To understand car chasing, we first need to understand Border Collies. 

From a strictly biological standpoint, herding is a modified version of the very specific sequence our Border Collies’ ancestors used to hunt. This is the biological blueprint for how a canid hunts. In wild species like wolves, this sequence is a fluid, functional chain.

Wild predators, which still rely on natural selection, will have the following complete sequence. Unlike our pet dogs, who have some, all, hardly any, or weird new versions of this sequence, wild animals that are not born with the innate ability to perform this complete, ordered sequence will die.  

In domestic dogs, selective breeding has "broken" or "hypertrophied" specific links in this chain to create specialized working behaviours.

The exact steps of the sequence are as follows:

Search / Orient

The dog uses its senses (smell, sight, or sound) to locate potential prey. When they are searching, they are looking for prey, but haven’t found it yet. 

They might:

-Sniff the air or ground
-Increase inhalation, trying to scent their target
-zig zag, covering more ground
-Scan the environment
-Hold their ears up, or swivel them around
-Move at a trot, trying to cover more ground and hope they will encounter prey

Once a target is found, the hunter orients to it. This is the exact millisecond between Search and Eye. 

They might: 

-Freeze
-Align their head, with their eyes and ears pointing at the target, helping them triangulate the location of the prey
-If their mouth was open, it might snap shut
-Their body might stiffen, coiling to get ready to move to the next step. 

Eye

Once the target is located, the dog "locks on." This is a state of intense, stationary focus. This is what our Border Collies are known for. It’s their signature move. We've simply bred Border Collies to do it a LOT and very intensely.

Over the last 132 years, this is one of the exact traits we’ve been fine-tuning, selectively breeding for. These days, some dogs are still “loose-eyed”, like my border collie, Griff. Some have so much “eye”, they get stuck, having a hard time seeing more than the one sheep they are locked onto. 

But in the middle, there’s the sweet spot. The dogs who have just the right amount. 

Back in 1893 in Northumberland, England, sheepdogs were forceful and loud. This stresses sheep out. So when Old Hemp was born, the first of his kind, moving sheep calmly by staring, a legacy was born. Eye is a prized trait; some handlers like more, some like less. It’s talked about, debated and is probably the most identifiable trait of our current dogs. 

Stalk

Combine with eye, this is the Border Collie's 1 2 punch. 

The dog moves toward the prey while keeping its profile low. This involves a lowered head, a rounded back, and a slow, creeping gait. The goal is to close the distance without triggering the prey's flight response.

In wild animals, this is the trick to getting close enough to the prey to chase it down. If they bolt at first sight, the prey has a better chance of getting away, and the hunter would expend too much energy, fail to replenish themselves, and die off. Stalking allows them to narrow the gap. 

In Border Collies, this, combined with the eye, is off-putting to sheep. Sheep, born with their own innate traits to survive as prey, know a hunter even if they have never seen one. They recognize the stalk, the stare, and they know to move away from it. 

Chase

When the prey flees or the predator reaches a critical distance, the "thinking" phase ends, and the "doing" phase begins. This is an explosive, high-arousal pursuit designed to outrun or intercept the target.

While we don’t want our Border Collies running amok on the field, we’ve also modified this to get “flanks” and an “outrun”. While most breeds will run directly into their target in a straight line, border collies sweep around, or run out around sheep in a “pear-shaped” arc. We can fine-tune this with training, but good dogs have a natural flank. 

Grab-Bite

The moment of contact. The dog uses its mouth to seize the prey. In retrievers, this step is modified into a "soft mouth" to hold without damaging; in herding dogs, this step is largely suppressed but can manifest as "nipping" at heels.

Kill-Bite

A specialized, forceful bite is usually accompanied by a "head shake." This is designed to break the neck or crush the vitals of the prey. Selective breeding in most working breeds (except Terriers) seeks to eliminate this step entirely, although you'll still see it if your dog has a toy or is playing tug. 

Dissect / Eviscerate

The dog uses its teeth and paws to tear the prey apart. This behaviour is often seen in domestic dogs when they "surgically" remove the squeaker or stuffing from a plush toy, holding the toy with their feet and using their incisors to pull out the insides. 

Consume

The final metabolic goal: eating the prey. This completes the sequence, and the animal usually calms back down again.

Now, we need to understand a sciencey term: Modal action patterns. Stick with me! We are coming back to car chasing, I promise…

A Modal Action Pattern is a "pre-installed" instinctual program triggered by a specific sight or sound, called a “releaser”.

The releaser causes the animal to perform a complex behaviour, such as stalking, without being taught. MAPs are like micro instincts. If the instinct is to hunt, the eye is a MAP inside the broad instinct category. 

Animal kingdom examples: 

-a bird is able to build a nest specific to its species without ever being taught
-a fawn lies still when its mother is gone, refusing to move until she's back
-Geese roll eggs back into their nest
-Stickleback fish become aggressive when they spot the red dot on another male's body
-Male Jewel Beetles are attracted to brown female beetles covered in dimples

We mentioned “releasers”, the stimuli that trigger the animal to perform the MAP. 

-Nest building is “released” by increasing daylight
-Lying still is “released” when the fawn is alone
-Aggressive behaviour is triggered in Stickleback fish by the colour red

We all agree, I’m sure, that if we take all of this into consideration, sheep “release” the MAPs of breed specific herding. 

But eye/stalk isn't released only by sheep. Just like in the animal world, weird and wacky things will release MAPs.

You can trigger Stickleback fish by showing them a red-painted wooden block. You can get Geese to roll fake eggs. Male Jewel Beetles fall in love with brown stubby beer bottles.

Yes, sheep might “release” your dog's herdiness. But so might chickens, kids, bikes, leaves, you name it. My female border collie completely ignores sheep, but herds other border collies who are acting herdy themselves. Her behaviours are “released” by the other dog's movement. 

One of my border collies is triggered by me picking up dog poop in the yard. I move in a weird, drifty way that sends his MAPs out into the universe. Strange, but true.

Although he herds me while I'm poop scooping, he's not a car chaser and is great with sheep! This was his first time with 40 sheep…

So when it comes to car chasing, there’s been a lot of online discussion recently about what drives it. Is it predatory? Is it herding? Is it strictly fear? There have been suggestions that it cannot be herding because border collies know the difference between sheep and other objects, or that, because cars don’t move like sheep, it can’t be herding. Or that, in the wild, predators don’t chase cars, so it’s unlikely dogs would mistake one for something to chase. 

But here’s the thing: 

Herding behaviour MAPs aren’t exclusively released by cattle and sheep. If they were, border collies wouldn’t stalk their ball, wouldn’t cause issues at dog parks when they herd other dogs. Australian cattle dogs wouldn’t bite the bums of delivery men, and German shepherds wouldn’t pace fencelines. Border Collies would be oblivious to the family cat. Australian Cattle Dogs wouldn’t be nipping the broom. We wouldn’t be using ducks to work our sheepdogs. 

Herding itself is naturally rewarding. Performing the behaviour itself is the reward. We don’t call border collies off the field and give them a food reward; we don’t need to. My border collie herds his ball, and when he’s allowed to take it, he instantly drops it again- herding it is more rewarding than having it. 

Having said that, it is a mistake to assume herding behaviour is only seen in happy, healthy dogs working under perfect conditions. Think of it like a pre-installed app on a smartphone; just because it’s a factory setting doesn't mean it isn't affected by how the phone is running. If the phone is glitching, the app might not run smoothly.

This happens because a dog’s genetic programming is deeply tied to their emotions. When a dog feels a massive surge of excitement, it acts like a power boost to their herding app, lowering their self-control and making them more likely to impulsively crouch or chase. In these moments, the dog isn't a mindless robot; they are simply in a high-energy flow state where their joy is being channelled through the only physical language they know best. 

That means that the behaviour can come up during excitement, when a dog is frustrated, when they are scared, when they are happy, or when they are overwhelmed… You name it. Herding behaviour is not mutually exclusive to emotions. 

On top of that, border collies rarely come out of the womb as you see them on the trial field. The first time my very well-bred border collie saw sheep, he was charging, barking, had his tail up… his world exploded! Now, he’s the opposite. And while people might say “that’s not herding”, it’s more like “that’s not what we want from a herder”. But in that moment, the dog isn’t wrong to be in over his head. Most pet dogs are not trained to control their herding behaviours, so why not chase a car? 

On top of ALL of that, some lines are more chasey than others. I’ve worked with many dogs from certain lines, and I can say that many of my car chasers are related! 

I've heard it said that wild predators don’t chase cars, so it's unlikely that a border collie would get it “wrong”… but wild predators are not selectively bred. Wild predators rely on fear and caution. Wild animals are less likely to “glitch”. Wild animals rely on instincts to survive, and getting it right, not making stupid mistakes, is much more costly for them. And also, sometimes wild predators do chase cars…

As a result of domestication, dogs are no longer reliant on these perfectly rigid MAPs that kept their ancestors alive. Because of that, dogs hump the air and cover up food with invisible dirt. They resource guard water. They herd owners picking up poop, and they chase cars. They do it because they are excited, because they are afraid. They do it because it moves, they do it because they are living, breathing animals who aren’t robots, and when you breed 130 years of chasing into an animal, sometimes it doesn’t come out fully cooked. 

Although behaviour is complicated, messy, weird and wild, it’s also sometimes just what it is, but it rarely, if ever, fits into a little box. We can isolate why a particular dog chases a trigger, but we can't extrapolate that to an entire breed. 

In most cases, we assess whether a dog is fearful or enthusiastic when encountering a trigger. If the reaction is positive and safe, we can allow the interaction to continue, as we do with happy or frustrated dog-to-dog reactivity. However, car chasing is inherently dangerous and potentially fatal. Because of that, regardless of the dog's underlying motivation, we must intervene immediately to modify the behaviour.

Behaviour is never just one thing. It is a messy mix of who the dog is, how they feel, and what’s happening in front of them. But when we see the "eye," the "stalk," and the "chase," we are seeing the bits and pieces of their ancestor's perfect software that we've pushed and pulled and moulded and refined since Old Hemp.