about as bomb proof as I've seen a Border Collie. He loves people, adapts well to new situations, isn't flabbergasted by a lot. However he still has his quirks. He is obsessed with sneezes. When he was a little puppy he would want to jump up in your face and lick your whole face when you sneezed. Now at 9 months old he will just run up and stare at you. When he was about 6 months old I literally stepped into the kitchen one day and my smoke alarm went off because the batteries were running low. Ever since that day no matter how many thousands of time I had been in the kitchen before or how many times after he is terrified when I got in there. He will run and stick his head under my bed. I'm getting ready to move so it remains to be seen whether that will carry over at the new house or not. Even as adaptable as he is, he still gets overstimulated and a bit over the top around children and lots of fast moving people, and that's something we've been working on since the day I brought him home, two days before he was 8 weeks.

 

These are examples of two very different Border Collies. When people ask me about them I say, "they're quirky" and that's putting it nicely. They are just so smart and sensitive that they notice EVERYTHING and sometimes decide that relatively harmless things are bad news. I love my dogs and they are my favorite breed but I know that if I have children while I still have Tess I will always always have to manage their interactions. As other have mentioned it's not really the physical exercise you have to worry about, it's the mental. Some people say dogs are always learning, which is even more true for Border Collies. Your BC will always be seeing things and developing opinions about life, you have to be sure to be there to guide them so they form the correct ones.

 

What draws you to a Border Collie?

[Maralynn]

I'm just getting past the puppy stage with my (4th) Border collie. He has a delightful, adaptable temperament. He enjoys people and is happy to be around kids. He's spent lots of time with my nieces who are now 5 and 3 and pretty good around dogs.

 

All that said, raising a first Border Collie with kids that age is not something I'd recommend. It was a full time job teaching my pup kid manners as he was just so darn happy and excited around the kids. And they're not yet at the age where they consistently remember to ask for/require calm behavior from a very energetic pup.

 

They recently adopted a lab/great dane mix pup who is much better suited for kids that age. She's sweet and smart and happy to run around and play with them but is much more mellow and easy going overall.

[medic09]

I don't dispute anything said here, but I will interject some questions for further thought:

 

Generations of herding and ranching families have raised, worked, lived with their Border Collies. Not all of them keep their dogs segregated from their growing children. Many of those children have fond memories of the family's work dogs, and go on to then have their own dogs and work them in the same way. Border Collies may not be the breed 'made for children'; but why can't it work with some effort and understanding on the part of the humans? Disclaimer: our children were all grown by the time we got a Border Collie.

 

Although not typical, both the Border Collies we've had (one mixed, the present one 'pure' ranch-bred) have been fine with small children. Hoshanah, now gone, was largely aloof and very tolerant around children when they interacted with her. I have a fond memory of coming to the end of a hike with our then three dogs- BCX, Labrador, and Aussie/sled dog - when we encountered a tired family on the last slope up to the trailhead. Little child was pooped, and Mom was already carrying a baby and trying to cajole the tyke up the slope to no avail. I held on to the Lab and sled dog; and gave the little boy the leash for Hoshanah. I urged her forward and she ever so gently pulled that little boy up the slope. Golan, our present 2 year old, has learned not to be too enthused when first approaching, and beyond that is gentle and tolerant. Today, on that same hike, we encountered a dad and toddler. After Golan checked him out, we walked along with them for about twenty minutes with no problems. Golan was off-lead after the initial meet. So, we've been lucky. (Oddly, our Labrador was difficult around little ones. He never learned to be gentle. I used to compare him to Lenny in Of Mice and Men.) Oddly enough, Golan is the softest and most pliable personality we've had of all our dogs of various breeds.

 

Again, I don't dispute the wiser and more experienced voices here; but we have been very lucky in our house. I do think you've started the right way by asking. Whatever dog you get, plan on starting training early with 'puppy classes' and continuing on if you have a good trainer available. Involve the family in the process so that humans and pup learn together. I think with any breed, a home-schooled family has the better chance of success. You'll be more flexible, more available, and you can even work the dog care into the educational routine to some extent. But as folks have already noted, you won't really know what you've got until the dog is a dog.

[CptJack]

Generations of dogs living on farms had children from previous generations who had access to the great outdoors and farm, and the dogs themselves had places to go besides the living room with the kids and jobs to do. They were also not living in an environment already stacked with fast moving objects and loud noises and other dogs, on leashes limiting their ability to avoid those other dogs and scary things, all while having NO OUTLET for their herding drives.

What we have now a days is a dog bred to live on a farm, work at herding cattle or sheep, chill out and hang around sometimes, but is NOW living in a suburban or urban environment, constantly stimulated, and not allowed to have an outlet for their instincts and drives.

 

I'm not saying and have never said BCs who are great with kids don't exist, Your dogs sound incredible and I've certainly had some really good kid dogs in the past (and some really bad ones of assorted breeds), but when you have a dog mentally wired for countless generations for one (relatively secluded) environment and type of job and chuck 'em in someone's living room you're maybe, just maybe, going to get a different outcome than you would have on the farm.

Also a kid generations ago (and some today) getting bitten by a dog likely would have resulted in a 'WELL DON"T DO THAT (whatever that was) THEN" for the kid, instead of a trip to the shelter or euthanasia for the dog, you know?

 

ETA: I am the kid who got soundly bitten by the farm dog for 'pestering' it and that was pretty much exactly what I got. That dog was NOT good with kids by ANY stretch of the imagination. The assumption was that we would leave it alone, not that the dog would be okay with us. I couldn't've been more than maybe 4 or 5. Tore my finger up good (and just my finger, somehow). Haven't thought about that in years.

Edited June 14, 2015 by CptJack

[CptJack]

And um, I just realized that whole reply sounded way snarkier than I intended it to. Please don't take it that way. I'd edit more fully if I knew exactly how to make it not come across as confrontational easily, but since I don't just take a disclaimer after the fact, please?

[GentleLake]

CaptJack, I didn't read your post as being snarky at all.

 

And I totally agree with your rationale about why so many farms dogs worked out when we find so many problems with pet border collies now. Spot on. It's exactly what I was going to say before you beat me to it.

[Tess's Girl]

I agree that Border Collies can be good with children. I grew up with one, a BC/Springer mix. We got him when I was three and he put up with me nicely. That said, he was an outside dog, able to roam our 25 acres. He was not around me being a crazy kid all the time or around when I or my newborn brother were crying at all hours of the night. He was also a terrible resource guarder and if I approached him after he had killed a rabbit and was chowing on it (which he did often) and he growled at my I was met with my parents telling me, "Well, you knew better than to get near him when he has food" when I was too young to understand those concepts my parents just kept me separated from him during those times.

 

And there are Border Collies who are highly adaptable and don't mind kids and blend seamlessly into a house full of activity and children and in a city full of distraction, but I would think they are an anomaly. There are Border Collies who aren't very high energy. My Tess sleeps most of the day and really doesn't want to run around. She's one of the laziest dogs I've met. But I would be doing a disservice to the breed if I started telling people, "oh border collies aren't high energy at all, my girl is so quiet" Just the same I think we would be doing a disservice if we did not tell people who don't have Border Collie experience that they are not automatically a breed that is good with kids, that it takes very hard work for most Border Collies and sometimes even that is not enough.

[Cass C]

On the note of kids learning to not harass animals, my DH was bit as a child because he was running away from a border collie trying to 'play' with it. He said it swiftly taught him that running away from a dog is not the proper way to play with them. The dog was a working dog and probably had no interest in dealing with a hyper kid.

[GentleLake]

^^ Again, spot on, especially this:

 

I think we would be doing a disservice if we did not tell people who don't have Border Collie experience that they are not automatically a breed that is good with kids, that it takes very hard work for most Border Collies and sometimes even that is not enough.

 

You (the OP) may be savvy enough to understand this, but we don't know you well enough to know this and it's not a given.

 

Besides, other people come back and read these thread, sometimes years later, and what may seem reasonable might not be as readily apparent to everyone.

[simba]

When I was a kid the farm border collie was a dog we knew to stay away from. If you walked quietly past the dog, not looking at it, with your hands crossed across your chest the dog would maybe probably not bite you. If it got into the house when you were inside, you got up on a table. Rules for kids she didn't like (who were apparently randomly picked)- just stay away from the dog, stay inside the house, and if she snarls at you when you come into the room, well, back slowly out of the room again.

 

It's your responsibility to avoid being bitten, and if she bites you, well, it was unfortunate that you went outside or that she happened to get inside the house. Once you got old enough the dog would decide you weren't a kid any longer, and you would now be allowed outside the house, and all would be well.

 

This was a dog raised from a puppy around kids, different children in and out of the house all the time, and she liked and did well with some of them- so similar mixed reviews about her. That dog did fine in that household because she did what they wanted her to do- she worked, she was a good watchdog, and she didn't draw too much blood from the kids too often.

 

She wasn't unique. There were many houses that I remember you could go into provided you carried a good stick and kept the kids behind you, or where the dog agreed not to bite you if you agreed not to interact with it or make any sudden movements. I would suspect the reason farm dogs did so well and dogs in the different situations now don't, is simply that standards are different. The dog is inside in more than one room when the kids are small, rather than being kept outside or confined to one room where the kids often aren't, and they are expected to interact. Nipping, growling, guarding, is not as acceptable.

[medic09]

CptJack, I think your response to me was very much to the point and answered the question well. (Not snarky at all.) The OP would do well to take the perspective you provided into account.

 

My own time living on farms was later in life, and working with milk cows (no herding), crops, and poultry. Though I have friends who herded (mostly cattle), I did not work with herding dogs. I will say, though, that Simba's experiences are new to me. Farm dogs that I knew of who were difficult around any people were kept outside, and largely away from people. In some cases, they weren't kept around at all.

[CptJack]

I've read a few conversations lately where people are positing that dogs of 'the old days' were better behaved, had fewer temperamental issues and so on. Not BC specific just in general.

 

Then I look at the things we expect of our dogs today as opposed to when I was a kid, which wasn't in the 40s and 50s, but just the late 70s and onward.

 

My dogs stayed home. House or yard, depending. Otherwise, they... went to the vet and the hunting dogs were taken out hunting but that was it. They weren't expected to like everyone. They certainly weren't expected to go neigh on everywhere, from Pet-stores to beaches to assorted dog sporting trials and all kinds of classes and more. They growled, people backed off or got bit and it wasn't the end of the world or the end of the dog when it happened, at least not most of the time for 'simple' bites with clear warning given by a dog who did a 'job'. Dogs fighting with other dogs was not seen as a big deal, either, unless it was causing grief in house.

 

It's a different world all right, and frankly most of that is that people react differently and the amount of STUFF a dog is expected to deal with/tolerate/LIKE is a whole lot higher than it used to be.

[CptJack]

CptJack, I think your response to me was very much to the point and answered the question well. (Not snarky at all.) The OP would do well to take the perspective you provided into account.

 

Thank you, I'm glad I managed to get my point across politely!