Willingness to Train

As I'm going through my course on becoming a Dog Trainer, it's hitting me more how many bad behaviours we create ourselves. Of course there are some things nature (genetics) leave us imprinted with, but we all adapt to environment. Jumping, bolting from doors, seperation anxiety, barking, pulling -all things we reward without thinking about it.

As I screen my applications now, and at my homechecks, I am going to put more emphasis on an obedience course right out of the gate. Even the best adopters of mine have challenges as they go, and a lot of them would be rectified quickly if only they went through one set of courses and followed the homework diligently. Put it this way: a $150 -approx- course is going to save you heaps of time in reworking bad behaviours that have already had a lot of reward to the dog, so are more difficult to address. Of course they are addressable, but preventative always works better than correcting after the fact.

I would also question that if you didn't want to do some training right away, if you would want to do some training later. We don't live in an idea world though, so many of us (myself included) wait until we have a problem to get some training. If we got the training first, we might not have the problem at all, or at least have the tools quicker to address it.

A little bit of food for thought, but I definitely have a preference -especially for the young dogs- that they go to a home where I know they will enroll in an obedience course quickly. After all, a GOOD obedience course is helping teach them (in the end, YOU have to do the homework though) all the skills they need to be a well-rounded companion who is fairly easy to live with.

Thoughts?
As I get my afternoon off, I'm starting to make preliminary lesson plans for the first obedience courses I will run myself, after 'graduation'. I might need some guinea pigs for that down the road!

Oh... and one of Lemon, cause she's special like that:

Not cut out for 5 hours of training a day....  exhausted, and stomach is too full with treats.

Yep, she's a pretty lame dog to take through this course. She'll do stuff, but she isn't eager. Dog wants to cuddle, and dog wants to go for her hour walk and has a good recall. That'll do Lemon, that'll do.