When You Have to Throw Away The Book
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By Chris Robinson with Professional Trainer Craig Klein
For 75-80 percent of the dogs in any sporting breed, or for that matter, just about any breed in the seven groups, conventional training methods for whatever you are asking them to do will get the desired results. In other words, these dogs can be successfully trained “by the book.” Another five percent or so of the dogs in any sporting breed have absolutely no interest in birds or any aspect of their job in the field. For these field misfits it’s probably best, for the mental health of both you and your dog, to seek some performance activity that doesn’t involve hunting or, in a lot of cases, retrieving, if you don’t want your dog to be a total couch potato. That brings us to the 15-20 percent that can be good performers in the field but for which conventional training methods are ineffective and can be downright detrimental to achieving success.
First, let’s examine what sort of dogs generally fall in the “not-by-the-book” (hereafter NBTB) category. They are often dogs with quite “soft” temperaments, and some are only casually interested in birds. If you are fortunate enough to have a dog that’s “soft” but has an intense love for birds, you are “one-up” because there are almost no issues that arise in training that can’t be overcome if the dog has a high level of interest in birds. But, you’ll likely have to get very creative and embrace many unconventional ideas and methods to complete the mission. So, what do you do with dogs where you have to “throw away the book?”
Regular readers of The Canine Chronicle will be familiar with Bo, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever who forced both of us as well as Craig’s assistant trainer, Josh Tritabaugh, to learn a lot of new training “tricks.” There will be references in this story to things we did that were successful with Bo that Craig and Josh have also been able to use with other dogs with similar temperaments or issues. And, although this particular story for the sporting dog issue is about training for fieldwork for sporting breeds, if you are active in other performance activities with your dog, you may find some tips that can prove helpful in whatever dog sport you are doing or useful in understanding a dog when conventional training methods aren’t working.
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Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=199500
Posted by AnthonyA
on Apr 20 2021. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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