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   From the Director:
     A tribute to a special lady.
     A move ahead for Swiftdog

HAVE CHILDREN? THINK TWICE ABOUT A BORDER COLLIE!

This statement has been said to me more than once in my career: " ... I have children and I have read that Border Collies make great dogs for them..."

Border Collies need constant routine and a non-varying enviornment. Over the past decade, I have studied the interaction of families with children and Border Collies, and have found one consistency with a majority of the Border Collies we have encountered; most families with children have a varying enviornment and a hectic atmosphere. AND, most of the Border Collies we receive in rescue end up here due to enviornmental discrepencies, and the lack of living in harmony with society, and/or with the children in/outside of the family.

Truth is, most of the time, it is this atmosphere and enviornment that causes Border Collies to become troublesome characters to society, and usually is not the dog's fault.

The following behaviors can be witnessed in ANY dog, however, Border Collies have been famous for them. A deeper suggestion is be sure the border collie you are interested in has been temperament tested, keeping in mind that this temperament can change once it enters your enviornment. Be sure that the evaluator has plenty of experience in evaluating behavior problems within dogs, more importantly with Border Collies.

Behaviors such as: Aggression towards other dogs, food aggression, aggression towards other animals, aggression towards people outside the family, aggression towards people inside the family, aggression towards children, fear aggression, dominance aggression, separation anxiety, and naurotic behaviors such as obsession, pacing, barking, herding, destructiveness, fence jumping, bolting, digging, strong insecurities, thunderstorm phobia, and even mild to severe seizures or convultions have occurred within the Border Collies.

Many of these behaviors have been encountered and most of those can be linked directly to enviornments with little to no structure. Many times, upon evaluation, I have been able to redirect these behaviors within a controlled enviornment, or with behavior modification. However, many families who have children naturally harbor these behaviors within Border Collies. It amazes me to see families with perfectly well behaved children have monstrous Border Collies!

Although a handful of cases have slipped by me in my career, few of these dogs need to be euthanized. What sadens me the most is how many of these cases could have been prevented, or modified before those dogs were to the point of being euthanized. These cases were the minority, though, and each of these dogs were as unstable as their enviornment.

You see, due to their high intellegence, Border Collies magnify the variations within an enviornment and react negatively to show their disagreement in the situation. Most times, a disagreement comes in one of the behaviors mentioned above!

So folks, am I trying to detour you from adding a Border Collie to your family and making what could be the best decision in your life ? No Way!

However, we are trying to show you the perspective that we see day after day. It is the very reason that we believe in adopting qualified Border Collies to qualified families...it is just one more way we hold quality over quantity.

If you feel you have more questions about any of the information I have offered here, please contact me via email at swiftdogz@hotmail.com

Please keep in mind that this information has been provided as a result of personal experience over the past decade of training, evaluating and rehabilitating aggressive dogs - most of which have been Border Collies.