Border Collie Training – Easy and Hard

The training of a Border Collie can be both easy and difficult at the same time. The reason for this is because a Border is incredibly intelligent. Their intelligence can be the proverbial double edged sword.

On the one hand, they learn things very quickly. In fact they love to learn. Border Collies are “working dogs” and as such, take training very seriously. Show them what you want and they will pick it up, usually after only a few attempts.

Something to keep in mind is that training a Border Collie needs to be done regularly and it has to be fun. With their higher level of intelligence, training may have to be more like a game that you two play, than anything else.

A bored Border Collie can be a very destructive animal. This is one reason so many of them are given away to shelters. They are like hyper active teens. They simply have an abundance of energy and without a proper path to exercise that energy, they will chew and destroy your things.

When training your Border you definitely need to establish yourself as the leader early on. If you don’t, he will decide for himself that he is the boss. He will also decide what he wants to learn, how he wants to do that and when. At that point you are going to have a much more difficult task ahead of you trying to get him to learn what you want. It may sound silly but it really is true that you need to be the “alpha dog”, especially with Borders.

A word of warning, Border Collies can be very stubborn. You may think everything is going great. Your dog has mastered some new trick and then suddenly he seems to have completely forgotten his name. Or worse, like our Border did, wander off to go investigate some scent somewhere. It can be frustrating to say the least.

Training your Border Collie as I have said can be both easy and hard. How you go about it and how much effort you put into it will determine whether it is easy or not. But if you can get past all that, what you end up with is a very loyal, hardworking pet that will try to please you.

from Paws Puppy http://bit.ly/2pQTtv0