Last week, I found myself a bit in a wad after someone who doesn’t know dogs at all said Lilly is “hard to train.” She said it like it was a statement of fact, like she was simply reiterating something I’ve said myself. I quickly clarified my point, which is this. The training work I’m doing with Lilly is hard. It’s hard for me to learn. It’s hard for me to stick to long-term. It’s hard for me to understand entirely these very detailed (bordering on PhD-level) strategies. Lilly, however, is a breeze to train simply because she’s so smart. The hard part comes when training goes deeper than simply a crude physical response to a verbal cue. This is so beyond “pet” dog training.
Teaching Lilly to DO things is really very easy. She, for example, learned ROLL OVER in about 10 minutes. She learned to do circus-like things with an exercise ball in short sessions over 3 days. And, in the early days of agility training, she picked up obstacle work (other than the teeter) quickly.
Teaching her to BE something, teaching her to FEEL something, teaching her to DEFAULT to something … well, that’s an entirely different thing. I’m not only teaching Lilly to do things. I’m teaching her to feel certain ways about doing certain things, seeing certain things, hearing certain things.
But, it’s not hard because of Lilly per se. It’s just hard.
This conversation reminded me of one I had with someone else last year. I was talking about something Lilly had done or been afraid of or something like that. And, her response? “That DUMB dog.”
You can call my dog soft. You can call her silly. You can call her goofy, anxious, shy, reactive.
But, please … do not call her dumb.
Seriously.
She’s anything but.
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