fourteen month old border collie with what i now realize is genuinely high prey drive and our recall has gone from "reliable in fenced areas" at 9 months to "completely unreliable around any moving small animal" at 14 months and i am stuck on the e-collar vs long line debate because everyone i ask answers with their ideology not my dog

Wren is our 14 month old border collie, 36lb, female, from a working line breeder (her parents both run sheep on a farm in vermont and we got her on the explicit understanding that she would have a job, which for us is herding lessons twice a week, daily nosework, and a lot of structured exercise). she is the dog i grew up wanting and she is also a much harder dog than i was prepared for. we are 9 months in to ownership and the recall situation has gone in the wrong direction in a way that scared me enough this weekend to come ask for help on the internet.

where we started. at 5 to 9 months Wren had what i would call a solid recall in fenced spaces, very good around mild distractions (people, other dogs at a distance), and acceptable around moderate distractions (other dogs nearby, slow moving small animals at a distance). we trained recall the standard way, lots of high value reinforcement, short distances, building distraction tolerance gradually, reverse luring, the whole pet professionals guild approach. our trainer (CCPDT certified, positive reinforcement focus) had us on a structured progression and we were on track. at 9 months i would have said the recall was 80% reliable in open fenced fields with normal distractions which was honestly better than i expected at that age.

where we are now at 14 months. recall around any moving small animal (squirrel, rabbit, chipmunk, bird taking off, anything in motion that triggers the prey sequence) is essentially zero. she does not hear the cue, she does not see me, she is fully locked in to the chase. last weekend at a friends rural property she took off after a deer at full speed and was gone for 19 minutes before she came back on her own, and the wave of fear i had during those 19 minutes told me that the long line + positive reinforcement only approach we have been running is not going to be enough for the kind of dog she is, and i need to actually engage with the e-collar question rather than continue avoiding it because it makes me uncomfortable.

the problem is everyone i ask answers with their ideology. our CCPDT trainer is fundamentally opposed to e-collars on welfare grounds and her answer is "more impulse control work, more pattern games, more management." the herding instructor (working line breeder herself) says every working dog she has ever trained has been on an e-collar by 12 months and Wren is overdue. the breeder says the same. our generalist vet does not have a strong opinion and deferred to "ask a behaviorist." a DACVB consult is $700 and a 6 week wait and i am not sure if i need that or not. the reddit threads i have read on this are 50/50 and the comment sections are mostly people yelling at each other rather than answering the question.

my actual questions. one, for people who own and have actually trained high prey drive dogs (border collies, herding breeds, sighthounds, working line shepherds, terriers with genuine prey drive not just light enthusiasm), what does the protocol that worked for you look like in real terms. two, is the long line + positive reinforcement only approach realistic for the kind of dog Wren clearly is, or is the answer that this approach has a ceiling that is below the threshold of "safe off leash near wildlife"? three, if e-collar is the answer, what does an actually-good introduction protocol look like (i have heard "low stim, conditioned as a tap on the shoulder, never used as a correction") and who do i find to teach me how to use one correctly because this is not the kind of tool to figure out from youtube. four, is "Wren is just never going to be reliable off leash near wildlife and that is the deal with this dog" a real answer that i need to accept or is that a cop-out. five, the deer chase scared me badly enough that something is going to change. what are people who have been through this actually doing