The BorderCollie Consultant

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The BorderCollie Consultant Border collie ABTC registered clinical animal behaviourist (CAB) - kind, positive behaviour modification & training. https://form.jotform.com/213343120138038

Helping collies of all ages with behaviour problems. Working remotely or in person - Lincs, Leics, Rutland, Cambs, Notts, West Norfolk.

This is the very handsome 11 month old Bowie, who first came to see me for:- Car chasing- Chewing household fixtures & f...
30/06/2025

This is the very handsome 11 month old Bowie, who first came to see me for:

- Car chasing
- Chewing household fixtures & fittings
- Inability to settle, which was worse for a couple of hours after eating
- Compulsive digging in his water bowl
- Resource guarding food from the other household dog
- Extreme arousal with jumping and biting when his owner was preparing his food
- He would also eat very quickly with great big gulps

These sorts of behaviours can often be linked to gastrointestinal discomfort, but Bowie didn’t show any of the common physical signs of this, such as diarrhoea or loose faeces, vomiting, passing wind or burping.

We implemented a behaviour plan and eliminated the car chasing and digging in his water bowl, but the other behaviours, although less intense, were still present.

So we asked the vet to test for giardia and started to think about food intolerances. Giardia is a tiny parasite that attacks the lining of the intestines and causes very watery, strong smelling diarrhoea. It can cause pain and discomfort in dogs and a wide range of pain-induced behaviours such as those we were seeing in Bowie. And with the brain-gut link that scientists are learning more about every day, it’s not surprising that an attack on the gut can completely upset behaviour.

However, giardia can be present in the absence of medical symptoms, which is why we tested Bowie. The test came back positive, and Bowie is about to end his course of treatment. Unfortunately, giardia can cause damage to the gut leading to ongoing issues, and is very easy to re-ingest causing further infections.

So although we are seeing some signs of improvement, such as his increased ability to settle after eating, it’s going to be a long road helping Bowie to recover before we start to see signs of behavioural improvement. But at least we know what is causing his behaviour and how to help him. 🙂

An evening trip to the beach for Ozzy. 🙂I’m so proud of him - he’s a real worrier but copes with everything really well....
29/06/2025

An evening trip to the beach for Ozzy. 🙂
I’m so proud of him - he’s a real worrier but copes with everything really well. So long as he’s with me, he’s happy. 😍
Pattern games such as Look At That have really helped him, as has working really hard on relaxation and settle, helping him to feel safe. He’s so easy to take out - no bother at all.

29/06/2025

Border collie repetitive behaviour - also called compulsive or stereotypical behaviour. Here Cami is biting at invisible flies, a condition thought to be linked to gastrointestinal discomfort. It’s rarely due to boredom, herding or epilepsy, as many people believe. Read more here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3500118/

29/06/2025

This is Cami who I’m working with for her abnormal repetitive behaviours, which are relatively common in collies. She will bite and snap at invisible flies and grab grass on walks, as well as spend 80% of her waking hours in the house running from window to window, sometimes striking the windows with her paws. I love working with the owners of dogs with these behaviours. It’s like detective work, going through all the potential causes to try to find out what initiated and is maintaining the behaviour. Then putting in place behaviour plans to help resolve it. Interestingly, fly biting at invisible flies is often related to gastrointestinal discomfort - it’s thought that stretching out the neck feels nice and provides relief, and in this video we can see Cami gulping and licking excessively. So this is one of the factors that we’re looking into. 🙂 It’s rarely due to boredom or herding, as many trainers will claim.

This is Willow, a stunningly pretty little collie that I first met back in 2023 when she was a young pup for some behavi...
28/06/2025

This is Willow, a stunningly pretty little collie that I first met back in 2023 when she was a young pup for some behaviour and training sessions.

Willow would resource guard her food, her crate and her toys, as well as be unpredictable when her owner was trying to train her with treats. She would also lunge and bark at men and traffic. There were no physical signs of pain - no limping, hopping or strange gaits.

There were a lot of potential factors linked to Willow’s behaviour:

- She had dislocated her shoulder at one point before I saw her, which won’t have helped her relationship with people and vets, and may have been causing ongoing discomfort
- She was attacked by another dog which is likely to have made her anxious around dogs
- She often had soft stools, making discomfort in her tummy a possibility
- Her resource guarding worsened considerably due to the phantom pregnancies she suffered from

So it was difficult to unpick what could have been going on, and a vet behaviourist was involved as well.

We did a lot of work with her and improved things a little, and I mentioned to the referring vet several times that I was concerned that she could be in pain due to her intense behaviour. The vet didn’t think she was in pain, but did trial her on pain meds which improved things a little. She was then also trialled on anxiety medication which improved things still further, but we never really saw the improvement we should have seen.

Her owner recently got in touch to say that she finally pushed for x-rays even though the vet still didn’t think it was necessary, to find that poor little Willow had been living with severe hip dysplasia. ☹️ It would almost certainly have been causing her pain from when she was young, and is very likely to have been causing or contributing to her behaviour problems. She’s going to have a hip replacement next month in one hip and hope that the same operation in the other won’t be necessary.

It’s cases like this that make me realise how often pain can be present, even in very young collies with behaviour problems, when there are no obvious physical symptoms. And how important it is to push back to get them thoroughly checked, even when vets (and often owners) don’t think there is anything wrong.

It’s difficult for vets to find pain or discomfort in the ten minutes they have with a patient. The dogs are, in the case of collies, either fearful or excited and these strong emotions may override any signs of pain, which is what the vet is looking for when they examine them.

I’m gutted that for Willow I took the vet at their word and didn’t keep pushing further at the time. But well done Clair Bradford Farr, Willow’s lovely owner, for pushing for the x-rays, and for getting in touch to let me know. I’ll be thinking of you all when she goes in for her operation. ❤️

Today I met this beautiful little girl, Gracie. She’s struggling with generalised anxiety, noise sensitivity, not wantin...
26/06/2025

Today I met this beautiful little girl, Gracie.
She’s struggling with generalised anxiety, noise sensitivity, not wanting to go for walks, or suddenly wanting to go home if she does go for walks. I’ll be working with her owners and her vet for the next few months, to help Gracie become more confident and see if we can get her enjoying her walks again. ❤️

24/06/2025

Ozzy and the scary barbecue! Ozzy is still going through adolescence and is a rather anxious boy in general so any changes in his environment, such as the appearance of the barbecue, can cause this reaction. Feed buckets where they shouldn’t be, piles of branches on walks, weather vanes etc etc. I help him by talking to him and showing him that I’m not scared at all. I go up to the item and he usually comes with me and realises it’s fine. In this instance he got brave and went to inspect it himself. This is very common in collies from about 6 months plus, and usually just a phase. But if your dog is reacting to people or other dogs in this way, you may need help to ensure that you don’t make it worse. Sorry for all the loud chatter but Flo was talking to me. 😂

23/06/2025

Ozzy blackberry picking! He watched me pick and eat a few then started to help himself. A great example of social learning!

Sudden increased reactivity to sounds can be a sign of pain! Since a scientific study carried out by Lopes Fagundes et ...
23/06/2025

Sudden increased reactivity to sounds can be a sign of pain! Since a scientific study carried out by Lopes Fagundes et al in 2018 (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2018.00017/full) we are aware that sound sensitivity can be related to pain in dogs.

The following case study demonstrates this really well and also shows how difficult it can be to find the source of the pain. Little Molly was lucky that her owners took her to the vet to get her checked and that the vet decided to check her teeth properly and managed to spot her painful throat.

CASE STUDY:

Molly, a female entire 1 year old border collie
Reactivity towards traffic, sound sensitivity and inability to settle.

PROBLEM BEHAVIOURS

Barking and lunging at traffic, including in the car while travelling, pulling on the lead, excessive barking in the home, at animals on the TV, household appliances (vacuum cleaner, mop, hairdryer, blender, gardening tools such as a shovel), cars driving past, inability to settle in new environments (she would pant and whine if the owners stopped to talk to someone on walks, and was impossible to take into pubs or cafes due to barking/whining).

I’m still working with Molly and she’s a wonderful little dog. We are working on her behaviour and training plan, and she is making a lot of improvement. However, she has suffered from many infections in her short life, from urinary tract infections, a**l gland issues, eye infections and most recently tonsilitis. So a lowered immunity is on our list of differential causes of her behaviour problems, and we’re in close contact with Molly’s vet to determine if there is anything ongoing.

However, for the purposes of this article, it was her tonsilitis that highlighted just how much pain can affect behaviour.

DIAGNOSIS

I’d been working with Molly’s owners for a few weeks when, between, our catch ups, Molly’s reactivity to noises, household appliances and triggers on the TV suddenly became much worse. Her caregivers immediately realised, due to our work together, that pain somewhere could be causing this escalation and took her to the vet. When they couldn’t find anything, they decided to sedate Molly to properly check her teeth to make sure there wasn’t a dental cause. While examining her teeth, they happened to notice that her throat was extremely sore and inflamed and that she had severe tonsilitis, which they never would have seen without sedating her.

OUTCOME

Molly was put on strong antibiotics, and her behaviour gradually returned to its previous levels – but this case is so important to highlight how sudden changes in behaviour can be caused by pain. And it also shows how easy it would have been to miss this – tonsilitis isn’t something vets routinely check for.

Work with Molly continues, and after visiting a pain clinic (the wonderful MSK Vets in Melton Mowbray: https://mskvets.co.uk ), we have found that Molly has a chronic strain injury in her back left leg. Their equipment, a force plate treadmill, calculated that she was putting 10-15% less weight on her left hind leg than her right, and when the vet was checking her muscles with each leg extended she gave him a tap with her snout when he put pressure on the left side. She is trialling pain medication and will go on to have it checked by ultrasound if it doesn’t improve.

22/06/2025

With storms forecast over the next few days, make sure that you try to pair the thunder and lightning with something good if possible - see me overshadowing the thunder with something exciting and fun in the video. I was talking loudly to drown out the thunder a little, which you should be able to hear in the background.
Ideally don't walk in storms and don't let dogs out in storms at night - the sudden loud bursts of thunder can be very frightening and cause lasting phobias. And the lightning can also be frightening. If you are caught out by an unexpected storm, as I was in this video, then this is the best way to handle it.

It’s hot and a great time to practise your “settle” training because dogs rest more in the heat! One of the most effecti...
21/06/2025

It’s hot and a great time to practise your “settle” training because dogs rest more in the heat! One of the most effective ways of teaching settle is to reward your dog when they are naturally settled.
Save a portion of their food and aim to use it all by placing a piece quietly between their paws when they are relaxed and settled. Don’t say anything or make eye contact as that might encourage them to get up. Just place the food between their paws whenever you notice them lying quietly. If they are asleep, just leave it between their paws for when they wake up.
If the immediately jump up, then try a quiet, calm “good dog”. Give them that attention for doing what you want and over time you’ll see that they start to offer settling quietly instead of barking for attention or doing other unwanted behaviours. 🙂

It was wonderful to meet the lovely Matilda on Thursday, who I've been working with by video call with since she was a p...
21/06/2025

It was wonderful to meet the lovely Matilda on Thursday, who I've been working with by video call with since she was a puppy. Her caregivers just call me when they need a chat and I charge £60 for an hour (which usually runs over and that's fine), answering any concerns and discussing training.
Her owners were travelling from their home in Cornwall to a family party in Edinburgh and they called in to see me for a couple of hours in Lincolnshire to do some in-person training!
She's a beautiful little dog and we've just worked on puppy training and guiding her through adolescence! 😍

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