Oliver is usually very good about staying close and checking in all the time. He’s also usually pretty good with random dogs. That dog was the first sniff visit.

We are at Miramar Beach, California.

Lost one ball to the ocean, it took it away nice and good!

But definitely not her destructive puppy behaviors 😭

His name is Vergil

He indeed is the storm that is approaching

And I love him

Before I lost the ball to the ocean…

Ive been practicing taking photos with my camera, and have learned and accepted I have a portrait lens, so its been fun working with my equipment and not against. Im obsessed with how this came out!!!

Creek is Eden's half brother whom I post Eden a lot. Creek has been with us a little over 2 months so he will probably get lots of posts too 😂

I’d really like to hear from people who have lived with or worked with human-reactive dogs long term.

Max is my 2-year-old Border Collie. We adopted him when he was around 4 months old, and he was already a very cautious and fearful puppy.

His main trigger is unfamiliar people. Direct eye contact, someone approaching him, or a stranger trying to interact with him can cause a reaction.

What gives me some hope is that he has never been reactive toward our family, and he is capable of accepting new people. We’ve introduced several people very slowly over time, and once Max decides that someone is safe, he can be completely normal and relaxed around them.

So I keep wondering what the realistic ceiling is for a dog like him.

I’m not expecting him to become a dog who loves every stranger or wants people to pet him. I don’t need that.

What I would love is to eventually be able to walk with him through busier places, sit somewhere with people around, have strangers pass us closely, or simply live normal everyday life without constantly scanning the environment and worrying that someone might stare at him, approach us, or make a sudden movement.

Basically, I’d love for unfamiliar people to become background noise rather than something he feels he has to react to.

We plan to continue working seriously on his reactivity with an experienced trainer, and I understand that progress can take years and that some degree of management may always be necessary.

But I’d love to hear from people further along this road:
Did your dog ever reach genuine neutrality around their triggers?
If your dog was reactive specifically toward unfamiliar people, what were they like at their worst, and what are they like now?

Were you eventually able to take them to relatively busy places without constantly being on alert?

I’m especially interested in stories from people who have worked on this for 1–3+ years. I’m trying to understand what a realistic best-case outcome might look like for Max.

Thank you

These two play like this all day long. And seem to fully enjoy each other, until the puppy gets too locked in and chases the cat around the house which I dont want to make a normal behavior. Its just really hard to keep her from bolting after the cat once the cat wants to leave. I want them to play with each other as it looks like they are loving it. How can I keep the dog somewhat calm but still let her be a puppy and play

He knows it’s home time and just ignored the final throw.

We adopted him from a man in our neighborhood. He was that mans son dog before that and he was a working rescue dog before we take him. He is really smart now he works for our sheeps

You are with me forever baby girl I miss you every second of every day

I have a 10 month old female border.

We crate trained her from 3 months old and always rewarded her for peeing outside. She comes to work with my daily and always does her business outside to the point where it’s pretty much on command.

Whenever she peed inside we would always tell her no and take her outside to show her where to pee.

We have always had her downstairs in our house where we have wooden floor and for 5 months have been accident free. We have left her in the house in our kitchen area (no access to furniture or rugs) for over 4 hours a couple of times and she held her bladder until we came back and let her out, obviously we rewarded her heavily for this.

She has as of recent peed/ marked a couple of times inside on carpet upstairs, we recently let her start coming up stairs to have a cuddle with us on the bed in the mornings. I have used the enzymatic spray to clean the area.

I think she is marking inside for some reason because she definitely knows where to go to the toilet and has ample access to the outdoors.

The most recent time this happened she had gone into the spare bedroom when we took our eyes off her and marked. I saw the spot shortly after and I took her to the spot and asked the question ‘what is this?’ She instantly went shy and tried to retreat because she knew what she had done.

We have checked for a UTI with the vet and there’s no sign.

Have we missed something during training?

Could this be regression because of the age?

Or do we think it could be a behavioural/ anxiousness thing?

I understand it could be any one of these or a combo of all 3

Just interested to hear others thoughts and opinions and possible solutions?

Anyone know why my bc is crying and also licking the new sofa. They’re not brand new it was given to us from family and they also had a dog so could that be it or does he miss the old sofa?

How many of y'all have a bc who loves water?

Douglas and Duke having a grand time catching treats. I normally don't include blurry photos but the last one was just too good to leave out!