Rachel Rodgers
Border collies are consistently over-represented in cases of car chasing, traffic fixation and lunging at moving vehicles (Cooper et al., 2024; Cooper et al., 2025). Typically, the behaviour is often described as hypervigilance and fixation, followed by barking, lunging, spinning, and—if opportunity allows—chasing. This behaviour presents substantial welfare and safety risks, including injury or death … Read more
As a behaviourist seeing some of the worst behaviour cases, often those who have been to trainers first who have been unable to help, many of the collies I see are eventually diagnosed as being in pain. When a dog’s behaviour is intense, inconsistent, or occurs without any external cause, we always need to consider … Read more
This muzzle training guide is for dogs that already have an aversion to the muzzle as well as dogs that are completely new to muzzle training. With dogs that are already very fearful of the muzzle, we start training with a cardboard cup, just to get them used to putting their nose inside something, then … Read more
Understanding what’s going on Entire (unneutered) male dog agression often occurs in collies and is characterised by tension, scuffles, or barking at other entire males — particularly during adolescence. This can be worrying and often misunderstood. It’s easy to assume a dog is being “dominant” or “protective,” but in reality, the reasons are far more … Read more
Did you know that…. the dog training industry is unregulated and anyone can call themselves a dog trainer or a behaviourist? Even with no training, or just because they have done a 3-day course from a dodgy organisation that tells them they are now “qualified”. When I decided to run a dog training business, … Read more
If your border collie is anxious about unfamiliar people, and barks and lunges when she meets them, the first step will be to try to limit how often she practises the barking and lunging. This is because: the more a dog practises a behaviour, the more they will continue to practise the behaviour. So helping … Read more
Vet checks for your collie! Very often in online articles or in social media groups, we are advised to get our dog “vet checked”. But often, we aren’t sure what might be wrong. Our dog might seem physically fine, but be behaving in a way that indicates they could be experiencing discomfort, so it’s difficult … Read more
Border collie reactivity – barking, lunging, snarling, and snapping – is a very common problem with collies. It’s stressful taking them out for walks when they are so noisy and embarrassing, it can be scary and painful attempting to restrain them, and they often restrict our social lives as it’s not easy to have visitors … Read more
There’s a persistent myth in the dog world that collie traffic chasing is just “herding behaviour” or “controlling movement.” However, when you really look into the different experiences the collie has when meeting sheep and when they chase, nip or lunge in other contexts, we can start to see why many of the behaviours we … Read more
Do you have a sound reactive border collie? If so, you are not alone – as a breed, border collies are susceptible to fear of noises, as well as struggling to cope with specific everyday household noises. This tendency is thought to be due to selective breeding and genetics, the breeding environment, learned associations and … Read more