This is a novel, so my apologies in advance. Get yourself something to eat, and settle in. I’m hoping the details help someone come up with some advice for us.
I grew up with mostly Chesapeake Bay Retrievers (one border collie, and a couple hound dogs too throughout growing up), and dh grew up exclusively with standard dachshunds. So with the Chessies and the Dachsies you’ve got a good idea of the sort of dogs we’re familiar with – independent, intelligent, with a tendency towards dominance if the owner isn’t careful in training/approach. The border collie we had was also very intelligent and active and super-obedient/polite. All the border collies I’ve been around have been very active and energetic and intelligent.
We adopted a border collie almost two years ago, when our dd was 16 months. She was already walking well at that point, and LOVED dogs (still does). She was excited to have our own dog.
Smokey was 5 years old at the time. He’d lived on a relative’s ranch for three years, then with their daughter (a college student) for two more years before she couldn’t keep him anymore and was going to send him to the pound. At five years of age, he had hardly ever been around children, and having been on a working ranch, he hadn’t ever learned anything about toys or playing either. He’s a beautiful blue merle border collie, sweet disposition – and couldn’t herd anything. On the rare occasions that he tried, the animals wouldn’t respond anyway. They had hoped to keep him and use him for breeding, so kept him for quite awhile trying to make it work but he was just too meek. One of his littermates was similar in disposition, and when she was three, my sister adopted her. Sally took awhile to adjust but now is a very confident, well-adjusted happy dog and really great with children and strangers. When we heard about Smokey’s situation, we talked with my sister and she told us she thought we were right, that he would hopefully be a good fit for our family.
Smokey was very meek when we first got him (and still is except with small dogs, where he is confident). He attached quickly to dh and myself (moreso to dh even). We have tried to get him interested in toys – squeakers, teethers, balls, etc. etc. and any time he sees them, he cowers and sneaks off. Even if other dogs are playing with them and he’s not involved, they seem to really make him uncomfortable. Even rawhide bones and nylabones, he will only chew on for 5-10 minutes and then never looks at them again. He LOVES being walked. When we put him outside to do his thing, though, he immediately returns to the stoop and hardly ever sniffs around (oddly, when FIL keeps him while we’re on trips, he seldom will enter their house at all, sleeps outside even in the winter (in their garage)). His only other way of entertaining himself is to be petted by us or whoever is visiting us. He would happily sit down and be loved 24/7 without food breaks I think! He doesn’t scratch furniture, he never makes messes in the house, he doesn’t mess with Ina’s toys – in many ways he’s a dream dog. And very oddly for a border collie, he really seems to mostly sleep or eat, he doesn’t really try to play or entertain himself at all. He’s entirely reliant on us to entertain him via walks and occasional romps with dh (and with myself before I was pregnant, but he likes the romps better with dh).
BUT he has never liked Ina. We thought for a long time that it was because he’d never been around children, and didn’t feel comfortable/safe with her. We have always been careful that she is gentle with him, that she doesn’t pull ears or tails or pet too hard or anything. But he ignores her and avoids her at all costs. The only times we have ever heard him bark or growl, have been at her. He doesn’t growl at her often, but sometimes he will growl as she walks/runs past him (when she’s completely ignoring him and busy with some other game entirely). He always acts really submissive and sorry when he growls, and tries to get away from her vicinity immediately. Typically, he growls when she's trying to pet him and he's under her crib (which is where he's chosen to sleep) - or under the table or in a room with no exit while she enters it. So it seems to me that the growls are to get her away from him when he feels like his exits are blocked.
On the other hand, when Ina is sleeping or napping by herself, he'll come let us know when she's starting to wake up, and one night, he let her walk herself out of the bedroom still half-asleep after she'd had a night terror or something, supporting her all the way.
This is doubly odd because Ina is so very good with animals – the neighbor’s cat is really skittish but seeks Ina out; FIL’s dog (a huge husky) will do anything for her; his neighbors have a grouchy older dog who comes outside when he hears her voice, so she can love him through the fence … My parents’ dogs and horses etc. all really like her, people comment on how well animals respond to her. She assumes all animals love her and we really keep working on this - she knows not to approach strange dogs by now, thank goodness but for a long time, she'd try to run up to any dog she saw (!!
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We talked with a well-respected local dog trainer about the situation (we were at that point thinking that maybe this was a dominance issue with Smokey, thinking that he should be dominant over Ina). Her assessment was:
1. Use a clicker to encourage him to play with toys (?? This makes no sense to me, how do we get him to even take the toy so we can click, if he heads for safety every time he sees a toy even if another dog is playing with it). My sister got her dog used to toys by having her around other dogs and their toys and then spent a whole day with a squeaky toy, coaxing her to play with it. I have not tried the squeaky toy part of the equation, mostly because Smokey doesn’t show any interest in squirrels, rabbits, birds, etc. when we take walks. It’s almost like he’s selectively deaf – he certainly hears just fine as he demonstrates whenever his leash is touched and he comes bounding out, hoping it means we’re off for a walk.
2. Don’t discipline him for growling, that’s a safety/warning mechanism we don’t want him to quit using. Instead, let him have a “safe place” to go to and don’t pet him after growling or etc. either. (Not something we were tempted to do, BTW).
3. “He’s an older dog and just not used to children, he’ll come around as he realizes more and more that she is an excellent food source” – and to encourage that by having her help feed him and give treats.
4. Continue to keep an eye on them, but that she didn’t see any reason to expect him to bite, and that this doesn’t seem like a dominance issue at all to her.
So – 9 months later – no change.
We have observed, though, that his antipathy towards children is entirely restricted to Ina. He thinks my cousin’s little boy (5 ½ years vs. Ina’s 2 ½ years) is great and always greets him when he comes to our house, etc. When we take walks, he will veer towards families with children (even children younger than Ina, babes in arms practically) expecting to be loved by those children. We walked over to the school my cousin’s son attends one day to pick him up and take him home with us for the afternoon, and Smokey was very friendly and well-behaved, stayed sitting but really sought out pets from all the little kids who went by (including one who was the same height as Ina although obviously older).
We give him his treats at night, as part of Ina’s bedtime routine. As soon as we start brushing teeth etc., Smokey shadows me, with begging eyes, and periodically gives me little “remember me?” nudges as we go through the rest of the routine. I get the box of treats out of the pantry (Ina can’t open the door yet), and hold the box while she takes out 1-2 treats. He watches ME like a hawk the whole time, completely ignores her until the treat is in front of him, then wolfs it down and moves away. When we have Ina give him his food (morning and night), he again watches dh or myself (we open the food container and fill the scoop to the right level, Ina carries it to the dish and fills it), and completely ignores Ina. She’s not old enough/adept enough that she is opening the doors/containers yet, and since she loves him so much (and likes to feed him), this is probably a mixed blessing – while he sees us give Ina the food she then delivers to him, he’s also not being fed into oblivion by Ina either.
She knows commands, and will tell him to “Sit!” and “Stay!” He only obeys her if he is right next to us. The rest of the time, he scurries away from her and acts like he didn’t hear/understand the commands (he is always 100% responsive to us, even if he’s panicking over a thunderstorm or etc.). If she asks him to “sit” by us, and he sits, the entire time she’s petting him, he’s looking at us with one of two expressions – either abject love towards us for the delightful petting he thinks WE are giving him (not her), or else abject suffering and martyrdom because he’s allowing “the girl” to touch him.
Lately, when he’s growled at her, we will have him roll onto his back and have her rub his belly (which he loves when we do for him). He will take his paws and push her away while she’s trying to rub his belly, and then try to roll over and get up immediately. This really seems to me like it is, in fact, a dominance issue at least in part.
We go ‘rounds whether he’s dumb, or smart with this. And, whether he’ll ever decide he likes her. It’s so ironic, because if he would just hold still and let her pet him, he’d discover that he could spend probably half his waking hours being loved on by a little girl. When we get frustrated with him, and say that he’s foolish or etc., Ina is always quick to correct us. “No! He’s a Good Dog!” She still thinks he’s great despite his attitude (but this means that she also doesn’t believe us when we tell her he wants to be alone, doesn’t want her to pet him or try to play with him).
It seems like a no-brainer that at some point, he’ll figure out that she loves him and start responding to her. At this point, when we’ve tried to have her be more assertive with him (i.e., for a couple weeks we had her hold the treats and go to the other side of the kitchen and told her to “call Blue to you,” which she has tried in other situations) – she doesn’t do it. In that case, she just laughed and thought the goal was to try to hide the treat from him and get him to chase her (which he won’t do). She’s just too young, at not-quite-three, to really understand the mechanics of working with dogs, although she tries to mimic what we do with Blue. When we’re nearby and she gives him commands, we can reinforce them for her – but when we’re not close enough, he just ignores them.
It seems reasonable that by the time she’s 4 or 5, she’ll be capable of interacting more effectively with him, and he would (as a really quite meek and submissive dog) respond accordingly, I’d imagine.
It’s just so frustrating in the meantime. It’s not like he was “here first,” she was here the day he walked through our door so that shouldn’t be confusing him at all. We’re pregnant with our second child and I’m really curious to see whether he thinks this next little one walks on air, or if he thinks she’s just as awful as he seems to think Ina is. I think it’s a 50/50 proposition, probably.
I just don’t know what else we should do, how else to approach this. I don’t know whether it’s plain old jealousy he feels over the attention Ina receives – or if it’s a dominance thing – or what?? I’d suspect that he’d been teased by a little kid, based on his reactions to Ina, if he wasn’t so very happy to see and be petted by other children. And we know he hasn't been mistreated by her, because we watch so closely.
Last night, while he was adoring me for the expected treats (I was in the living room and Ina was already by the pantry door) -- I had dh get up to go give the treats, thinking that since Smokey thinks *I'm* the source, maybe having dh give Ina the treats would cause Smokey to actually see INA as the treat source. But, as soon as dh headed to the kitchen, Smokey was off like a flash after him (even though dh rarely gives Smokey treats at all), and Smokey sat and watched dh through the whole treat process like he watches me when I'm there. This seems to me like he's quite intelligent and aware of what's going on, he's just choosing to pretend that Ina doesn't exist and to avoid her at all costs. He may be meek and submissive, but maybe not so dumb (but then again, he still hasn't figured out how leashes work?).
Any suggestions? We do really like Smokey, and are glad we have him (I think a dog like this would have been unlikely to stay adopted from the pound, unless adopted into some pretty specific circumstances; he probably would have been euthanized at the pound instead – after all, most people assume border collies will be high energy, love to play, probably be good with kids and super-obedient (which he is with everyone but her)). Ina loves him to pieces …. It just is frustrating to watch their interactions (or rather, her attempts at interactions and his reaction to them).
I grew up with mostly Chesapeake Bay Retrievers (one border collie, and a couple hound dogs too throughout growing up), and dh grew up exclusively with standard dachshunds. So with the Chessies and the Dachsies you’ve got a good idea of the sort of dogs we’re familiar with – independent, intelligent, with a tendency towards dominance if the owner isn’t careful in training/approach. The border collie we had was also very intelligent and active and super-obedient/polite. All the border collies I’ve been around have been very active and energetic and intelligent.
We adopted a border collie almost two years ago, when our dd was 16 months. She was already walking well at that point, and LOVED dogs (still does). She was excited to have our own dog.
Smokey was 5 years old at the time. He’d lived on a relative’s ranch for three years, then with their daughter (a college student) for two more years before she couldn’t keep him anymore and was going to send him to the pound. At five years of age, he had hardly ever been around children, and having been on a working ranch, he hadn’t ever learned anything about toys or playing either. He’s a beautiful blue merle border collie, sweet disposition – and couldn’t herd anything. On the rare occasions that he tried, the animals wouldn’t respond anyway. They had hoped to keep him and use him for breeding, so kept him for quite awhile trying to make it work but he was just too meek. One of his littermates was similar in disposition, and when she was three, my sister adopted her. Sally took awhile to adjust but now is a very confident, well-adjusted happy dog and really great with children and strangers. When we heard about Smokey’s situation, we talked with my sister and she told us she thought we were right, that he would hopefully be a good fit for our family.
Smokey was very meek when we first got him (and still is except with small dogs, where he is confident). He attached quickly to dh and myself (moreso to dh even). We have tried to get him interested in toys – squeakers, teethers, balls, etc. etc. and any time he sees them, he cowers and sneaks off. Even if other dogs are playing with them and he’s not involved, they seem to really make him uncomfortable. Even rawhide bones and nylabones, he will only chew on for 5-10 minutes and then never looks at them again. He LOVES being walked. When we put him outside to do his thing, though, he immediately returns to the stoop and hardly ever sniffs around (oddly, when FIL keeps him while we’re on trips, he seldom will enter their house at all, sleeps outside even in the winter (in their garage)). His only other way of entertaining himself is to be petted by us or whoever is visiting us. He would happily sit down and be loved 24/7 without food breaks I think! He doesn’t scratch furniture, he never makes messes in the house, he doesn’t mess with Ina’s toys – in many ways he’s a dream dog. And very oddly for a border collie, he really seems to mostly sleep or eat, he doesn’t really try to play or entertain himself at all. He’s entirely reliant on us to entertain him via walks and occasional romps with dh (and with myself before I was pregnant, but he likes the romps better with dh).
BUT he has never liked Ina. We thought for a long time that it was because he’d never been around children, and didn’t feel comfortable/safe with her. We have always been careful that she is gentle with him, that she doesn’t pull ears or tails or pet too hard or anything. But he ignores her and avoids her at all costs. The only times we have ever heard him bark or growl, have been at her. He doesn’t growl at her often, but sometimes he will growl as she walks/runs past him (when she’s completely ignoring him and busy with some other game entirely). He always acts really submissive and sorry when he growls, and tries to get away from her vicinity immediately. Typically, he growls when she's trying to pet him and he's under her crib (which is where he's chosen to sleep) - or under the table or in a room with no exit while she enters it. So it seems to me that the growls are to get her away from him when he feels like his exits are blocked.
On the other hand, when Ina is sleeping or napping by herself, he'll come let us know when she's starting to wake up, and one night, he let her walk herself out of the bedroom still half-asleep after she'd had a night terror or something, supporting her all the way.
This is doubly odd because Ina is so very good with animals – the neighbor’s cat is really skittish but seeks Ina out; FIL’s dog (a huge husky) will do anything for her; his neighbors have a grouchy older dog who comes outside when he hears her voice, so she can love him through the fence … My parents’ dogs and horses etc. all really like her, people comment on how well animals respond to her. She assumes all animals love her and we really keep working on this - she knows not to approach strange dogs by now, thank goodness but for a long time, she'd try to run up to any dog she saw (!!
)We talked with a well-respected local dog trainer about the situation (we were at that point thinking that maybe this was a dominance issue with Smokey, thinking that he should be dominant over Ina). Her assessment was:
1. Use a clicker to encourage him to play with toys (?? This makes no sense to me, how do we get him to even take the toy so we can click, if he heads for safety every time he sees a toy even if another dog is playing with it). My sister got her dog used to toys by having her around other dogs and their toys and then spent a whole day with a squeaky toy, coaxing her to play with it. I have not tried the squeaky toy part of the equation, mostly because Smokey doesn’t show any interest in squirrels, rabbits, birds, etc. when we take walks. It’s almost like he’s selectively deaf – he certainly hears just fine as he demonstrates whenever his leash is touched and he comes bounding out, hoping it means we’re off for a walk.
2. Don’t discipline him for growling, that’s a safety/warning mechanism we don’t want him to quit using. Instead, let him have a “safe place” to go to and don’t pet him after growling or etc. either. (Not something we were tempted to do, BTW).
3. “He’s an older dog and just not used to children, he’ll come around as he realizes more and more that she is an excellent food source” – and to encourage that by having her help feed him and give treats.
4. Continue to keep an eye on them, but that she didn’t see any reason to expect him to bite, and that this doesn’t seem like a dominance issue at all to her.
So – 9 months later – no change.
We have observed, though, that his antipathy towards children is entirely restricted to Ina. He thinks my cousin’s little boy (5 ½ years vs. Ina’s 2 ½ years) is great and always greets him when he comes to our house, etc. When we take walks, he will veer towards families with children (even children younger than Ina, babes in arms practically) expecting to be loved by those children. We walked over to the school my cousin’s son attends one day to pick him up and take him home with us for the afternoon, and Smokey was very friendly and well-behaved, stayed sitting but really sought out pets from all the little kids who went by (including one who was the same height as Ina although obviously older).
We give him his treats at night, as part of Ina’s bedtime routine. As soon as we start brushing teeth etc., Smokey shadows me, with begging eyes, and periodically gives me little “remember me?” nudges as we go through the rest of the routine. I get the box of treats out of the pantry (Ina can’t open the door yet), and hold the box while she takes out 1-2 treats. He watches ME like a hawk the whole time, completely ignores her until the treat is in front of him, then wolfs it down and moves away. When we have Ina give him his food (morning and night), he again watches dh or myself (we open the food container and fill the scoop to the right level, Ina carries it to the dish and fills it), and completely ignores Ina. She’s not old enough/adept enough that she is opening the doors/containers yet, and since she loves him so much (and likes to feed him), this is probably a mixed blessing – while he sees us give Ina the food she then delivers to him, he’s also not being fed into oblivion by Ina either.
She knows commands, and will tell him to “Sit!” and “Stay!” He only obeys her if he is right next to us. The rest of the time, he scurries away from her and acts like he didn’t hear/understand the commands (he is always 100% responsive to us, even if he’s panicking over a thunderstorm or etc.). If she asks him to “sit” by us, and he sits, the entire time she’s petting him, he’s looking at us with one of two expressions – either abject love towards us for the delightful petting he thinks WE are giving him (not her), or else abject suffering and martyrdom because he’s allowing “the girl” to touch him.
Lately, when he’s growled at her, we will have him roll onto his back and have her rub his belly (which he loves when we do for him). He will take his paws and push her away while she’s trying to rub his belly, and then try to roll over and get up immediately. This really seems to me like it is, in fact, a dominance issue at least in part.
We go ‘rounds whether he’s dumb, or smart with this. And, whether he’ll ever decide he likes her. It’s so ironic, because if he would just hold still and let her pet him, he’d discover that he could spend probably half his waking hours being loved on by a little girl. When we get frustrated with him, and say that he’s foolish or etc., Ina is always quick to correct us. “No! He’s a Good Dog!” She still thinks he’s great despite his attitude (but this means that she also doesn’t believe us when we tell her he wants to be alone, doesn’t want her to pet him or try to play with him).
It seems like a no-brainer that at some point, he’ll figure out that she loves him and start responding to her. At this point, when we’ve tried to have her be more assertive with him (i.e., for a couple weeks we had her hold the treats and go to the other side of the kitchen and told her to “call Blue to you,” which she has tried in other situations) – she doesn’t do it. In that case, she just laughed and thought the goal was to try to hide the treat from him and get him to chase her (which he won’t do). She’s just too young, at not-quite-three, to really understand the mechanics of working with dogs, although she tries to mimic what we do with Blue. When we’re nearby and she gives him commands, we can reinforce them for her – but when we’re not close enough, he just ignores them.
It seems reasonable that by the time she’s 4 or 5, she’ll be capable of interacting more effectively with him, and he would (as a really quite meek and submissive dog) respond accordingly, I’d imagine.
It’s just so frustrating in the meantime. It’s not like he was “here first,” she was here the day he walked through our door so that shouldn’t be confusing him at all. We’re pregnant with our second child and I’m really curious to see whether he thinks this next little one walks on air, or if he thinks she’s just as awful as he seems to think Ina is. I think it’s a 50/50 proposition, probably.
I just don’t know what else we should do, how else to approach this. I don’t know whether it’s plain old jealousy he feels over the attention Ina receives – or if it’s a dominance thing – or what?? I’d suspect that he’d been teased by a little kid, based on his reactions to Ina, if he wasn’t so very happy to see and be petted by other children. And we know he hasn't been mistreated by her, because we watch so closely.
Last night, while he was adoring me for the expected treats (I was in the living room and Ina was already by the pantry door) -- I had dh get up to go give the treats, thinking that since Smokey thinks *I'm* the source, maybe having dh give Ina the treats would cause Smokey to actually see INA as the treat source. But, as soon as dh headed to the kitchen, Smokey was off like a flash after him (even though dh rarely gives Smokey treats at all), and Smokey sat and watched dh through the whole treat process like he watches me when I'm there. This seems to me like he's quite intelligent and aware of what's going on, he's just choosing to pretend that Ina doesn't exist and to avoid her at all costs. He may be meek and submissive, but maybe not so dumb (but then again, he still hasn't figured out how leashes work?).
Any suggestions? We do really like Smokey, and are glad we have him (I think a dog like this would have been unlikely to stay adopted from the pound, unless adopted into some pretty specific circumstances; he probably would have been euthanized at the pound instead – after all, most people assume border collies will be high energy, love to play, probably be good with kids and super-obedient (which he is with everyone but her)). Ina loves him to pieces …. It just is frustrating to watch their interactions (or rather, her attempts at interactions and his reaction to them).
I just read the title, and the only thought that popped into my head was "is there a such thing as a NORMAL Border collie??"
and is still not that into it, so we don't push it.
