Border Collie Halfway through a Tuesday afternoon, a Border Collie named Juno padded into the living room carrying a stuffed platypus. Her owner had asked for the platypus by name, from two rooms away, mostly as a joke. Juno had never been formally taught that word.
She had simply been listening.
That is the part nobody warns you about. Border Collies are not merely trainable. They are actively hunting for a job, studying your face, your hands, your tone of voice, the way other dogs study a dropped sandwich.
Which means the tricks available to you go well past sit and shake.
Below are five of them. A couple are genuinely useful around the house. The rest exist purely to make your guests set down their drinks and stare. All five are within reach of an ordinary dog and an ordinary owner armed with treats and patience.
Fair warning: once you start, your dog will not let you stop.
1. Naming Toys (Yes, Dozens of Them)
Border Collies have a documented talent for object labeling. Some have learned hundreds of words. Your dog probably will not hit triple digits, but forty is a realistic ceiling for a motivated household.
How it starts
Pick one toy with a distinctive name. Say the name every single time it appears, and never say it about anything else.
Play with that toy. Only that toy. For about a week you are going to feel a little ridiculous saying "badger" out loud in an empty room, and that is fine, because on day nine your dog is going to bring you the badger and you will forget you ever felt silly.
Then add a second toy. Place both on the floor and ask for one.
Where people go wrong
Adding toy three before toy two is solid. Rushing this is the single most common mistake, and it produces a dog who guesses instead of a dog who listens.
A dog who guesses is playing a slot machine. A dog who listens is reading a menu. The difference is entirely in how slowly you built the vocabulary.
Keep sessions to five minutes. Stop while your dog still wants more.
2. Tidying Up Their Own Toys
Here is a trick that pays rent.
Your Collie can learn to pick up every toy on the floor and drop it into a bin, one at a time, until the room is clear. Parents of small children tend to find this borderline miraculous.
Building it in pieces
Start with the bin, not the toys. Reward your dog for touching the bin, then for putting a paw near it, then for standing over it.
Next, hand your dog a toy while they are standing over the bin. When they drop it, the treat appears. Gravity does most of your teaching here.
Once the drop is reliable, back up. Toss a toy a few feet away and ask for it to come to the bin.
Adding the cue
Only name the behavior after it looks like the finished product. "Clean up" said too early just becomes background noise.
Then extend the chain. Two toys, then four, then the entire disaster zone under the coffee table.
One caution. Some Collies get so invested that they will begin tidying up things you were still using, including your phone, your shoes, and on one memorable occasion I heard about, a slice of pizza.
3. Closing Doors, Drawers, and Cabinets
This one looks like a magic trick and is secretly one of the easiest on the list.
Dogs already know how to push things with their noses. All you are doing is aiming that instinct at a door.
The sticky note method
Stick a bright note on the door at nose height. Reward any nose contact with it.
Once your dog is deliberately booping the note, move it toward the edge of the door where leverage lives. The door swings. The treat arrives. The connection lands almost immediately.
Fade the note by trimming it smaller over several sessions until nothing is left but the door itself.
Scaling up
Cabinet doors are lighter and make a satisfying click, so they are a great confidence builder. Drawers require a shove rather than a nudge, which some dogs love and others find undignified.
Refrigerator doors are the endgame. Heavy, awkward, and deeply impressive at dinner parties.
Any behavior a dog can do accidentally, a dog can be taught to do on purpose. Your job is not to install the skill. Your job is to notice it and pay for it.
4. Counting (Sort Of)
Time for the party trick that will genuinely unsettle your relatives.
You hold up three fingers. Your dog barks three times. Someone at the table quietly puts down their fork.
What is actually happening
Your dog is not doing arithmetic. Your dog is reading you, which is arguably more impressive.
The mechanic is simple. Teach a bark on a hand signal, then teach your dog to keep barking until you give a tiny, nearly invisible stop cue: a blink, a slight lowering of the chin, a shift in your shoulders.
Border Collies are absurdly good at catching micro movements. That eye they use on sheep works just as well on you.
Making it convincing
Practice your stop signal in a mirror until it disappears. The subtler your cue, the more your dog looks like a mathematician.
Start with small numbers and be scrupulously consistent about when you release. Sloppy timing gives you a dog who barks fourteen times at the number two.
Keep the whole routine short. Barking games escalate fast, and you do not want a dog who has decided barking is now the answer to everything.
5. Leg Weaves and Backwards Walking
Canine freestyle looks like dancing because it basically is. Two moves form the backbone of nearly every routine, and both suit this breed perfectly.
The weave
Stand with your legs apart and lure your dog through the gap with a treat held low.
Repeat until the path feels obvious, then start alternating legs so your dog is threading a figure eight around you. Add the cue once the pattern is smooth.
Speed comes later. Speed always comes later.
Walking backwards
Set up a narrow lane using a wall on one side and a row of chairs on the other. Walk gently toward your dog inside that lane.
Backing up becomes the only option, and the moment it happens, you pay. Dogs figure this one out startlingly fast, sometimes in a single session.
Widen the lane over time until you can drop the props entirely.
A trick your dog performs is entertainment. A trick your dog offers you unprompted, tail up, eyes bright, is something closer to a conversation.
Stringing them together
The real fun starts when you chain these moves. Weave, back up, spin, weave again.
Set it to music if you want the full effect. Your neighbors will have opinions, and every one of them will be positive.
Twelve minutes a day of this kind of work will burn more mental fuel than an hour of fetch. Owners who complain about a bored, destructive Collie are almost always exercising the legs and ignoring the brain, and the brain is the part that gets everyone into trouble.
Start with whichever trick made you smile most while reading. Your dog has been waiting for the assignment.