A Border Collie's log starts with the day's work
A Border Collie's appetite is a moving target, because her fuel use swings with her workload. A day of agility training, long hill walks or stock work can leave her genuinely hungry, while a rainy day indoors leaves her picking at the bowl. So the first line of her daily log should record the work before the food: what exercise she had, roughly how long it lasted, and whether it was physical running, focused training, or both. Under that, note her meals as measured amounts, whether she finished them, and any training treats, because a heavy reward day during a new exercise can quietly add a second dinner's worth of food.
What to write down each day for a working-minded Collie
Keep the daily entry short enough that you will actually keep it up. For a Border Collie, appetite scored simply as keen, normal or picky tells you more over a month than grams of leftovers. Add water intake if it changes, the state of her stools, and one line on behaviour: settled in the evening, or pacing, staring and inventing jobs around the house. Restlessness in the log is useful data, since a Collie who suddenly cannot switch off may be under-exercised, sore, or simply bored, and the pattern across days helps you tell which. Note sleep too; a dog who normally crashes after dinner but stays wired is flagging something worth watching.
Weighing an athlete whose coat hides the answer
Weigh a Border Collie once a week, same scales, same time of day, ideally before breakfast. Her medium double coat can hide both weight loss and gain, so pair every weigh-in with a hands-on check: ribs should be easy to feel under a thin fat cover, and her waist should tuck up visibly from the side. Record the number and the hands-on result together. A slow slide downward during a heavy training block usually means the ration needs to grow; a slow climb through a quiet winter usually means the treats, not the meals, have crept up. Either way, four weeks of honest entries beat one worried guess.
Patterns in a Collie's log that deserve a vet conversation
Show your vet the log if a Border Collie's appetite drops for more than a couple of days without a lighter workload to explain it, or if weight falls even though her food has gone up. Limping after rest, repeated stiffness on cold mornings, or a dog who starts refusing jumps she normally loves should all be written down with dates and raised promptly. Sudden behaviour change in a breed this observant, such as new noise sensitivity or withdrawal from training games, is also worth recording in her own words rather than from memory weeks later.
Keeping several handlers writing in one Collie diary
Border Collies often have a whole crew: one person walks at dawn, another trains in the evening, a third feeds. If each of those people keeps their own mental notes, the dog gets double dinners and nobody sees the full appetite picture. KinsLe Care Teams gives the Collie one shared care record where feeding, walks and training sessions are assigned to named people and ticked off with a timestamp when done, so her daily log builds itself from the people actually doing the work.