Dog Breeds and training

SeanKroll

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Olympia, WA
Looking for some advice and references on training and breeds.

We will be looking for a four-legged friend or two in the coming months to a year.

Some medium-sized rescue dogs, probably.

Good with kids. Good for a work-truck dog. Protect the homestead.


Thoughts?
 
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The shared, wire fence to the neighbors' pasture has two sheep and a sheepdog behind it, IIRC.
 

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On the other hand, pure lab is not much of a guard dog.
I have a good friend who breeds and trains Golden retrievers.
He has made some of the most award winning hunting dogs in Scandinavia.
But, he has installed cameras in his dog pens, because he is afraid somebody will steal the dogs.
My comment to that: " why not get one real dog, and let it in with the others"
That didn't go over too well.

I am not going to suggest any breed, Sean.
Not knowing how much of the Alpha gene you have with dogs and how much time you are willing to put into a dog, makes it near impossible.

Your problem is that the breeds that are good guardians of family and property, are the hardest to train.
Simply because in order to be a good guardian, a dog needs a large ego, which makes it hard to work with.

You would, IMO, be better off looking for a good buddy for your daughter and let the homestead protection come in second.
Most any dog will go all out to protect the kid they live with, no matter what breed, anyway.

Personally I like to mix Alsatians with something else ( I don't much like pure bred dogs, too many inbred races out there, hybrid vigour is a good thing), That gives you the smarts and trainability of the Alasatian, then you can add something from the other breed. I prefer the white Shepherds, because they don't have all the inbreeding problems of the brown ones.

Alsatian/ Yellow lab makes a wonderful dog, but is too mellow for me.

So I put something more forceful in, like the White shepherd/Pyreneean and the White shepherd/ Giant Schnauzer I have now.
Both were hard as hell to train. Jack, the Giant schnauzer mix is two years old now, and I have just now got to the point where he'll drop flat when I whistle.
I'd say that on a lab/Alsatian mix, that should take half a year.


Shit, now I went and did just what I said I wouldn't do.
 
Personally, I'd never do it.
Like you say, too much of a lottery.
However much I would like to save every dog in the world, I don't want to be stuck with a dog, that somebody else has frigged up for good, for maybe 10 years.
So for me it has always been 8 weeks old pups, bought from people where I can meet both parents and come regularly to follow the developement of the pups.
That way I start with a clean slate.
If something doesn't work out, I have only myself to blame.
 
"Rescue dog"....you get what you get and they're usually older and display their personality and traits more so than a puppy.

Spend time with them alone and have a list or one approved canidate for your daughter to fall instantly in love with.

German Shepherds are tough to beat for intelligence, protection, desire to work/please, and trainability.


(Oops, I take too long to post. You guys covered rescue.)
 
After having two rescue dogs & two from the litter as pups, I am with Stig. The damage done before they reached me ruined both rescue dogs, irrespective how much I cared for them. Sad but true
 
Do not bring your daughter when you choose the dog, be it a rescue or a clean slate type.

That is the worst mistake people make.

There is NO way you can go look at a bunch of cute puppies and decide not to buy one, if you have your kid with you.
So people usually end up buying one from the first litter or the first pound they visit.

Big mistake, you need to look at several in order to weigh them up against each other.

Best dog I ever had was one out of a litter of 12.
He was the only one of them I wanted, after observing them for half a day.
Unfortunately, he was already spoken for.
So I left.
2 weeks later they called me, and said that those people who wanted him never showed up.
He was mine 1 hour later.
Alsatian/Black lab/ Siberian husky with maybe the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure, a true Mulligan stew of a dog.

I'd gladly trade every dog I've had since, to have him back.
They say you get one truly good dog in your life, Thais1 was mine.

Being able to say " No thanks" is probably the most important part of picking out a good dog.

So leave your daughter at home and surprice her when the deed is done.
 
Shit, Sean.

You can probably tell, that you've pushed my button.

I really wanted to stay out of this, because the whole dog thing is just so tied up with how one's personality works.

Then I remember how Pete adviced me not to go the Malamute/shepherd way like he has done, because he felt it would be too hard to train to the kind of free style life my dogs have.

So I got something else, even though Bear seriously turns my crank.

So, for what it is worth, I'll give whatever advice I have to give.

Don't get two dogs at the same time, that is a recipe for trouble.
Get one, train it well, then get number two.

Two pups or untrained adult dogs will gang up against you, making training them 15 times as hard.

The old Buckaroo I worked for in Idaho always said:" One boy is a boy, two boys are half a boy and 3 boys are no boy at all".
That goes for dogs as well.
 
My lab was a puppy that just showed up on our front porch. Never knew where she came from but she was very young and we trained her from early on. I'm sure that makes a big difference.
 
Great advice Stig. There is not one dog that is right for everyone. Maybe you can get a training thread going sometime?
 
I can't really see myself doing that.
The way you train has to be suited to what kind of person you are and the circumstances you live in.
Not least the kind of dog you have and what your expectations are for that dog.
I always tell people to make a short list of what they want the dog to do when ordered to do so, and then work from that.
No reason to teach them a lot of stuff that has no actual use.......play dead, be a dead Nazi, roll over etc.
That shouldn't be taken to mean that I wasn't a great fan of Skidboot.
Amazing dog and amazing trainer, they were born for each other.


A lot of the stuff I do, simply wouldn't work if I wasn't a natural alpha male or if I had kids.

I don't train dogs, I train wolves. That is how I look at it.
Have read a lot about wolves and wolf psychology over the years.

I try to look at the way a wolf pack functions, and see my dogs and myself as pack members.

So I do a LOT of stuff that dog trainers warn you against doing.

" Never play fighting games with males of the big, powerful breeds"
Bullshit!
I do that all the time. I simply make sure I win each and every time.
We can all have a good time pulling at an old towel, seeing who is the strongest.
With me being old and the size of dogs I have, it surely ain't me.
So if I'm about to lose, I simply say:" Enough. Give it to me!"
Easy as that. Old Alpha male wins again. Not by physical strenght, but by force of personality.

" Never feed your dog at the table, or they'll end up begging all the time for food"
Bullshit!

I feed my dogs at the table,because packs eat together, that helps strenghtening the whole pack feeling.
But when I say, " No more, good bye!" the doggies know it is time to leave an woe be upon the one who doesn't.
That is something you can't do when you have kids.
They'll side with the dogs and try to slip them morsels.

I never give an order and don't see it through.
If I say " Lay down and stay" we'll work at it till it is done, I never quit.

Personal record on how well that one works is 4 hours.
Got tangled into a Police K-9 training in the woods, laid the dogs down, so they wouldn't interfere and picked them up 4 hours later, when the cops were done.
Impressed the hell out of the local K-9 unit, which is always a good thing.

I had a problem with that order and my Giant Schnauzer/Alsatian mix, Jack.
He simply refused to do it, too humiliating for mentally strong dog like him.
So he would end up painting himself into a corner from where he couldn't get out, just trying to avoid doing it , and the whole exercise would go to hell.
I talked it over with a buddy, who is a really good trainer ( Using a completely different system, on completely different dogs) and finally simply stopped trying to get him to do it for 4-5 months, untill he had forgotten about feeling humiliated.
Then I started up again, with a lot of " good dog!" and now after 2 years it works.

Gary pretty much said it.
They have to do stuff, because they want to please me.

Make old Alpha male happy and all sorts of good shit happens.

For a long while there was a trend in training, that you should assert your Alpha status by denying the dogs anything, never let them walk through a door before you, assert yourself physically etc.
Bullshit!

A good Alpha male in a wolf pack is one who has a forceful personality and makes good things happen for the pack.

Today a Norwegian wood turner arrived to pick up a load of good turning blanks.
We traded for 20 pds of dried Norwegian codfish, which is almost impossible to get here and is just the best dog candy.

Dogs and I opened that box together and they had a piece each.
I feed them according to rank, so old Sam got the first piece, Thais the second and the overgrown pup, Jack, the third.
Notice how they each politely wait for their turn, even if this is totally outstandingly good food, instead of acting like a bunch of Japanese entering a subway train.

Do you think they feel they have a great alpha male today?

We have a lot of fun together, but I'm always in charge.


A well functioning pack.

That is really all it is about.

Resized_20180429_171944.jpg
 
We've had a bunch of breeds. Almost got another Rottweiller, the breed we had before our Chihuahua, and a few other.

One Rat Terrier was such a great dog, we just got another one after the other finished out it's life. We got one that had a mix of Decker or something like that in it, and it will be a bit larger than our last Rat.

This is our new puppy, Gracie ...
 

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I really love Australian cattle dogs aka blue/red heelers. The are small to medium sized, intensely loyal and very smart. They are stand offish with non family but super lovey if you are in with them. Amazingly healthy dogs too, some live 20+good years. Plus they are super cool looking.

Two downsides, very high energy need a lot of walks, and they really only obey/like a few people.
 
mutts are the best dogs. chill, smart, adaptable and not prone to weird diseases. purebred dogs always have some sort of issue or another it seems
 
Something happened today that made me think of this thread.
The Eggplants that I have lovingly raised from seeds bought in the good old US of A didn't handle being transferred to the polytunnel too well.
Probably gonna lose all of them.
I love eggplants, so I went to town to buy replacements.
First store I went to has an outstanding bakery, but were out of eggplant seedling.
So I just bought a Foccacio, and munching away, drove across the street to the next store.
Went in and bough some seedlings, and on coming back to the truck, realized that I had left half a foccacia on the passenger seat, well within reach of the 3 dogs.
Like, they didn't even have to stretch their necks to get it.

It was untouched!

You will never see a wolf get smart with Alpha male's food, except for small pups.
They get to eat whatever they want to.


I've mentioned the whole Alpha male thing a lot, and it is IMO critical in dog training.

Some people are just natural Alpha males, most have to work hard at it.

My dad was a schoolteacher with a natural affinity for being in charge.
He worked with a lot of those classes, that others had given up on, and never had any trouble getting them to toe the line.
I know, because I was in one of them.
The old man never raised his voice, he simply had that aura of authority about him.
He simply commanded respect, without doing anything for it.

Since not everybody are that way, there has been developed training systems for our dear little domestic wolves.

( Make no mistake,; scratch any dog hard and one inch under the surface you'll find pure wolf)

So for most people, getting with a system ( I liked the one Gary linked to) and sticking with it, is the best way.

In training, consistency is the key word. Train your dog to leave the dinner table when you say: Enough", then give in once and you can start all over again.

Consistency.
 
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