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Crouch and stare on walks


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Cricket is a 9 mo BC mix with a lovely, lively personality. She does well in obedience classes (how I wish they were still in session now!) and she socializes with appropriate enthusiasm off-leash with other dogs. A few weeks ago, she suddenly started crouching and staring down oncoming dogs on walks, and no command or treat can get her up. She lays fully on the ground, very still, and stares until they pass. Many other dog owners seem to think she's being submissive, but the intensity of her behavior suggests otherwise to me. I've seen her frightened and she has seen aggressive dogs, but this doesn't resemble her responses in those situations.  If the dog approaches her directly, she stands and greets them normally. I've only seen this on leash. So my question is whether she's herding or doing something else, and is there a particularly effective way to train her to respond differently in these situations? Also, if anyone has an online training resource that you love for this time of social distancing, I would love to hear about it. Many thanks in advance!

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Hello and welcome to the BC Boards.

This would not be called "herding" by any stretch, as herding is a specific work that involves moving livestock under the direction of a human being, and requires careful training. However, the crouch-and-stare is  a behavior that border collies use when they are trained to herd. In my opinion your dog is just being a border collie. The fact that she doesn't seem scared or aggressive and greets the other dogs in a friendly manner tells me there's nothing to worry about with this. She's just following an instinct that has been bred into this breed for hundreds if not thousands of years. I don't know why you would want to train her out of this unless it actually causes a real problem at some point.

You can find a lot of indoor training info on Suzanne Clothier's website. She is doing special webcasts for this time. And she is a wonderful dog trainer. Another thing to do is Google dog tricks. KikoPup is another great website that has fun behaviors and tricks to train your dog to do.

She's a cute dog!

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