High-Drive Dogs

Your Dog Isn't Destroying Your House. It's Finishing A Job You Never Gave It.

A Border Collie, a lost $2,300 rental bond and advice that wasn’t helping. Then an egg farmer explained what I’d been missing.

THE WORKING-DOG FILE Bandit · Border Collie

If you read my story about Bandit, you know how it ended. Here's the part that matters more than the ending. Three things I wish someone had told me before I lost a bond.

1. Your dog isn't bad. A Collie, a Kelpie, a Heeler, a Staffy or a Lab chewing your house is a working dog with no work.
2. The standard advice treats the symptom. Walks, crates and bitter spray deal with the chewing. None of them deal with why.
3. Most toys were designed to sell, not to work. They look great on a shelf and do nothing when you leave the room.

Here's how I learned all three the expensive way.

Nine months. One lost bond.

What every trainer said

I did all of it. I want that on the record, because the advice makes you feel like you haven't tried hard enough.

Two walks a day, an hour each. Fetch in the park until my arm hurt. A crate, which stopped the chewing and started the howling. Bitter spray on every frame in the house, which moved him to the skirting. Puzzle feeders, three of them, all solved by day four. Twenty-something toys. Two Amazon "smart balls."

Then a trainer at $120 an hour, who watched Bandit for forty minutes and said, "He needs more exercise."

I was already doing two hours a day. She said, "Then three."

That was the moment I stopped trusting the advice and started looking for someone who actually understood the dog.

What the egg farmer said in 90 seconds

Sunday market. A bloke selling eggs with two Border Collies asleep under the trestle table. Not tied up. Not looking at anyone. Just done.

I asked how. He looked at Bandit straining on the lead and said this, near enough word for word.

"Walking's nothing to a Collie. That's just moving. He needs to chase. Something that moves without you, moves wrong so he can't work it out, stops and starts, like a sheep does."

Then he explained why, and it's the thing every trainer had skipped. Every dog runs on a sequence. Working breeds run on it harder than anyone.

• Eye. Lock on to something that moves.
• Stalk. Low, slow, creeping. The Collie crouch.
• Chase. The part they were bred for.
• Grab. Teeth on it.
• Shake. Job done.

Why walking doesn't count. A walk is step one, at best. He sees things. He never gets to stalk them, chase them or grab them. To a Collie that's not exercise. That's a commute.

Why fetch doesn't count either. A thrown ball is three seconds of chase in a straight line, then a wait. He knows where it's landing before it leaves your hand. No stalk, no surprise, no job.

Why the door frame. "He's finishing the job," the farmer said. "He's got no chase, so he skips to the end. Grab and shake. Your door frame is the last step in a job you never gave him."

That was 90 seconds. It cost me nothing. It explained nine months.

Why the toy industry gets this wrong

I went home and tipped out the toy basket with the farmer's sentence in my head. Moves without you. Moves wrong. Stops and starts.

Nothing in the basket did any of it.

Passive toys wait. A rope is a rope until a human picks it up. A plush is a cushion. A ball is a ball on the floor. They only run the sequence while you're standing there, and the chewing happens when you're not.

Puzzles get solved. A puzzle feeder is a good ten minutes on day one. By day four a Collie has it worked out, and once it's worked out, it's furniture.

Cheap smart balls fail on the farmer's test. Both the ones I bought rolled in a straight line at one speed. Bandit worked them out in two goes. Then they died on the carpet inside a couple of minutes anyway.

To be fair to the basket, ropes and puzzles are fine. They're good extras. They just aren't the chase, and the chase is the bit that was missing.

Five questions I took shopping

I turned the farmer's sentence into five questions and took them shopping.

The toy-basket check

Pick a toy you already own. Tick what you’ve seen it do.

Moves on its ownDoes it move without you throwing or pulling it? Changes things upDoes it vary its direction or pace? Responds to a nudgeDoes touching it start the movement again? Works on your floorCan it move on the surface your dog plays on? Holds up to playIs it still intact after your dog has used it?

The basket scored zero. The Amazon balls scored one. Then someone in a working-dog group posted a video of a blue ball with rope arms cutting across a lounge room with a Kelpie in the Collie crouch behind it.

It passed all five.

The one that passed

It's called The Chase Buddy, from a small Australian brand called FloofyPups. They call it "the first dog toy engineered around prey-drive science," which is a big claim. Here's how it lines up against the farmer, feature by feature.

"Moves without you." Three modes. Slow Mode for the first few days, gentle rolling and pausing. Fast Mode for the full chase. Interactive Mode, which I'll get to. None of them need a person.

"Moves wrong so he can't work it out." The movement is properly randomised. It cuts sideways, spins, stops dead, bolts. Bandit has had it six months and still can't predict it. That's the whole point. A Collie that can predict a toy is done with it.

"Stops and starts, like a sheep does." This is Interactive Mode, and it's the bit that fixed the door frames. When Bandit stops, it powers down and goes still. When he nudges it, it takes off. They call it touch reactivation. The farmer would call it a sheep.

Carpet. It works on carpet, tile and hardwood. Every rental I've had has been carpet, and it's never stalled.

Survives a Collie. Chew-resistant ABS and TPU shell, reinforced for heavy chewers. It has marks. It works. It's safe for small, medium and large breeds.

It charges over USB-C in about 90 minutes and gives up to 24 hours of play. Twenty to thirty minutes a day is enough to burn off the zoomies, even in a Collie.

"The Chase Buddy is one of the most thoughtfully designed dog products I've seen this year. It actually addresses the underlying behavioural issue, not just the symptom."

Dr. Sarah Bennett, Veterinary Behaviourist, 2026

Meet the Toy That Passed the Test

Free shipping · Ships within 24 hours · 30-Day Happy Dog Guarantee

Bandit’s progress journal

The maths for renters

The Chase Buddy is $49.99 AUD. My bond was $2,300. You don't need me to do the sum.

Right now it's Buy 1 Get 1 Free. Two for $49.99 AUD. I keep one in the lounge and one in the hallway, where the skirting used to be. Buy 2 Get 2 Free is $99.98 AUD if you've got more than one working dog, which, if you've got one, you probably will eventually.

Shipping is free on every order. They ship within 24 hours, and it's 3 to 5 business days in Australia, 5 to 10 overseas. They send to the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Not just Bandit

And if you think your dog is the extreme case, the Dog Aging Project found in 2024 that 85.9% of US dogs show moderate-to-severe separation or attachment behaviours. Texas A&M researchers found problematic behaviours in nearly every US dog they studied. Your dog is not being naughty. They are under-stimulated.

Put Their Energy to Play

4.7/5 from 1,422 reviews · Not sold on Amazon

The guarantee, in plain words

They call it the 30-Day Happy Dog Guarantee. Use it for a month. If your dog isn't happier, email them and they refund the whole thing. You keep the toy. You don't post anything back.

Fewer than 1 in 50 people ever use it. If it doesn't work for your dog, you've lost nothing. If it does, you get your bond back at the end of the lease.

Give a New Job a 30-Day Trial

Full refund if your dog isn't happier. You keep the toy.

Two ways this goes

The first way, you keep doing what the trainer said. Three hours of walking. Another crate. Another bottle of bitter spray. Another inspection you're dreading, and a dog who's still finishing a job at 2pm on a Tuesday with your door frame.

The second way, you give him the job. Slow Mode, five minutes, day one. Watch for the crouch. Then see what your skirting boards look like in a month.

I'd pick the second way. I did, and I've stopped hiding my shoes.

Let the Door Frame Retire

$49.99 AUD · Buy 1 Get 1 Free · Free shipping

Common questions

This is an advertorial. Tom W. is a FloofyPups customer sharing his own experience. Results vary from dog to dog. The Chase Buddy is a toy and is not a substitute for veterinary or behavioural care.