And that’s why I use many different ‘methods’, each one chosen for the particular dog or breed I’m working with at any time.
What works for Dobes and Pits is totally useless for Sight Hounds.
[actually, just about everything is useless for Sight Hounds]..LOL
I’ve had Dobes for 38 years now and I’ve never had one that took more than a month to ‘fix’, no matter how horrendous their life had been before I got hold of them.
And actually, Merlin was the only dog who took a month, due her multiple severe physical and mental abuses.
[she was one that I kept because she was so traumatized that she only trusted and obeyed me..it was a sin, the things done to her]
She was one of my best dogs ever but I didn’t trust that anyone else would understand her particular emotional scars.
The other couple dozen usually were go good to go in 2 weeks, give or take.
You ever work with Euro Dobes?
“Biddable” is not really in their vocabulary...but ‘driven’ certainly is.
So their training has to be modified to fit that drive.
I will say that they learn much faster than American Dobes which is not necessarily a good thing.
They learn to ‘anticipate the command’ so fast it’s scary..and frustrating at times.
But even that has its upside.
Odin is so attuned to my subtle hand signals [taught at the same time as his voice commands were] that people who watch him ‘do his thing’ in public think he’s ‘reading my mind’.
Of course, he’s not.
He’s just watching for the tiny, almost imperceptible shifts in the positions of my seemingly still fingers to do what he’s supposed to.
Little kids love it.
They think he’s “magic”.
:)
Prefer them. Much more solid dogs, more able to work. My first all-my-own was a German bred Dobe, a big red male. I like big working dogs that can work. Some of them come in here so messed up it takes as long as a year to put them back together. I don't take the quick turn arounds.
Ever worked with completely feral dogs? Born in the wild, never been around people at all types? Those are interesting.