Dog Days

Dog Days at Mid-Atlantic Border Collie Rescue

27 February 2012

Special needs?


What constitutes special needs?

In my mind, things like epilepsy, diabetes, blindness, or deafness qualify as physical special needs.

Behavioral special needs may include things like fear of children, fear of other dogs, or separation anxiety...

Perhaps a missing limb might be special needs...

But shyness? Is that really special needs? Or a pup that needs socialisation? Is that special needs? Training manners? Leash walking? Is that really special needs?

I was recently asked why we (MABCR) had so many special needs dogs. I racked my brain, going through a mental inventory of the current list of dogs, and couldn't think of a single special needs dog...well, ok, we do have one that is head shy and needs to learn some trust. And we do have a couple of shy dogs who need socialisation, and will do better living with other dogs, but are they special needs?

On further investigation, I came to understand that the person asking the question had never lived with a border collie. Yes, they had lived with some higher drive dogs, all hunting breeds, though none with the drive or intelligence of the border collie (sorry, it is true, and I subsequently suggested they look at other breeds to adopt...)

This got me to thinking about what qualifies as special needs. If this person's inference is true, then nearly all of the dogs we have ever had in rescue here are special needs. Right now I have a couple of dogs that have some OCD, a couple that are shy, a couple that need to learn to walk properly on leash, that have no known history with children, that need to learn how to deal with 'town' life...well, I guess all of our dogs are special needs if you go by that...

In reality, I have only marked an occasional dog as special needs; Tribble (needs weekly injections), and Lucas (blind) are recent special needs dogs...really, only a handful of dogs in all of these years.

Truth be told, I am not sure I have ever met a border collie that didn't have some sort of quirk. While they may not be in-your-face-obvious, they are there if you look for them. In general, their humans appreciate the quirks as part of who that dog is, and while they may not love the quirk, they have learned to manage it.

The conclusion I have come to is that in reality, Border Collies may indeed be special needs for some. I have always maintained that border collies can be difficult and are not for everyone (which is why we work through matching here), so if little quirks seem like special needs to you, then...well then, you are really missing out (tongue in cheek smile here), but you should definitely look at another breed as a companion..


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