There is a lot of confusion around what can cause traffic chasing in border collies. Many behaviourists, trainers, and owners still believe it is caused by the instinct to herd, rather than it being a fear-based behaviour. This confusion often means that owners are given the wrong advice about how to help their collie overcome … Read more
Pattern games help build confidence, giving the dog agency and helping them to regulate their arousal in a wide range of contexts. Using pattern games as part of counterconditioning and desensitisation really helps to boost these training techniques. These games don’t involve giving the dog any cues, so we are not forcing them to … Read more
Once management is in place, training can focus on changing emotional responses to traffic and helping dogs to regulate their arousal and learn to practise new behaviours around traffic. We ALWAYS, with every training technique listed here, carry out this training at a distance from traffic at which collies feel safe and can relax. Over … Read more
Pain can cause a wide range of problem behaviour in dogs, and anecdotally, many dogs that I have seen for traffic reactivity behaviours have eventually been diagnosed with pain or discomfort. If a dog is in pain, then it can increase their arousal and make them more susceptible to fear, anxiety, and frustration, so trying … Read more
Lunging, barking, and spinning at passing vehicles (which is what I mean by “car chasing”) is a common issue in border collies, thought to affect 25% of individual collies (Marin et. al., 2026). The behaviour is rarely due to herding tendencies in collies, and much more likely to be related to fear, frustration, anticipation, pain, … Read more