25/01/2026
Great timing for this article as our puppies start their life with their new families
DONâT STOP BELIEVING!
Our breed expert Carol Price offers some advice and reassurance to any owner finding their young Border collie âhard workâ
Today I want to look at some of the challenges that can come with rearing and training young Border collies. And to reassure so many of you out there that these are actually quite normal, if not to be expected. Especially in dogs with more sensitive or excitable natures, or higher levels of working instinct or drive.
The more Border collie puppies you have raised, moreover â and I am currently on puppy number 21 â the more you realise the folly of taking anything for granted, in terms of how they may behave or view and respond to a world that is totally new to them. Anything could literally happen. And you have to be prepared for it.
PRE-PROGRAMMED TRAITS
No Border collie puppy is actually a âblank canvasâ â as can so often be imagined. They will come instead with a whole host of tendencies that are already genetically programmed in. Which can range from how naturally confident or reserved they may be as individuals to how much âworkingâ instinct or drive they have. Which may later get directed on to any number of external moving targets, in the absence of having livestock to work. Or many different forms of more repetitive or even obsessive behaviour.
Expect this to be the case with most Border collies. There are likely, from the off, to be aspects about them that cannot be changed, only better managed, re-channelled or modified, due to the inherent way they are wired. And once you have accepted this, and stopped comparing your current collie to any other previous dog you may have had who was âdifferentâ or âeasierâ, your mission thereafter is to try to shape that dog in front of you into the best version of themselves they can be, in order to best fit the life they are going to live with you.
ACCESSING THE MIND
Sometimes owners get so fixated on all the different things they want to teach their new collie that they forget one essential basic principle. Which is that you cannot teach any young dog anything until you have first found a way to better hold their concentration and access their mind; hence the vital early priority of âfocus trainingâ. Where you train your youngster to watch you and focus on you â see illustration â for ever longer periods of time, and then through progressively higher levels of surrounding distraction. Few things you do with your dog, early on, will bring you greater later benefits than this.
BETTER MANAGING AROUSAL
The biggest obstacles to getting better responses from your young Border collie in training or just life in general, is the inability of the dog to be able to focus on you when distracted by something else. Or an inability to better control their levels of arousal. From excess arousal comes so many of the less desirable habits in collies, including aggression, lunge nipping, less controllable chase behaviour or more persistent barking.
That is why impulse control training â where you teach your dog to master ever greater control of their arousal levels â is also so vital for collies, from as young an age as possible. Keep remembering that abilities to better focus through distraction, or better regulate or contain arousal levels, are not things any dog is born with. We have to teach them to do it, and the more we teach them, the better they get at it over time.
Sometimes just more persistent work on focus and impulse control training can make such a difference to any young collieâs behaviour overall.
MANAGING INSTINCT
âWorking instinctâ in young Border collies (i.e. eyeing, stalking, chasing or herding moving things) can switch on at any age. But the most important thing is to be aware of when it first happens, and what it has got directed on to â e.g. cars, cyclists, runners, or birds. You will never get a better chance to stop a dogâs working instincts going on to the wrong targets than when it first happens. Whereupon you must immediately get the dogâs focus back on you (the âleave itâ and âwatchâ commands can be very helpful here) and reward that instead. Thereafter you must keep doing this until the dog is prepared to ignore the target they previously fixated on in return for the reward you will give them for leaving it instead. Conversely the more opportunity the dog gets to fixate on and chase or lunge out at âwrongâ moving targets the ever more compelling this habit can get for them.
âWorking instinctâ in most Border collies, however, never goes away, and must therefore have some alternative âlegitimateâ target to direct itself upon, in the absence of livestock. Like chase toys. I use these in a particular way in training, teaching the dog to better check and modify their movements around the toys (i.e. âdown and waitâ, âdown on the moveâ and âmid-chase recallâ exercises) before they can get them. Shepherds train their dogs to better discipline their actions around livestock in much the same way, if with differing actions or commands.
Either way, the point is always not that your dog HAS working instinct, but that you can always keep control of it.
KEEPING THE BELIEF ALIVE
Sometimes with the raising of a young collie you can go to darker places. Doubt yourself. Doubt your dog. Think some things will never get better. I have been there many times over many years. But mostly what it taught me is that things actually always do get better. My young dog can only reflect back at me the quality of the education I have given them, and the level of belief I have placed in them. And belief, as I am sure so many others of you out there will know, can go a long way with a Border collie.
Meanwhile all aspects of raising and training Border collies (including focus and impulse control training, the âleave itâ and âwatchâ commands and anti-chase training using toys) is outlined in the SECOND book (red cover) in my BREED APART trilogy, ESSENTIAL LIFE SKILLS AND LEARNING.
All text Š Carol Price 2026
Carol Price collie books: In the UK from: https://performancedog.co.uk/?s=carol+price In the USA from: https://www.dogwise.com/ # and https://www.cleanrun.com/product/border_collies_a_breed_apart_book_1_secrets_of_the_working_mind/index.cfm In Canada from https://4mymerles.com/collections/books In Australia from: https://gameondogs.com.au/ And in the Netherlands and Belgium from: https://mediaboek.nl/border-collies-a-breed-apart-book-1.html
