Dogs are all individuals, just like humans. Within each breed there is the whole array of personalities so a whole array of different training needs
Compliments to Gus
“How do you get your dog to do that?”
“What a well-trained dog”
“Collies are so easy to train”
Just a small selection of comments I get frequently when out on walks with Gus. I accept the first two happily and chat away to people about dogs and training, however I do take issue with the last one. They aren’t always…
Any dog is easy to train if you first understand the breed and then take care to understand your dog’s personality, likes and dislikes.
Why breeding matters
Breed does matter (despite the headlines from a recent study suggesting it doesn’t.) Your dog will tend to want to do what it was bred for – herding things, chasing things, catching things or retrieving things.
But dogs are all individuals, just like humans. Within each breed there is the whole array of personalities. Gus in some ways is a typical collie. He’ll try to chase or herd cats and would probably have been a car chaser if he’d ever given the opportunity, which he wasn’t. He’s also noise sensitive. But he also has a bark – and he knows how to use it. Often. Whereas collies generally are quiet dogs.
Pepper, my grand-dog is a sight hound, so he has the genetics to chase and kill small furry things. Yet last week he was hunting for bits of sausage when one started squeaking, much to the astonishment of Daughter no 1. It turned out there were two baby rabbits hiding in the grass, but Pepper just thought they were there to play and made no attempt to harm them.
But you need to look beyond the breed and into their own personality
Understanding your dog’s personality, foibles, likes and hates and finding out what they love is the key to making training easy. Which is why we ask everyone to first a reward audit before starting our Perfect Pet classes.
Many of you will have signed up for the Reward booklet. Do work through it if you haven’t already done so.
Then come along to a Perfect Pet class to find out how to use your audit results to train your dog easily and effectively.
If you’ve already attended a class, get out your booklets and revise the games we teach.
Training is not something you do once then forget – topping up your dog’s responses regularly means you’ll get congratulatory comments from passers-by you meet on walks.
And there’s not much better than hearing people praising your dog.
Keep training and stay safe,
Carol
