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I have a 9 month old border collie who has an issue with runners. When out walking she can not resist running up to a runner and jumping up on them until they stop running. As a runner I completely understand how infuriating this is and I am obviously wanting to stop her doing it asap. In all other respects she is a fabulous dog. I have owned collies before and understand her need to 'herd' which is what I assume she is doing with runners. When she has 'herded' other things I have broken the habit by using her favourite toy as a reward for not doing it. In general her recall is very good and she comes straight away. The lure of a runner is just too temping for her though. She is not short of exercise as she gets on average 2 walks of an hour each aa well shorter trips to the park etc. Have any of the doggy owning forum got any suggestions?
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Hi
We have 2 collie x labs. They wanted to jump up at people when they were pups. To stop it, we walked them on extended leads, then if we saw anyone approaching, they were made to stop and sit until they had gone past. It took a lot of reinforcing to start with, but they eventually learnt.
Now they're 2 they've calmed down a lot anyway, but we still make them walk to heel if we see anyone in the distance, just in case.
Now he's got to the stage if he see's something he thinks he might run after he comes on command, sometimes without me asking. It took about a month of repetition but he's pretty much got it.
Now, if I could only get him to walk past a pub
Mine (collie cross) tried to jump up at runners and also liked to chase bikes.
Corrie's suggestion of repetition of of the stimulus coupled with appropriate response is the key. It may not take you as long as you think. I would purposely take her to environments like parks with lots of runners and cyclists, specifically to train this behaviour out of her.
When you see a bike/runner approaching get her to sit (treat visibly in hand) command to "stay" and keep her focus and when runner/bike is ignored, then instantly treat and much fuss ("good girl" etc). Collies are bright and so eager to please. She will soon learn what the desirable behaviour is.
I also found a clicker training helpful as it instantly got her attention.
When I get the clicker out she's immediately in 'learning mode' - quite funny.
She really took to the clicker like a duck to water.
Now if I get the clicker and do one click, she's sat square in front of me, attentive ears, questioning eyes "Yes, I'm here! What would you like me to do?"
I don't use extendable leads either. Much faff and no control.
I have a couple of standard 1m leads, a 5m training lead that can be extended to 10m (which I initially used for recall training), and a short 0.5m lead for heel walking training.
One of our terrior-ists has an issue with any other dog - He feels that in order to defend himself he needs to attack first. I run with them off the lead and over the two years we've had them he's learnt to immediately lie down as soon as he sees another dog without a word from me. He'll get petted and told he's a good boy, maybe get a treat. (When I've caught up with him as he's usually 20 yards ahead). We started off as various above have said with him on the lead and verbally telling him to lie down as soon as another dog came into view. Gradually the lead got longer, then it was a piece of rope that we didn't hold - he just dragged it along the ground. The behaviour we wanted ( Him not taking on packs of Dobermans. He did once in the early days) became second nature to him. The rope got shorter and now he has no rope. Yes this process has taken time but is so worth it for both of us. He loves running and can run free, I don't get tripped up by a dog I'm holding on a 0.5m lead
The other one is fine, unless you ignore her warnings to keep your nose out of her bum. That's fair enough in my book!
I'd third what Nam and Taylor say about extendable leads - waste of time - the dogs that need to be on a lead need to be under control and you don't have that with an extendable lead.
For the chasing joggers thing - my dog used to do it a little bit as a young dog - she's a breed that was oridiginally a herder too. I just worked harder on her recall using treats or more often a ball which she is obsessed with - that worked pretty quickly but I was lucky in that she didn't need a lot of encouragement to become ball obsessed.
If it's a problem that is proving hard to solve then enlisting the help of a few runners might be the best thing. With a couple of friends you can give your dog maybe a couple of dozen incidents in half an hour and the runners can behave ideally - probably stop and ignore the dog totally when it reaches them. If your dog has a natural instinct to chase/herd then I think these kind of things can be hard to stop - I have a problem with mine that she wont run off lead beside my bike without trying to nip my leg - on a long lead she's fine and if I'm running with her off lead she's fine - she doesn't chase/herd any other cyclists either - just me.