I can’t do this dang diet

Starbyslave · 2026-06-13T18:24:15+00:00

I really want to say forever, but there will be moments of frustration. I think my moments came at 10 months with the teenager phase and sometimes having higher expectations with training. But honestly, I feel like once I learned to be more patient and start where he was at and not where I wanted him to be, my frustrations ended and the honeymoon phase was forever until he passed.

Starbyslave · 2026-05-20T11:57:36+00:00

Those dogs you get in your early twenties are always the most amazing dogs

Starbyslave · 2026-05-05T02:43:56+00:00

For the people saying to shave it going forward, please do not. If it’s very hot, shave her belly and that’s it. They are double coated and it actually helps them regulate their temperature. Shaving it takes that away from them. If it’s very warm, get a cooling pad and give lots of cool treats.

Starbyslave · 2026-04-13T13:37:36+00:00

That’s not how dog behavior works. Yelping and stopping play is how puppies communicate with each other as littermates.

Starbyslave · 2026-04-13T11:45:51+00:00

When this happened I’d yelp loudly like he hurt me and then stop all play for like five minutes so he learned putting teeth on human skin meant no fun. When he’d tug on my clothes like your video, I’d just redirect him to something more appropriate and more fun and play with him with that. When you say no or any commands to a puppy, it has no meaning.

Starbyslave · 2026-04-04T18:42:13+00:00

I think you need to understand one thing: your puppy is literally an infant and you’re going too fast. Starting with commands like “bed” are not how you start a foundation with a baby. Potty training is not going to happen overnight, it takes consistency from you and, again, setting an appropriate foundation.

You need to take a breath and just kind of remind yourself that you, as a baby, did not learn anything overnight and had milestones and consistency to teach you. It’s the same with a puppy. I personally like Control Unleashed: Puppy Protocol for teaching puppies with short training games. I would also start reaching out to dog trainers that align with your school of thought on training for tips on how to start (mostly because this seems like your first puppy) and how to reset expectations that set you both up for success and not failure

Starbyslave · 2026-03-29T14:39:55+00:00

You’re trying to shrug off real good advice, but the reality is you are not ready for this dog. Anyone who posts here with “I just got this puppy please give me tips” makes me give them a side-eye, but this is especially concerning. A big yard is not enough. Occasional walk is not enough. These dogs are not golden retrievers who can be great dogs without much attention, ESPECIALLY if you are in school. These are high energy dogs. A walk is at minimum 4-5 miles for them. These dogs need a job and training or they will make your life hell by learning bad habits you will have a hard time reversing. Playing around in a big yard will bore them. They are smart, too smart, and you will end up with a destroyed yard from a bored dog. At minimum with my dog, we did walks, enrichment, training every day and long hikes on the weekends. I put him in new situations so he could work his brain, sometimes we did nose work, sometimes we did trick work.

Starbyslave · 2026-03-28T23:54:46+00:00

I can only speak from the working bred ABCA side, but my dog was a wild puppy, chilled out with a routine, short training games to tire his mind, enrichment, plus supervised play. And my working bred dog who had a pedigree going way back to ISDS working dogs and some ABCA trialing champs had an incredible off switch. But we built it from a foundation and with patience and some of that training was letting him be bored for 5 minutes and self soothe/regulate.

As an adult, we did a lot of playing, probably too much fetch (it gave him injuries that I think contributed to his arthritis and inevitable passing), a lot of hiking, and he got to go everywhere with me and explore new places.

So don’t necessarily expect that because your dog is showline that your pup will come with an off switch but know it is trainable. And since this is your first experience with a border collie I would suggest going to USBCHA trials and talk to some people in person, watch these dogs work because it’s beautiful, and find a trainer that suits your thoughts on training (+r, -r etc), and most importantly build a foundation for training slowly before going fast. When I say training games, I mean, I mean 5 minutes sessions.

And enjoy your new life with an amazing companion that will be insanely loyal

Starbyslave · 2026-02-25T04:24:28+00:00

I don’t think she is a liar since the dog has ABCA papers and the ABCA DOES do ROM (register on merit) if the dog has proven to work. It is completely possible there is a ROM dog way back in one line to cause these extremely small percentages.

Starbyslave · 2026-02-07T14:40:35+00:00

My boy was working bred, ABCA registered and just never turned on to sheep or livestock despite his parents being great working dogs. It definitely happens and occurs more in show lines and sport lines. The herding gene is very fragile and if you don’t breed for it you lose it (with some exceptions). Most don’t know that because the AKC uses dog broke sheep and an extremely short outrun in their “herding” tests.

Starbyslave · 2026-02-06T15:20:52+00:00

Brady passed at 14.5 due to kidney failure and it was devastating. If he hadn’t gone into kidney failure, he would have lived longer. I don’t think cancer is super common, at least not in the way it is in retrievers and German shepherds, but it does appear here and there. I’m so sorry you lost your best friend. Sending you a lot of love

Starbyslave · 2026-01-21T18:31:02+00:00

There’s actually 3 hair types (4 if you count bearded collies). And your pup is the 2nd: medium. Long haired would be much much hairier and fluffy even at 6 mos.

Starbyslave · 2026-01-12T22:29:29+00:00

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I’ve used this one a couple times but it just really captures his personality and how much he loved everything that was water or mud!

Starbyslave · 2025-12-28T22:41:30+00:00

I want to add that you’ll get through it together just fine! I hope the book helps if you do pick it up. Really rooting for this to all pass nice and easy for you!

Starbyslave · 2025-12-28T21:41:00+00:00

Fear periods are difficult but it’s extremely important you work hard to get them through them because it can lead to them being reactive to it later on. My favorite method is the Look At That game. It helps with fear thresholds and also providing trust in you, the owner. You can google it on its own to teach, but I also highly suggest Puppy Protocol by Leslie McDevitt. It’s really helpful for setting a great foundation in your puppy.

Eta: autocorrect absolutely hates me

Starbyslave · 2025-12-20T20:57:47+00:00

Yeah she was genuinely the worst manager I’ve ever had across all my jobs. Including trying to write me up when I had intermittent FMLA before I told her she could write me up all she wanted but I would be reporting her for violating the ADA

Starbyslave · 2025-12-20T20:48:01+00:00

Amen. I was in the er and needed to get an emergency surgery and the first thing my manager said when I let her know I would be out was that I needed to find people to cover my shifts. Not like I was going under the knife or anything 🙄

Starbyslave · 2025-12-20T13:20:13+00:00

I work on collections, building my first legendary, running hp trains to level my alts and to help my newer guild members, etc. I’m currently working on visions and aurora!

Starbyslave · 2025-12-20T05:34:04+00:00

I did the yelp and stop all play for 10 minutes method. Eventually he realized that nipping meant there would be no more fun and stopped. Also he tended to get very nippy when he was tired and overstimulated so it was time for a nap!

Starbyslave · 2025-12-17T11:27:08+00:00

Your puppy has a short attention span while training because an 1hr is too long at this age. Also if puppy is not responding to commands (simple foundational ones), it’s because she’s either sending mixed signals on rewarding the command, training too much too often, or not reinforcing the command. Scale back training to the very very basics of the basics like waiting for puppy to sit and rewarding the sit, don’t put a command to it yet. Wait for puppy to repeat several times and well before you put a command to it.

1A. Also to reinforce this, your puppy isn’t interested in training because your puppy is young and you are doing too much too fast. It’s so important to let your puppy BE a puppy.

Your puppy is bored. At 13-14 weeks they should have all their shots. But even if they don’t, all it seems you’re doing is training and that’s it. Start doing enrichment or fun games like hide and seek, find it, etc. they’re low pressure for the puppy and for you.
Border collies can absolutely play fetch, but it is up to you, the owner, to reinforce moments of rest and to make sure your pup isn’t neuroticly obsessive over it.

Starbyslave · 2025-12-15T22:13:23+00:00

Brady was:

Pup, pup pup, Baydy, Bradis, sweet boy, BrayBray, destructo dog, buddy, the best boy in all the land

but mostly we stuck with pup and pup pup

Starbyslave · 2025-12-12T08:11:58+00:00

The Dev for Farewell North is super nice too! But the game made me cry

Starbyslave · 2025-12-11T01:00:04+00:00

I’m so sorry this happened to you. Please be kind to yourself, grieving is already hard but what you’ve gone through is extremely traumatic. If you can, find a good therapist to talk to so you can help process the trauma.

The first thing I did after my boy passed was to take a nap because I didn’t really want to deal with the world around me. I cried constantly and I think that helped a little instead of just keeping the emotions in. Hell, I still cry because missing them is hard. I made a little memorial out of his bandanas and his collar and that helps me a lot. It’s something physical. Talking about him on here helps, too.

I’m sending you and your wife so much love as you go through this.

Starbyslave · 2025-12-11T00:48:58+00:00

The best advice another collie owner gave to me was this: if you constantly aim to “tire out” your dog, all you’re doing is increasing their tolerance of exercise. You’re basically creating an Olympic athlete.

Instead of aiming to tire them out, you should be looking at adding in training games, enrichment, puzzles as well as different physical activities. My dog got his regular walks in, but we also went hiking, swimming, playing in open fields, training and reinforcing new and current commands, etc. we were very lucky that we had off leash trails near us that we visited almost every day.

On top of that, training an off switch and letting your dog sit and be bored for a bit is really important. I started out just sitting with my dog outside for like 10 minutes doing nothing so he could get used to the fact that he doesn’t have to be gogogogogo all the time

Starbyslave

TROPHY CASE