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Here is another example of my border collie’s intelligence which happened this morning whilst walking him. Anyone who trains Border Collies, especially professional trainers know that they are the one of the easiest breeds to train. As they become more advanced in their training, they can develop difficulties because they start to think ahead of the trainer, forward plan and think for themselves and then break the training rules.

For example, the border collie/sheepdog will start to realise they don’t have to go up to the top of the field and across at a 90-degree angles. They think, well I can just do a diagonal and cut straight through over to there instead. They think for themselves such as – why do I have to cross here all the time when I can cross the side of this road from here instead of over there.

At the time of writing I was walking my border collie who’s well trained and I see two joggers in the distance behind us. At the correct point, I had stopped and asked the dog to sit facing forwards. But because he could hear them coming and talking, he broke rank and he decided to look back at them approaching at a 45-degree angle with his head turned around.

In order to break this off skew position I asked him to move and walk a bit further along and re-sit, but again he wanted to sit in the direction he was hearing the noise approaching because it was approaching too slow for his liking, running joggers, chatting.

I did it a 3^rd time but he insisted he wanted to stay in the 45-degree position while sitting so he could see what was approaching. I didn’t try to correct this any further. I let it happen, and the joggers went past. We then we proceed to walk on.

My training concerns

As we walked on and as a matter of retraining and reflection came upon me about this fault which resides with me as handler. I then asked the dog to sit suddenly and then walk again – it was a do as he is told moment on my part. And then I repeated to suddenly sit and walk again as I request it. And then again sit. And then walk again etc.

I done that maybe 6 times, whether I should or shouldn’t have. I did it. And we walked on and thought no more of it.

When the dog sits, I want the dog to sit pointing in the correct direction and position that we’re going in and not to sit and decide to break rank and turn around the other way and see what’s coming. That’s something new I will work on because I’ve never trained him to sit forwards with a noise approaching from behind.

Anyway, we walked on.

However, on the way back an hour later, something happened, which is a demonstration of the intelligence of a sheepdog.

I don’t think this would have happened with another breed because a sheepdog/border collie wants to please and has a high level of pattern recognition at work in them. As we returned to that location, we crossed over the road in that vicinity and as we mounted the pavements he went into the down position and stayed there. He was offering me some sort of appeasement behaviour or a gesture of, I know I did wrong he was saying to me. I interpreted it as if he was saying, look, I’m being a good boy now and I am doing what I should have done for you. I’m making the effort. I got the message. Please be happy with me. He just wanted to stay in that down on the pavement position, completely down.

I asked him to come up into the sit stance in order to come out of that down position, but he wouldn’t.

I gave him a pull and said come, move. But he still wouldn’t move. It’s never happened before. For a second I thought there was something wrong with him.

I gave him a little tug on his body harness to lift him up, to indicate to go, to come up. But he still stayed down, I firmly said sit but he still wouldn’t budge so I used the move word firmly and loud. Move means move in my dog training and that’s when he moved out of this down position.

As I walked on with him, I reflected upon what just happened. I believe the dog detected that was where there was friction occurred an hour earlier. That was where something went wrong or was not correct, there was no negativity on my part. It was just, some forced loud words, it was a forced verbal sit, down, up, walk, sit down, up series of commands.

He knew he didn’t do something correct and he was offering his correction later on the way back by offering the down stance for me and specifically emphasising that for me by being stubborn, which I thought was beautiful and endearing. We can’t directly see into the mind of a dog. We can only read their behaviour and their body language. The fact that he did that was touching.

No rewards involved

I didn’t reward him then, but I did when we got back home, he got fuss and treats, which is beside the point. Even in dog training things happen outside of the norm or expected. And any good dog trainer which I try strive to be will notice odd or unexpected things occurring. In all my years of owning other breeds of dog, I’ve never encountered that before. Border collies are well known for offering appeasement gestures behaviours.

There is a difficulty when the border collie decides to do things their own way, they make decisions to bypass the training and just do it their way. Why do I have to go there and across to there when I can just cut straight across the field here? The sheepdog actually calculates a better way of doing it and that gets in the way of sheepdog training.

And just a point to note, I’m not a sheepdog trainer, but I’ve seen feedback, where they act differently to the training as it suits them. Sometimes they step out of their training to meet the needs of what is happening in their eyes which is not always right.

Another example is when we always cross the road at a certain point habitually every day and if I decide not to cross there and cross at a different point or continue on, the dog will sit down or he will pull me to that point where we normally cross. He’s basically saying we don’t go that way. This is the way we go and if I say no, he just pulls back a little. You see little moments of intelligence just shine up.

Untrained dogs run on roar impulse. And an untrained dog has patterns, expectations, habits and boundaries that it identifies to suit itself.

Training border collies to be a house-trained pet does not suppress its working energy levels or behaviours. It just reorganises the dog better to fit in.

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