Archie is very handsome, Riggers.
mrcharly, thanks for the great tips, which are really helpful. I'd read about the different kinds of border collie personality but we are certainly not experts.
The Dog's Trust recommended reward-based training with no punishment. When we have our pre-adoption talk on Saturday I'll ask their behaviourist about how to deal with any nipping.
I've known a few border collies, including
one called Toby who made friends with us while at a friend's place in Brisbane. Toby insisted on having his stick thrown, and being a mug, I threw it for him. And again. And again. And again, until the stick was a mere splinter lying on the edge of Toby's tongue. You get the picture. This resulted in a painful arm condition which we now know as
Toby Arm. Talk about running Peli into the ground.
We're very committed to setting ground rules for Scrappy-not-Crappy from the moment we collect her, but we're expecting the process to be hard work.
We're trying to decide who will be Teh Boss. Woolly has more experience with dogs, and clearly took on that role with the couple of dogs we looked after while in Portland last year. But, I'll be at home with her all day and will be taking her for her afternoon walk (probably the longest one of the day - we'll be walking her x3 each day).
If you consider that she's probably never been allowed to run naturally in her short life, it's understandable that she's a bit wild and just wants to run, run and run.