What if dogs have different needs in training?

Since I've been out of the serious dog training game for a while, I've recently started reading new information and signing up for DVDs and what not about dog training because I know a lot can change in 15 years.

One of the biggest things I've been learning of late is what it takes to "raise a dog right" for working.

My training skills came from doing conformation and beginner agility lessons when I was a teenager. That was over 20 years ago. Things have changed so much, in a blink of an eye. And that's also quite a few generations of dogs long ago, too.

I've been leading a discussion on Jack Knox's book Life's Lessons with Stockdogs on the Working Aussie Source group page. At first I found the book disjointed and not very interesting, and then toward the middle he started catching my attention.

"Stop telling your dog what to do" he practically shouted out from the page. "Help her be right and let her know when she's wrong, that's it." I read this as "you have a smart dog with talent, let it grow up."

Maybe it's also because I'm a new parent, and I really do equate a lot of my parenting to the dog training I have a lot more experience with. Things like being firm, not repeating yourself, not negotiating, and knowing when to let things slide.

One of the biggest challenges in society I have run across is that I've raised my 3 year olds to be aware and make good decisions. I can let them go get something in a store without being right by their side. But I can't tell you how many times it's ended in tears because a well-meaning adult didn't think they were capable and either tried to help or stopped them altogether to bring them back to me.

So, now take dog training in that context.

When we approach dogs like immature puppies - we are going to get immature puppies. A lot of us are attracted to dog training because, honestly, it's cool to control something. To train them to respond to us. Lord knows we can't do it with anything else in our lives.

And in a lot of ways, that's why I think stockdog training is the hardest. You can ruin a good dog by making them too obedient. By not letting them learn and make mistakes. By telling them what to do.

I saw this meme the other day on a dog training Facebook page. It rankled me. I'd recently had a conversation with someone who thought you trained the "off-switch" in dogs - and I knew they wouldn't understand since they haven't had a dog that had one.

Now, back in the day, I would have been supported this. Love your dog. Tell them they're awesome when they are . . . 

But now that I'm a parent, rewarding your dog for not being obnoxious? No frickin' way. That's like everyone getting a ribbon. 

So I'm wondering if dog training is behind the new empowered parenting movement and it will eventually catch up. All the people who complain about parents who gave their kids a trophy when they didn't earn it creating entitled kids . . . they're training their dogs to be entitled to praise for just . . . existing and NOT making trouble. Shouldn't that be an expectation? One developed by patterns?

I'm not saying don't reward, but reward for legit effort.

Am I wrong?

So then I think, my stockdog training is in direct conflict with my agility training. In agility, you keep the dog hyped up, you tell them exactly what to do, play drive is key. Stockdog, you really want THEM to figure it out, to use their heads, and to calm the heck down.

So then I got to thinking about neoteny. The theory that we select dogs for their puppiness. But if you have a working dog, you don't want all that puppy. You want more wild features.

And then I read this article: "Dogs Never Grow up, and Neither Do Some Foxes,"it took four generations to create fully tame foxes. "These were fully domesticated animals that showed no aggression or fear towards humans, instead wagging their tails and competing for attention." In my breed, we say reserved with strangers. There is a problem with aggression and fear towards humans even after 1000s of years of domesticity, and they don't always wag and compete for attention. It could be argued that these dogs lack the neoteny. They were selected for something else. They were selected for adulthood.

Then there's this: "In Belyaev’s foxes, this socialization window lengthened, and the same seems to have happened to domestic dogs. When a wolf pup is 2 to 3 weeks old, it’s socialization window is already closing. In dogs, however,  in only opens at the age of three weeks and stays so until the age of 12 to 16 weeks. This might be the most important component of domestication, since it gives much more time for the puppy to get to know humans in addition to it’s mother and littermates."

The implications of this are also huge . . . lengthening the period of socialization. My experience with puppies that grow up to be reserved "more adult" dogs . . . they don't enjoy strange people past the age of 8 weeks, if that. 

So here's what my implication is: WHAT IF, your neoteny-selected dog, be it Australian Shepherd or other breed, that's friendly, has a broad head and muzzle and floppy ears (and white) could benefit from praise for doing nothing while my working-selected dog with narrower muzzle, higher ears, less white, and is reserved . . . what if they just need different things?

What if your happy-go-lucky adult dog needs training as if it were still a puppy and your serious and reserved dog needs to be treated like an adult. What if trainers recognized the difference? What would happen if you treated happy like and adult?

What if we owned up to the fact that even within breeds there could be totally different needs for what a dog's potential is?