Over the next few weeks while I video and work my two pups, you might wonder if what I am doing is useful to your older dog. Just like humans, it is extremely good for any dog to learn something new at any age. I’ll give you an example of a little toy poodle I had in my beginner obedience class 10 years ago. This toy poodle was 15 years old, becoming increasingly aggressive to her owners and humans in general. She was going blind and deaf and was starting to fear life. The dog had never been trained during her 15 years. After just one 8 week beginner class, the dogs aggression was almost entirely gone and she graduated top of the class. This dog was starved for knowledge and was happy to find a way to communicate with her owners.
There will be many things you see me demo on the training videos that you might go “well that’s neat but what use will it have for me and my dog?” Lets change how we look at teaching our dogs. I know many things, trivia that really has no real use in my every day life. However, that trivia keeps my mind sharp and I hope makes me a more intelligent person. This will also hold true for your dog. During training, the dog will be spending quality time with you, which is vital to your relationship. As you train, the dog will pick up on what you are doing faster and faster. You will go from taking 15 minutes to teach SIT to taking 5 minutes to teach ROLL OVER to taking 2 minutes to teach SHAKE HANDS, PLAY DEAD, SPIN, SIT UP, etc.
This is the number one reason I start teaching something new with a clicker. A dog who is trained with a clicker learn to open their mind, be ready to experiment, they do not freeze and wait for direction but move their bodies hoping to hit on what you are looking for. There is a point where we move from clicker to verbal / leash work. That is only after the dog learns the behavior and I will cover that in a few weeks. Right now, I want everyone to see why I use a clicker to teach something new, how quickly I can get new behaviors using the clicker, and how much joy the dogs have in learning.
If you continue to teach your dog, you will be able to go from giving them trained commands to full conversation. This is what Merlot and to a lesser degree, Flash have learned. Flash had the misfortune of having me pregnant and raising my kids for the last 4 of his 5 years of life. He really only had one good year of training before I simply focused on gaining a few agility titles and left the rest. What Flash knows he has picked up either from Merlot or from when he was a pup… and Flash knows more than most dogs! Merlot could and did understand almost every word I spoke or didn’t speak. That only comes from a dog who seeks to learn and an owner who is willing to share. There were many things I taught Merlot that we didn’t really use much (Opening doors, helping me up from the floor, etc) and there are things I taught for fun that I actually used often (going to get my shoes and to know which shoes were mine over other options, picking up items I dropped).
In closing, take 5 minutes out of your day and teach your dog something new. It isn’t much time to devote and it will challenge both of you. Use my training videos to give you ideas on what to teach. Hopefully I will be able to put up 2-3 videos a week and keep you and your dog excited to try something new.
…..Because a blog post really needs a visual, even if that visual has nothing to do with the topic! Here is a photo of Flash with the family on our bed. It’s a hard life!
Aiden, Kenzie, Flash, and Keith.