I have a four year old collie cross (bearded/border). In general well behaved in the house. My problem is that whilst she loves to be out in the garden, she will not put one foot back into the house until I physically go to the back door. I suppose it maybe does not sound like too much of a problem, however we have been having some really hot weather and on countless occasions when I have gone to the back door she has obviously been standing there for some time in the burning sun. She has only started doing this this summer and I have been used to leaving the door open to let her wander in and out in the past. I don't need to do anything when I walk to the door. The door is already open and there are no barriers stopping her just walking in. The issue is that once she gets to the door she just will not move, either into the house or wander away to shade, she just stands and waits to see me before she will come in. And she would wait forever!!! I just cannot put my finger on why she is doing it. As soon as she sees me the ears go up, the tail wags and she prances in without a care in the world!!
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Strange one from a collie
- Thread starter Mich
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Awwww, silly dog 
That's not good for her health at all is it?
It sounds like she's got a much better grip on what she 'should' be doing as a grown up dog and she is doing what she thinks is the right thing in terms of the house rules. It's quite telling that she's just past the magic age of 3 years, when many breeds start acting like adult dogs emotionally and rules start actually being obeyed.
The other possibility is that she's had something bad happen when she went inside without you and she's thinking of that when she's waiting outside for you. It may not be anything that you remember and may, indeed, actually have nothing to do with whether she's indoors or not. Anything from a firework to a strange smell that she associates with going back inside without your permission could be making her pause and wait for permission.
If she's a collie then she's probably hugely clever, so how about teaching her commands for where you want her to be? I can talk Molly (the rescue GSD in my picture) around where I want her to be with amazing nuances- 'go to the bottom of the stairs and lie down there' is a different command to 'go up the stairs and lie down on your bed' (which is in the bedroom, not actually on the landing) and the start of this is learning the differences between up and down, in and out and the names of house, stairs, different rooms etc.
If you were to spend a little while with treats teaching her in and out (standing in the doorway and rewarding her as she comes through in either direction with the appropriate word, then making the same words work from when you are a little further away) then you would have a positive command which tells her that you WANT her to go inside, rather than her waiting for you to be ready to go in so she knows that it's OK to go herself.
Another thing that is really handy in hot weather is having a dog that drinks on command, goes into water on command, shakes on coming out of water (hopefully nowhere near your legs) on command- again, a clever collie should be capable of learning the words and actions for these commands if you put the time into getting her to learn what you want from the words you use. A clicker is a really helpful thing with specific actions with specific words in pinpointing for the dog exactly which bit of the action she is doing that you want from her.
I do home checks for several rescues and when I have a home check for a dog Molly goes with me unless there's a reason why she can't go into their house, and she has a few party pieces that I use to show people quite how clever some breeds can be when they have commands that they understand. If you ask Molly to go upstairs and she can't see any stairs she will go looking in the house to find some stairs to climb. Sometimes that will entail going out into the garden to climb steps in the garden path, but I have asked her to go up some stairs and therefore she needs to go and find stairs to climb. Similarly one of the dogs that I used to walk was a lovely border collie who had a job on walks to go and locate a stick for each of the dogs in their group to carry on their walks. It took her twice the distance that anybody else covered to go dashing about in the undergrowth to find 5 sticks, but she knew that was what was required when she was asked to find sticks, and she would spend half an hour really engaged in her task if that is what it took, and she was happy to complete it successfully once she'd done it.
Good luck in engaging your little one in a new set of commands which will keep her safer in summer
That's not good for her health at all is it?It sounds like she's got a much better grip on what she 'should' be doing as a grown up dog and she is doing what she thinks is the right thing in terms of the house rules. It's quite telling that she's just past the magic age of 3 years, when many breeds start acting like adult dogs emotionally and rules start actually being obeyed.
The other possibility is that she's had something bad happen when she went inside without you and she's thinking of that when she's waiting outside for you. It may not be anything that you remember and may, indeed, actually have nothing to do with whether she's indoors or not. Anything from a firework to a strange smell that she associates with going back inside without your permission could be making her pause and wait for permission.
If she's a collie then she's probably hugely clever, so how about teaching her commands for where you want her to be? I can talk Molly (the rescue GSD in my picture) around where I want her to be with amazing nuances- 'go to the bottom of the stairs and lie down there' is a different command to 'go up the stairs and lie down on your bed' (which is in the bedroom, not actually on the landing) and the start of this is learning the differences between up and down, in and out and the names of house, stairs, different rooms etc.
If you were to spend a little while with treats teaching her in and out (standing in the doorway and rewarding her as she comes through in either direction with the appropriate word, then making the same words work from when you are a little further away) then you would have a positive command which tells her that you WANT her to go inside, rather than her waiting for you to be ready to go in so she knows that it's OK to go herself.
Another thing that is really handy in hot weather is having a dog that drinks on command, goes into water on command, shakes on coming out of water (hopefully nowhere near your legs) on command- again, a clever collie should be capable of learning the words and actions for these commands if you put the time into getting her to learn what you want from the words you use. A clicker is a really helpful thing with specific actions with specific words in pinpointing for the dog exactly which bit of the action she is doing that you want from her.
I do home checks for several rescues and when I have a home check for a dog Molly goes with me unless there's a reason why she can't go into their house, and she has a few party pieces that I use to show people quite how clever some breeds can be when they have commands that they understand. If you ask Molly to go upstairs and she can't see any stairs she will go looking in the house to find some stairs to climb. Sometimes that will entail going out into the garden to climb steps in the garden path, but I have asked her to go up some stairs and therefore she needs to go and find stairs to climb. Similarly one of the dogs that I used to walk was a lovely border collie who had a job on walks to go and locate a stick for each of the dogs in their group to carry on their walks. It took her twice the distance that anybody else covered to go dashing about in the undergrowth to find 5 sticks, but she knew that was what was required when she was asked to find sticks, and she would spend half an hour really engaged in her task if that is what it took, and she was happy to complete it successfully once she'd done it.
Good luck in engaging your little one in a new set of commands which will keep her safer in summer
Thanks for your response which was really helpful. The two options of why that you have come up with are the same as I thought. I do like to try to understand why Skye reacts in a certain way before trying to adapt the behaviour if I need to. I feel if you understand you can come up with a much better solution for both dog and owner, rather than just the owner deciding how they want the dog to behave.
Molly is so cute. My last dog was a GSD as well so I know how clever they can be as well. However Skye does tend to actually pick up new commands a bit quicker than Oscar did so your idea of placing her in areas with commands I am sure will work really well with her. I had been trying to work out how the "come" command could be adapted for this so this will be the ideal solution.
I am fortunate enough that Skye will take a drink, go in, and shake on command, unfortunately she is never far enough away when she shakes and we almost drown lol!
The clicker I find absolutely hysterical. As you know, all dogs have their own wee odd behaviours, well Skye is absolutely terrified of clickers. From day one she has run a mile the second she heard it. Even an exceptionally good trainer very quickly said bin the clicker as you will never get anywhere with her with it. So I did and never looked back, she is fully voice trained,very keen to learn but only if you use voice and now throw in the occasional treat but she likes praise and touching as a reward much more now than treats(unless I am trying to train her something new and then she gets cheese - nothing competes with cheese - at the beginning till she gets it and then I reduce the cheese, add the praise back in and eventually the cheese goes away again.
So thanks again and I will start her new training today and see where we get to but knowing her by the end of the weekend she will be making progress!!
Molly is so cute. My last dog was a GSD as well so I know how clever they can be as well. However Skye does tend to actually pick up new commands a bit quicker than Oscar did so your idea of placing her in areas with commands I am sure will work really well with her. I had been trying to work out how the "come" command could be adapted for this so this will be the ideal solution.
I am fortunate enough that Skye will take a drink, go in, and shake on command, unfortunately she is never far enough away when she shakes and we almost drown lol!
The clicker I find absolutely hysterical. As you know, all dogs have their own wee odd behaviours, well Skye is absolutely terrified of clickers. From day one she has run a mile the second she heard it. Even an exceptionally good trainer very quickly said bin the clicker as you will never get anywhere with her with it. So I did and never looked back, she is fully voice trained,very keen to learn but only if you use voice and now throw in the occasional treat but she likes praise and touching as a reward much more now than treats(unless I am trying to train her something new and then she gets cheese - nothing competes with cheese - at the beginning till she gets it and then I reduce the cheese, add the praise back in and eventually the cheese goes away again.
So thanks again and I will start her new training today and see where we get to but knowing her by the end of the weekend she will be making progress!!
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What an oddity! I've never met a dog that was scared of clickers before. One of my cats is scared of pretty much everything and I often think how nice it would be to be able to explain to him why things aren't so scary- his life would be so much nicer if he wasn't so terrified constantly, but the poor boy was born on a building site in Leeds and only came to meet the human world when he was trapped.
Molly can be thoroughly manipulated with cheese too- its powers are only slightly less than her beloved dried black pudding, but the black pudding wins for a day to day treat because it doesn't go all horrible in your pocket like cheese does.
We tried to count the number of commands that her ladyship knows recently and we got to 100 before starting to dredge the bottom of the barrel and I'm sure that Skye is no different. She knows everything from 'get on the kerb' to 'take that and put it on your bed' and 'bring me that kitten, no not that one, the other one' as she's a serial kitten mummy and has reared somewhere around 100 kittens.
I often find that the more intelligent the dog the more little quirks seem to crop up, like separation anxiety is far more prevalent in clever dogs. It's like it doesn't really occur to less bright dogs to fret about whether their humans are going to come home. Obsessive and compulsive behaviours also seem to be a clever dog thing, with border collies in particular over represented in that group, which is why it becomes ever more important to keep challenging them mentally to allay boredom. Of course, by the time you've taught them every trick you can think of and are running out of things you can think of teaching them, that's the point at which you need inspiration for new things to learn.
I hope that Skye is in her element learning new things and you can help her to understand that sitting out in blazing sunshine is really not necessary!
Molly can be thoroughly manipulated with cheese too- its powers are only slightly less than her beloved dried black pudding, but the black pudding wins for a day to day treat because it doesn't go all horrible in your pocket like cheese does.
We tried to count the number of commands that her ladyship knows recently and we got to 100 before starting to dredge the bottom of the barrel and I'm sure that Skye is no different. She knows everything from 'get on the kerb' to 'take that and put it on your bed' and 'bring me that kitten, no not that one, the other one' as she's a serial kitten mummy and has reared somewhere around 100 kittens.
I often find that the more intelligent the dog the more little quirks seem to crop up, like separation anxiety is far more prevalent in clever dogs. It's like it doesn't really occur to less bright dogs to fret about whether their humans are going to come home. Obsessive and compulsive behaviours also seem to be a clever dog thing, with border collies in particular over represented in that group, which is why it becomes ever more important to keep challenging them mentally to allay boredom. Of course, by the time you've taught them every trick you can think of and are running out of things you can think of teaching them, that's the point at which you need inspiration for new things to learn.
I hope that Skye is in her element learning new things and you can help her to understand that sitting out in blazing sunshine is really not necessary!
Well we are well on our way to having this problem sorted. Five short training sessions so far and I can now shout from the living room"in the house" and she comes running in. It hasn't advanced to her going in of her own accord yet but I think it might over time so thank you for the advice. It is working a treat.
Molly must be exceptionally well trained. I tried to count Skye's commands. I got to 19 and gave up. However the new one of in the house gets her to 20 lol!
I will need to try the black pudding as the cheese is terrible in pockets. Especially when I am trying to train Skye something new or if I feel I need to go back to reinforce a command I always have cheese(which is quite often as I feel dogs do need to be reminded, you cannot assume they will remember everything forever) but it always ends up yucky in your pocket.
I would agree the more intelligent dogs do seem to be the ones that come up with strange behaviours. I put it down to them overthinking things. I do try to think how they must be feeling in a situation but it is hard to determine at times so I try to think how I would feel. So if a dog is scared of a brush for example, some people just hold the dog for long enough to brush them and then let them go. The dog does not know the brush won't hurt and the owner telling the dog it will be fine is useless. If someone was coming at me with something like a chainsaw but told me it would be okay would I believe them. No I would fight like mad and never go near them again!! That is why I think it is so important to figur out what your dog is thinking before doing something new with them.
Well off for another training session whilst the sun is still out and many thanks again xx
Molly must be exceptionally well trained. I tried to count Skye's commands. I got to 19 and gave up. However the new one of in the house gets her to 20 lol!
I will need to try the black pudding as the cheese is terrible in pockets. Especially when I am trying to train Skye something new or if I feel I need to go back to reinforce a command I always have cheese(which is quite often as I feel dogs do need to be reminded, you cannot assume they will remember everything forever) but it always ends up yucky in your pocket.
I would agree the more intelligent dogs do seem to be the ones that come up with strange behaviours. I put it down to them overthinking things. I do try to think how they must be feeling in a situation but it is hard to determine at times so I try to think how I would feel. So if a dog is scared of a brush for example, some people just hold the dog for long enough to brush them and then let them go. The dog does not know the brush won't hurt and the owner telling the dog it will be fine is useless. If someone was coming at me with something like a chainsaw but told me it would be okay would I believe them. No I would fight like mad and never go near them again!! That is why I think it is so important to figur out what your dog is thinking before doing something new with them.
Well off for another training session whilst the sun is still out and many thanks again xx
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