Not sure if anyone can help by I have a 4 year old Welsh Border Collie who is obssessed (which is what the title should have said, not obessed!!!!) with light beams on the carpet. She spends 6 hours a day bobbing up and down and biting the carpet and furniture where the light hits it.
As you can imagine this is magnified dramitically when the sun shines through the windows.

We have to keep all blinds closed in the house in the day and have had to change her metal collar tag to a plastic one as she goes insane when the light bounces off it.

A dog trainer and behaviourist said there wasn't much she could advise other than taking Ellie out of the situation. She has destryed her dog bed by biting it when the sun shines through the kitchen blinds in the morning.

Any thoughts or help would be greatly apppreciated

Not seen a thread on this before.

Can you minimise the opportunity to practice the reacting to light beams, and supervise. Distract onto an alternative, like a game, or giving you attention?

I know if permitted, my BC would stare and toy with a tennis ball for hours and hours, with unflagging total concentration, but at least that means things only get "attacked" if such ball rolls under something where it's unreachable.

A strategy to solve this, might involve rewarding any alternative behaviour to "chasing" the light, to counter program your Collie into something less frustrating.

This is a great website so there may be something useful on reactivity there to help tripod's Pawsensitive blog on reactivity/

Hi there cathsam,

This can be a serious compulsive disorder and is particularly associated with these types of dogs and has a genetic basis.

You need to urgently have your dog medically assessed, referred to an APBC behaviourist and possibly consult with a veterinary behaviourist.

Please please do this as soon as you possible as this type of situation escalates quickly and can be very damaging.

Best of luck

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"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." - John Steinbeck

"If you don't want your dog to bite you, don't be an a**hole to him." ~ Dr. Ian Dunbar

Not much help but.........this was the subject of one of the VS programmes. I can't remember what she did to help rectify it but maybe a trawl of the net may come in handy if you like the way she does things.

I haven't seen that VS episode (though I remember another programme by a less respected behaviourist covering it), but tripod's right, being bred to be workaholic makes BC's prone to chasing sunbeams, shadows or waves obsessively. It's one of the things that you try to avoid a young Collie doing, as not starting something is much easier on all than stopping a habit.

One thing VS does do is refer cases to Vets for tests and eliminate or evaluate medical causes, rather than just pile in with the tools she can wield. If it has become OCD or near it, then some pharmaceutical treatment may be required to assist behaviour modification.

The qualifications mentioned matter, so the assessment and treatment has a proper scientific basis, rather than self proclaimed DW types, who suppress symptoms but don't adress the underlying causes. This article referred to from tripod's blog explains what role a Vet may have for apparent behaviour modification http://companionanimalsolutions.com/...-modification/