29/01/2023
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BORDER COLLIES AND THE MORE AUTISTIC MIND
For the greater part of my life I have owned, lived and worked with Border collies, and striven to get to the heart of not just what makes them tick as dogs, but also makes them so different, in so many ways, to any other breed. And of particular fascination to me, always, was why dogs who could be so supremely intelligent and rewarding to own as companions could also be so psychologically complex, and prone to such a wide range of different obsessions, neuroses and anxieties, linked to their surrounding sensory and social world.
Collectively, and when exhibited in more extreme forms, such traits have long given the Border collie a reputation as a 'problem pet'. And also the breed - according to some pet insurance surveys - most likely to be referred to behaviourists with some kind of more serious psychological issue. It is common for them to be written off as mad, bad, or otherwise mentally unhinged. Whereas I tend to see them as just about the most fundamentally misunderstood dog breed on earth, whose main challenge in life is simply finding owners who can both better understand, and live with, their more unique type of canine mind.
MORE AUTISTIC THINKING AND TRAITS IN COLLIES
Those of you familiar with my books on the breed will be aware of how I came to the conclusion that Border collies have characteristics and traits often quite similar to those found in autistic humans. Which better explains everything from their more widespread sensory and social issues to their exceptional intelligence, particularly concerning feats of memory. Collies, much like ‘autistic savants’ in the human population, are capable of memorising huge amounts of information in a specific field, of a kind that would defeat many of their fellow canine peers– like the names of vast numbers of toys, or a wealth of different human words or commands.
Of course such seemingly ‘autistic’ characteristics found in dogs, or collies more specifically, cannot not be more directly compared to those found in human autism (which remains an infinitely more complex mental condition). How they originate, or are displayed, is likely to be something far more species-specific. But at the same time it is remarkable how many key traits of autism found in people can also be mirrored in Border collies.
To name just some of these: Tendencies towards more obsessive/ritualistic patterns of behaviour; intense focus on singular items; Hyperactivity; Hypersensitivity to sound, movement, light and touch; Noise phobias and phobias about specific mechanical devices; Fear or dislike of any change in routine and a greater desire for 'sameness’; Self-stimulatory behaviours; Anxiety disorders; Higher social anxiety or reserve; Problems with social recognition and connection; Higher need for control and obsession WITH control; More reactive/explosive patterns of aggression, which may often seem harder to better predict or contain.
What I have also found is that people with a more personal, or lengthy, experience of human autism themselves can often more immediately recognise the symptomatic parallels in their dogs.
HOW DID COLLIES BECOME A MORE ‘AUTISTIC’ BREED?
Of course no one went out of their way to make Border collies a more autistic type of dog or breed, in its thinking, behaviour or basic mental outlook, or are likely to have even considered this possibility over a century or more back in their basic genetic foundation. Not least because autism wasn’t even recognised as a condition in humans then.
It is something far more likely to have happened by accident than design, in that many of the qualities that made collies the best sheepdogs – like a more obsessive and compulsive mind, readily focused on a singular task, higher sensory awareness, sensitivity and reactivity, and a willingness to repeat the same endless rituals of behaviour (eye, stalk, chase, herd) again and again with no other more tangible reward in this for the dog, other than the repetition of the ritual itself – can be recognised as more autistic qualities, too.
GREATER INSIGHT
The possibility that dogs – and more specifically collies – could have a more autistic way of thinking, behaving or perceiving their surrounding world has been, to me, a vital tool in better understanding them more generally as a breed. Along with the realisation that dogs cannot just be seen, or judged, in terms of the ways they do, or do not, meet our expectations of their behaviour. They, too, may have their own inner mental vulnerabilities, struggles or challenges that drive them more blindly to do certain things, or which stand in the way of them acting any differently. And until we can work out what these are, and why, we cannot hope to lead better lives with them.
People who also ask, not unreasonably, what actual 'scientific evidence' proves that autism of any kind can exist in dogs may not be aware that there is still no scientific evidence - by way of any more incontrovertible test or scan - that proves autism exists in humans either.
And more than 70 years after psychiatrist Leo Kanner first identified the phenomenon of 'autism' in children, it remains a condition predominantly diagnosed via observing, in individuals, a set series of mental traits and behaviours which autistics commonly share, and then placing them on a spectrum of lesser or greater severity.
I see collies in the same way, and with their own spectrum of more species-specific autistic functioning or behaviour, that can vary from the mild or even negligible to the more extreme. And the more extreme the dog, the more issues they will always have and the harder they will be to live with. Owners can so often – and so unfairly - be blamed for having dogs like these, when the problem really began with the kind of mind the dog was born with.
Meanwhile anyone wanting to know far more about the ‘autistic’ nature of collies, and how this may affect all elements of their daily lives, management and training will find this covered more extensively in my BORDER COLLIES: A BREED APART trilogy of books. Links to where you can get them here:
All titles: https://performancedog.co.uk/product-category/books-and-dvds/authors/carol-price/
And in the USA via: https://www.dogwise.com/ # and https://www.cleanrun.com/
And in Australia from: https://gameondogs.com.au/
All text © Carol Price 2023
