Border collie mind games

[loren Kristunas]

Hello all. A different kind of question about Sage. I'm trying to find things to interest her and give her some fun. She is a really intense dog, very serious about everything, and seems to get bored so easily. If we work on something she can only stand about 10 repetitions before her brain turns off and she gets bored. Walking along the river is fine, but she doesn't seem really stimulated. We taught her how to swim and fetch sticks, and that was fun for her for about 2 weeks, but I can tell she's getting bored already. She absolutely loves obedience class but I can't have her there all the time and it's all about containment, not release or fun. The only thing I have found that really turns her on (besides playing with the several dogs she gets along with) is playing hide and seek, either at the house or the river, where we put her in a sit stay and hide from her and then call her, and she searches all over until she finds us. She really doesn't have a heavy exercise requirement despite her breed mix and young age, but that mind needs to think and be stimulated. Anyone have a dog like this, and how do you keep her interested? She has some very mild joint problems, a mild elbow dysplasia in one elbow and very mild grade one luxating patellas, neither should give her any problems until she is older, no hint of lameness, but the vet said agiilty and encouraging twisting and turning activities is probably not a good idea for her because it may bring on earlier arthritis, but she has no current exercise limitations at all. Any ideas?

 

[bridey_01]

Border collies LOVE tennis balls. I would take my three borders down to the park with a tennis racket and they would just go nuts! They are extremely intelligent and intense dogs and really do need an enourmous amount of mental stimulation. I don't know how bad the dysplasia may be, and if agility is out then tennis balls might be too. I would suggest teaching her many many tricks, such as weaving between your legs, shaking hands, pressing buttons, doing circles etc.

 

[loren Kristunas]

Thanks for the suggestion. She absolutley loves to run, and the vet said that really any activity that she initiates at her own pace is fine, just not things where we may be encouraging her beyond her limitations. The thing is she just doesn't really run after tennis balls or sticks. As with everything, she did this with excitement for a few weeks and then got bored and stopped. I know she's not in pain and that it's boredom because she will still run and play like crazy and do any new activity we ask, but she stops after it becomes familiar. Maybe alot of new tricks or clicker training. I thought we had it with the swimming, but like I said, now that that's routine she's slowing down on that too.

 

[bridey_01]

Sounds like tricks would be the go then. Dogs that learn fast but become bored easily usually love doing tricks, the more inventive the better.

 

[Renee750il]

Get her several BIG balls and spread them out in an area, then show her you want her to put them all in one place - you can nudge them with your feet, kick them, slap them with your hands, she'll get the idea. It's a fun game, and you can keep it varied by adding more balls, spreading them out in a larger area, maybe even through different rooms in the house.

Something to consider, since she is so fond of hide and seek, is that she might be an excellent candidate for search and rescue training!

 

[Melissa_W]

Something you can do is bring all your dog's toys together and put them in a big pile in the middle of the room. Then start teaching her the name of each toy. When she knows a few of the names, start asking her to pick certain toys out of the pile. This can come in handy because if she brings you a toy you don't really want to play with, you can say "go get the bone" instead and she'll go and bring you that.

Honestly, the sky is the limit with borders. Anything you can think of, you can probably teach them to do. Here is a link with some more suggestions though. http://www.bcrescue.org/winter.html

 

[Melissa_W]

Get her several BIG balls and spread them out in an area, then show her you want her to put them all in one place - you can nudge them with your feet, kick them, slap them with your hands, she'll get the idea. It's a fun game, and you can keep it varied by adding more balls, spreading them out in a larger area, maybe even through different rooms in the house.

Something to consider, since she is so fond of hide and seek, is that she might be an excellent candidate for search and rescue training!

Oh, that is a great idea! Herding balls... I'll have to try that one with Skye!

 

[loren Kristunas]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I like the idea of herding the balls, she needs an outlet for that instinct, and I also like the idea of teaching her different names of toys and then playing hide and seek or fetch with them. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[sammydawg]

how about rally-o? I don't know that much about it but it's sort of tamed down version of agility crossed with obedience. My other thought was hard hiking where she and you get tired from the exertion but also the joy of sight seeing , exploring a new place, new things for her to sniff etc
how about some herding? you could start with a clinic/ class and see if she likes it.

 

[loren Kristunas]

I don't know alot about Rally-o but it sounded interesting, I think Sage would love it. We're taking intermediate obedience classes but I don't think she's ready for competition yet. I'm trying to get more information on Rally-O, I'm pretty interested. We both love hiking and do hike with her about an hour every day, but the interdog aggression has been an issue with that and has limited us. The herding would be great, perhaps I should look into it more, but I think I'd have to drive somewhere for it and I'm not sure how it all works. We certainly don't have any of our own stock to herd, it seems a little too much maybe, or maybe I'm just ignorant. I think more obedience work and maybe Rally-o, clicker training, which I'm getting really excited about, and some of the suggested games will be a good combination for her and keep her mind busy and challenged.

 

[sammydawg]

was thinking of this post when I was walking sammy ( bc aussie X) last night--
we play a combo of fetch and hide & seek and tag. I throw the frisbee/ball and when Sammy runs off to get it I either run and hide or just run as hard as I can in the other direction. That seems to add some excitement to the game. (I probably look like a dork but I don't care b/c we're having too much fun.
I bet your dog will love the clicker.
If you find some fun new things to do with your dog let us know

 

[loren Kristunas]

We do something like that now, my husband puts her in a down stay and I hide in the woods, then I call her, she usually finds me in about 2 seconds, in the meantime my husband is hiding, after she finds me he calls her and she finds him, etc. She absolutely loves that game, we have to be careful to do it when no-one else is around though, because of her dog aggression, if she bumped into another dog without us right there I don't know how it would go. I'm going to try with frisbees and objects, we'll see what happens. I tried to start clicker training, we clicked and treated for a day, then we tried the touch object with her nose, she did it about 6 times and got bored and looked at me like "this is dumb, give me better treats if I have to do this", so we'll see, but I'll keep at it. I think I should take a class to make sure I'm doing it right.

 

[sparks19]

Yes we find that teddy really likes to play hide and seek also. We will throw a toy for him and when he goes to get it we will hide. he comes out and sees that no one is there and he will just start looking all on his own. We don't call him or make any kind of sound he just has to rely on his nose to sniff us out lol. We also play fetchwith him but throw three or four calls at a time and he has to bring all of them back before we will throw again. So he will bring one back and then we say "go get your other ones" and he runs off to search for the second ball and then the third and so on and so forth.

We take him to the beach for a swim all the time and we take his football on a rope for him to fetch. He only gets to play with this toy at the beach. So its extra exciting for him. he gets to swim which he loves and he gets to play with a special toy that he doesn't see very often.