I’ve taken on a new puppy, about 9 weeks old now. I’m unsure of the exact cross. I think dad was a smallish collie, and mum looked like a cavalier / springer cross of some kind.

It will clearly be a high energy dog. But I have read some horror stories about sprollies needing more stimulation than either collies or spaniels alone. So far she seems to be living up to the rep! She gets bored very quick.

I have big fields out back, and work from home, but I’m struggling to keep this puppy busy indoors. The crappy weather (she doesn’t like the rain) combined with her being slightly scared of outdoors still, means it’s hard to wear her out completely. She can’t be trusted with free reign of the house, and there are so only many hours of the day I can sit in front of her and play with her toys or teach her basic stuff like sit and fetch. She doesn’t seem too impressed with netflix.

Another problem I have is getting her outside to pee, and we have had a few accidents. It is raining a lot! Can’t really blame her – I’m trying crate training, but she hates the crate, and won’t go in even with super tasty treats. To her, it’s an evil prison.

Anyone been through this, or know any cavalier collies?

Generally if you want to tire out a collie I’d suggest some of these

and lots of space

Just stick with it and be super patient. She’s only 9 weeks old and probably still missing her mum and siblings whilst adapting to a new environment. Everything will be scary at first but it’s inportant that she is introduced to everything slowly but surely. And keep playing! She’s a beautiful little dog and she’s looking to you to make her happy! I’m more than a little jealous.

How did you come across her? A rescue?

Make them think. Hide food about the house and training. Exercise will just make them fitter

Stick with the crate also, it’s worthit. Our now one year old even gets in his crate as we sit down for dinner or any food for that matter. Door never gets shut.

No advice but awwww! She’s super cute! 😀

Make them think. Hide food about the house and training. Exercise will just make them fitter

Yeah, this. We had our dog doing the shell game with three cups and a treat. He had to put his paw on the right one. Ten minutes of that and his brain got tired.

The good news is after 10 years they calm down.

I just came here to demand more pics

Daaawwwwwwww

More pics needed. You can’t expect advice if we can’t appraise her properly first……

Aw, little sweety. We just rescued a 5 yr old collie cross and he is absolutley brilliant, chases a tennis ball like a whippet on speed then sleeps on your lap all evening.

As above tire the brain first then exercise ….lots af simple games and a bit of training ….don’t go too mad on the training at that age though …keep with the crate training ….it should be a safe place for them …never make it a punishment or even a holding pen

Any suggestions for brain games for a 9 week old? I have a kong feeding toy, tried teaching sit and fetch. And the hide a treat in a cup but I don’t think she has the attention span for this, she will generally lose interest in any game within a few seconds.

Breaking one of these in at present.

[/url]2015-11-08 15.14.53 by simon bach, on Flickr[/img]

Can’t sit still. Puppies are just hard work. Use the crate, pop them in when you need to. Perhaps get a rug to pop over. Roster the whole family for 1 hour shifts. We have three kids which helps. Ours is just nine weeks but loves the garden day and night. Will wander around with me endlessly.

Tearing up a chew toy as I write this.

Re games – its mostly interactive. Ball in garden, rope toys tug of war. Lots of sniffing – looking for wildlife. Did get some chews that will occupy for a short time but you have to amuse them.

Better just pop out again now.

Aerobie and sausage chunks. Got to make them run and make them come back. If that fails, then play doggie in the middle. Wait a few months for the bones to harden properly though.

Any suggestions for brain games for a 9 week old? I have a kong feeding toy, tried teaching sit and fetch. And the hide a treat in a cup but I don’t think she has the attention span for this, she will generally lose interest in any game within a few seconds.

Young puppies have a ridiculously short attention span. The key is to repeat things over and over throughout the days, rather than try and do it all in one go as they get distracted by everything. The more they repeat sit, fetch or whatever they are learning the better they get at it. Praise it each time it does what you want and sooner or later it will realise that you expect it to do something, and you will reward/praise it for doing it.

We had a collie until last year, and got a poodle in September, who is now 20 weeks. The collie was much better at working out what we wanted, then applying that everywhere, the poodle seems to have to learn what we want all over again in each different location.

As for games, we found changing the toys around helped loads, and whenever the puppy starts doing something it should be doing getting it’s attention back with a toy seems to work.

Any suggestions for brain games for a 9 week old?

I taught my collie pup a very strong retrieve at 8 weeks old, and focused on basic training. Give yourself a task for the week, for you and pup to learn – you’ll be surprised how tired a dog will get from working mentally, over working physically.

Collie pups can be a real handful, some are easy, some are mental. Rickon (my oldest collie) didn’t stop doing things until he was 6 months old, he woulnd’t sit down anywhere – he was constantly busy exploring.

Get yourself Gwen Bailey’s book, and follow it as if it were a bible.

Get yourself to a Puppy School http://www.puppyschool.co.uk/puppy-training-class-locator.html

I’ve trained with a lot of trainers and handlers, and I have a lot of time and respect for the Puppy School guys… hell, I almost become one.

You’ll learn *a lot* from classes, go now – while she’s young, they’re eager, have no bad habits – just behaviors that aren’t bounded yet. *You* need to bound them, once they become habits, then you’re doing something entirely different with counter re-enforcement.

The key is to repeat things over and over throughout the days, rather than try and do it all in one go as they get distracted by everything. The more they repeat sit, fetch or whatever they are learning the better they get at it.

You’ll learn *a lot* from classes, go now – while she’s young, they’re eager, have no bad habits – just behaviors that aren’t bounded yet. *You* need to bound them, once they become habits, then you’re doing something entirely different with counter re-enforcement.

I forgot to mention the most important things but the other posters have nailed it. Much of this ‘play’ is really training. They need training from day one, never too early to start. Ours has a good sit after 10 days and will recall haphazardly.

Puppy book and trying classes is great advice too, or the nightmare will continue indefinitely. Probably takes more effort than most realise, especially in the first 12 months, if you want a decent dog at the end. But it can also be very rewarding and they are great companions.

To tire out any working dog you need to exercise three things.

The body, mind and there nose.

What I do with bobs is make her sit and wait in one room whilst I go into another and hide either a toy or a treat then tell her to go find. She loves it and it’s training her at the same time.

Another little game we also play is hiding a treat under a cup, I’ll normally put a few plastic cups down and get her to show me which one its under.

I’d avoid any tug of war type games as this doesn’t help your chances of teaching them to drop things that they shouldn’t have.

A quick update… every morsel of food is now earned via training and it’s working great. It doesn’t seem like anything is sinking in. She might be quite dumb! But regardless she is sleeping like a log half of the time, still lively but much less aggressive when awake.

I’m teaching sit, turn around, touch the hand and drop, and I think she is adopting the multiple choice strategy of just sitting every time and winning 25% of the time. But she is sleeping on my lap right now. So something is going on!

Young puppy training is just reinforcement over & over. When they do what you want, say “good sit/ good drop” etc, loads of praise and a treat.

P.s don’t listen to me though, my 18 month old working cocker is having a teenager phase at the moment. Once he gets a sight of a pigeon/pheasant nothing I say matters for 10 minutes.

I’d avoid any tug of war type games as this doesn’t help your chances of teaching them to drop things that they shouldn’t have.

We have a 4 month old Jack Russell who is responding brilliantly to training. We’ve been working on ‘leave it’, and she’ll reliably drop a toy on command, even during a game of tug-of-war.

Different strokes for different folks, i suppose. Any excuse:

A couple of months ago:

A couple of days ago:

I’d avoid any tug of war type games as this doesn’t help your chances of teaching them to drop things that they shouldn’t have.

That’s not true, I’m afraid.

It can actually be a really good way of teaching give or drop. The key is when you want something off them, don’t make it into a game for them. Distract them with something of higher value – food, or another squeaky toy.

Is that a very tiny Jack Russell, or just very large leaves?

I forgot to mention the most important things but the other posters have nailed it. Much of this ‘play’ is really training. They need training from day one, never too early to start. Ours has a good sit after 10 days and will recall haphazardly.

Puppy book and trying classes is great advice too, or the nightmare will continue indefinitely. Probably takes more effort than most realise, especially in the first 12 months, if you want a decent dog at the end. But it can also be very rewarding and they are great companions.

Yeah, good point, play along with everything else they encounter helps shape them into the dog they will become.

When we were training our collie as a puppy (six years ago now so the advice may have changed) we were told that the first 16 weeks of their life is the most important for socialisation. During this time they are at their most open to new sights and sounds, so introduce them to as much as possible, and make sure they see things more than once.

Things like traffic, construction work, school children, buses, trams, trains, joggers, cyclists, loud bangs, fireworks, laughter, breaking glass sounds, lawnmowers, people in hats, big coats, walking sticks, walking frames, playgrounds, livestock, running water, other pets any anything else they may encounter in their lifetime. It sounds like a lot of work but it really is worth it, collies and collie crosses that are under socialised can be really hard work. (Any dog can, but collies with their high intelligence and high energy more so than most).

As others have said, training is really important as it not only helps teach you how to teach your dog, but also helps you to develop a strong bond. We did the Kennel club puppy then good citizen bronze silver and gold classes before he was a year old, and the wife did some rally obedience training too. We also tried agility, but didn’t really take to it. The trainers and other dog owners can offer advice with any queries you may have.

I would also strongly recommend reading Control Unleashed Puppy

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Control-Unleashed-The-Puppy-Program/dp/B0077BTNFS

And looking into clicker training. Our dog was taught no end of stuff using the clicker, and offered some behavior that we were also able to get him to do on command using the clicker.

we were told that the first 16 weeks of their life is the most important for socialisation

Yep, that’s still the case.. Although I think you meant to say desensitization.

Get a fireworks DVD and play it often in the house, if the pup wasn’t out and didn’t hear any fireworks in the last couple of weeks, he’ll likely become scared of them, as the first time he’ll hear them he will be a year old. And that’s really odd for a dog to hear something brand new, lound and confusing. You’ll find those dogs who were born in September will be much better around fireworks than those born in November and December.

Not to derail the thread… But can you explain what you mean by …

and offered some behavior that we were also able to get him to do on command using the clicker.

Is that a very tiny Jack Russell, or just very large leaves?

She’s not very big, but the picture makes her look even smaller than she really is.

We’ve also been trying different games to tire her out mentally. Current favourite is the empty water bottle with a few treats inside; she spends ages trying to make them fall out! Free fun!

Weirdly my pup liked the fireworks. My parents had a mongrel who would hide in the cupboard shaking like a leaf, but my pup was straining to see them. She is a weird one.

Tug of war is her favourite game. I read one way to get the drop is blow in the face lightly. It works!

Not to derail the thread… But can you explain what you mean by …

and offered some behavior that we were also able to get him to do on command using the clicker.

Sure, as an example we were trying to teach the dog to play bow on command as part of a trick training course the wife was doing, but he kept going into a down. During a training session he went into a play bow, we clicked and rewarded him and so he repeated it and we treated again. Then we added the cue “bow” to it, so we were able to teach him on command.

We also got him to close drawers using the same method when he nudged an open drawer with his nose. Not great examples but hopefully demonstrates what I was getting at. You don’t need to have an idea of everything you want to teach your dog, if it does something off it’s own back that you would like it to do you can use positive reinforcement to teach it to do it on command. The clicker is a great tool in helping to achieve that.

I’ll second the use of the clicker; we’ve had some good early success with teaching some basic things using the clicker. We use it to mark the behaviour we want to see, such as walking next to me.

Now, when were out for a walk she’ll mostly trot along next to my heel, even though her instincts might be telling her to chase cars / children / leaves. It’s amazing really.

Sure, as an example we were trying to teach the dog to play bow on command as part of a trick training course the wife was doing, but he kept going into a down. During a training session he went into a play bow, we clicked and rewarded him and so he repeated it and we treated again. Then we added the cue “bow” to it, so we were able to teach him on command.

Ah, I see now.

What you’ve actually done by mistake is walk into ‘Shaping’. Which is where you allow your dog to work out for herself what she needs to do, and then when she displays the correct behavior, you click and reward.

It’s a really good technique to use with Collies, as they learn to think, try out new things, and work for the click – not the reward.

Good stuff 🙂

What I wouldn’t do, is just randomly name something the dog does, before putting a physical cue into it – as there’s all sorts of things that could go wrong and you’ll end up with undesired behavior.

If you take them running to tire them out it doesnt work… They just get fitter 😯

I use a laser pointer on mine to get them running around for a hectic five minutes.