It’s a dog, not a Redbull
It goes like this:
I tell people I have a dog called Mango.
People ask what breed Mango is.
I answer that she’s a cattle dog x border collie.
And they say -
‘Oh, she must have a lot of energy.’
This irks me.
Not a lot.
About as much as someone saying ‘less’ when they mean ‘fewer’ might bother a grammar pedant.
The error is understandable, benign, and hardly worth correcting.
After all, it’s true that herding dogs have a lot of energy compared to other breeds.
At least, it’s true enough.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that herding dogs aren’t energetic - they’ve earned that reputation for a reason - but that’s not all they are.
It irks me because peddling this reductionist notions creates problems of its own. Here’s why.
It reduces dogs to a stereotype
A Scot, a blonde, and a lawyer walk into a bar.
The bartender asks what they’d like to drink, because assuming based on their nationality, appearance or vocation would be silly.
To stereotype [verb] means firmly or unchangeably assign a preconceived and oversimplified notion of characteristics to something.
We know that when it comes to jokes, a stereotype usually reduces someone to a one-dimensional (often offensive) cliché that barely touches on the complexity of what it is to be a human being.
Pigeonholing all herding dogs to being ‘energetic’ limits our ability to appreciate the complexity of the breed, let alone the individual.
The stereotype is based on limited knowledge
Stereotypes don’t hold much weight for people who know the subject in question. The problem is that people who don’t the subject are more likely to take the stereotype on face value, without interrogating its validity.
Unless you grew up on a farm with herding dogs that actually worked, most of your knowledge of them probably comes from media and society.
Movies and books show working dogs in a working environment, and people will keep talking to the one thing they know about herding dogs - that they’re energetic.
Most farmers would also say that herding dogs are energetic. They’d say that working dogs work hard, are exceptionally intelligent and have incredible stamina.
What often goes unsaid is that they don’t work non-stop.
They aren’t rostered on to work all day, every day. The farmer isn’t moving stock every day, and even if they are, they don’t always require the whole team.
Working dogs have substantial down-time, including long periods of rest that are necessary to refuel after a hard day’s work.
Stereotypes kill curiosity
My kelpie is out of control > kelpies are herding dogs > herding dogs are high energy > my kelpie is out of control because I’m not meeting their energy needs.
Lock it in Eddy. I don’t need to phone a friend.
This line of thinking *might* be right, but it also may be erroneously oversimplifying a more complex issue.
Believing you know ‘the answer’ is a reliable way to stop searching for it.
If all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
With curiosity quashed, all of the dog’s behaviours are now (mis)attributed to their breed.
Barking at cars? High energy. Can’t settle? High energy. Chewing the furniture? High. Energy.
If all you’ve got is an oversimplified notion of working dogs, every challenge comes down to ‘High energy’. But what about fear? What about sound sensitivity? What about the effect of pain on impulse control? What about being unequipped to self-settle? What about not having mental stimulation needs met?
At this point, a herding dog’s reputation doesn’t just precede them, it barges in mid-conversation, talks over everyone, and argues a tired and crude point, to the detriment of everyone in the room - mostly the dog and their owner.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy
Trying to solve what is believed to be a ‘high-energy’ problem with high-energy activities is what turns highly-strung couch potatoes into highly-strung athletes.
Your cattle dog is driving you nuts, so you take them on a 5km run to burn some of that energy. And it works! When you get home, they snooze for the rest of the day.
The next time they’re feral-ing, you go again. Only now you have to run 6km to get the same result. Next week you have to go 7km.
Before long you’re going on 20km runs with an athlete, whom you’ve conditioned to go further and take longer to tire.
The more high-energy activities you do with them, the more they will need to be satisfied.
The ‘they must have a lot of energy’ line is holding you hostage to an ever-growing routine.
And yet, the ever-increasing amount of time you spend pounding the pavement could be spent teaching your working dog how to self-settle, or providing them with enrichment activities that burn mental energy.
Don’t get me wrong, dogs like high energy activities - running, chasing, swimming etc. - and working dogs more than most. But they also like resting. They also like strolling. They also like slowing down and sniffing.
Everything in moderation, even moderation.
I like working out, but I don’t want to do it all the time.
I like sitting around, but I don’t want to do it all the time.
I like eating cake, but I don’t only want to eat cake.
Expending physical energy can become a crutch for both dog and guardian. If all the dog learns is that they can, and should, and will, be running all day, all they know is how to run all day. But if they learn to settle, to sniff, to sleep, they can solve their needs with the right solution.
You have a cattle-dog? Oh, what’s she like?
I hope you’ve taken some new information from this essay, and perhaps a new way of looking at the working dogs you encounter.
If you have a working dog yourself, perhaps you’ll get started on teaching them to settle if they don’t already know how.
Perhaps next time you come across one on the street you’ll be inclined to ask what they’re like, rather than run the energy line past the owner.
If you like, you can tell them about my girl Mango - who flops down in the grass on long walks if she gets tired, and snoozes on her back in the sun, and loves a good snuffle in the grass. Yeah, she has a lot of energy sometimes too, but that’s not all she is.
After all, she’s a dog, not a Redbull.
