Rachel Rodgers
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 (see “Collie car chasing management and setting up for success“), 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 … Read more
Pain can cause a wide range of problem behaviours 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
Border collies are consistently over-represented in cases of car chasing, traffic fixation and lunging at moving vehicles (Cooper et al., 2024). 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 of the dog, risk … 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