Border Collie Ask ten trainers where to start with a new puppy and nine of them will tell you the same thing: teach sit first. Sit is easy, sit is quick, and sit makes a lovely photo for the family group chat.
Sit is also close to useless when a herding dog spots a jogger two hundred yards away and decides that jogger needs gathering.
That advice was written for the average pet dog. Border Collies are not the average pet dog. They arrive with a job description stitched into their DNA, and if you do not hand them the right vocabulary early, they will happily invent their own.
The five commands below are not ranked by how impressive they look at the park. They are ranked by how much trouble they save you.
1. Recall, Because a Collie in Drive Is Already Halfway Gone
Recall is the command that keeps your dog alive. Everything else on this list is quality of life.
Here is the wrinkle that is specific to this breed. A Border Collie locked onto a moving target slips into something close to a trance, and once that stalking sequence fires up, your voice becomes weather. Background noise. Just another thing happening somewhere behind them.
Which means you cannot train recall the way you would for a Labrador who mostly wants a biscuit.
Build it before the drive switches on
Start indoors. Hallway, no distractions, and food that is frankly ridiculous. Cheese. Roast chicken. The stuff you would eat standing over the sink.
Say the word once. A recall cue repeated four times becomes a polite suggestion, and this breed is far too clever to take suggestions seriously.
Then work up slowly: garden, quiet field, field with a rabbit smell, field with an actual rabbit. Skip a rung on that ladder and you will spend the next year undoing it.
Never poison the word
Do not call your dog over and immediately clip the lead on to end all the fun. Do not call your dog over and then trim their nails.
A recall cue is a promise. Break that promise often enough and your dog quietly stops believing you, which is precisely the moment you will need them to believe you most.
Call, pay, release. Run that pattern a few hundred times and the word starts working even when something furry is involved.
2. Settle, the Off Switch Almost Nobody Teaches
Ask struggling Border Collie owners what went wrong and you will hear versions of the same story: the dog never learned how to stop.
Exercise alone does not solve this. A tired collie is often just a fitter collie tomorrow, because you have accidentally built an athlete instead of a companion.
Settle treats rest as a skill. Something trained, rehearsed and rewarded, rather than a mood you sit around hoping for.
What it actually looks like
Choose a mat or a bed and make it the calm place. Reward stillness, not tricks: hips rolled to one side, chin resting on the floor, breathing that has finally slowed down.
Do not ask for a down and then machine gun treats into your dog’s mouth. That builds a coiled spring that happens to be horizontal.
Feed slowly. Feed low, right between the paws. Let a bit of boredom do half the work for you.
Ten minutes, twice a day
Short sessions beat marathon ones, and doing this while you watch telly costs you nothing.
Two weeks of that and you will have a dog who can switch off in a cafe instead of scanning the room like a sheepdog surveying a hillside.
3. That’ll Do, the Command Borrowed Straight From the Farm
Shepherds have leaned on this one for generations. Pet owners almost never teach it, which is a genuine shame.
That’ll do means the job is over. Stop working. Come away.
Why the ending matters more than the task
Border Collies do not naturally quit. Left to their own devices they will herd the vacuum, the toddler, the shadows on the kitchen wall and next door’s cat, all before lunch.
A clear finishing signal gives them permission to stand down. Dogs who understand how things end worry far less about how things begin.
Teach it by attaching the phrase to the close of a game. The ball goes into your pocket, you say the words in a warm, flat voice, and something calm happens next: a chew, a lick mat, a lie down.
Dogs who never learn how a task ends spend their entire lives braced for the next one to start.
Say it the same way every time. Consistency here is worth more than volume.
4. Leave It, Which Is Really an Impulse Control Cue in Disguise
Leave it looks like a manners command. In this breed it functions as an emergency brake.
Movement is the real temptation
Most dogs break a leave it over dropped food. Border Collies break it over motion: skateboards, bikes, chickens, the delivery van, a carrier bag doing something fascinating in the wind.
So train it with food, absolutely, but understand that food is only the warm up act.
Cover a treat with your hand. Wait for your dog to back off even slightly. Mark that moment and pay from your other hand, so the thing they left never becomes the prize.
Then upgrade to things that move
Roll a ball across the floor and ask for the cue. Reward heavily the instant your dog turns away from it rather than towards it.
Progress to a ball bouncing, then to a friend jogging past at a sensible distance, then to real life at the sort of distance where your dog can still think.
Pay outrageously well for this one. You are asking your dog to override an instinct that people spent two centuries deliberately sharpening.
5. Watch Me, the Cue That Quietly Rewires Everything Else
Every command above depends on your dog being able to find you with their eyes when the world gets loud. That is a trainable skill, and it deserves its own word.
Eye contact beats obedience
A collie who checks in voluntarily is a collie who is thinking. A collie who is thinking is not stalking the cyclist, the pram, or the sheep in the next field.
Start absurdly easy. Say the cue, wait, and the second those eyes flick up to yours, mark it and pay.
Do not lure with a treat held next to your face. That teaches your dog to stare at your hand, which helps nobody.
Build it in ugly, boring places
Car parks. Bus stops. The scruffy end of the garden where the neighbour’s chickens live.
Practise where it is slightly hard, then slightly harder, always stopping while your dog is still winning.
A dog who looks at you by choice has already made the decision you were about to ask them to make.
Fold it into everyday life instead of treating it as a training exercise. Before you open the front door, ask for it. Before the lead comes off, ask for it. Before you throw anything, ask for it.
Ten seconds here, ten seconds there, five or six times a day. It adds up faster than any structured session ever will, and it costs you nothing but attention.