Hi Friday,
I used to love training.I especially loved working with dogs that need to learn not to eat people. Working any dog though one must be centered and in the moment. Two with an aggressive dog it's especially important to be able to read him. Sometimes there comes a time where you need to have a bit of a CTJM ( Come to Jesus Meeting) generally though. the hope is that he begins to understand who he is as he learns to be obedient. Interesting ever the baddest of the bad guys will generally fall in love with the first person who is willing to be coherant. consistant and willing to give praise and correction. I suspect it's at least a little like raising a child.
I loved the connection. I also loved working with dogs that people said could not be made safe. I'm in MD, were dogs shipped down from NY and North from the Carolinas. That gave me a great sense of pride. Even better when the person would pay me to compete with their dg in obedience. A funny story, I am not particularly fond of Pointers. I'm a terrier kind of guy. A terrier can be blood and gut, intelligent as all get out and always looking for an "angle" so to speak. An English Pointer finds his wonder in the field. finding and retrieving birds. Anything outside of that is just not easy. So a good terrier you may want to repeat a skill maybe 4 or 5 times before he gets bored. Anymore that that and He'll be looking for an angle to screw it up so to speak. I enjoy that, intelligent, a sense of imagination and even a sense of humor.
A pointer on the other hanf UGH! The have no imagination. Heel makes little sense to them and you might have to repeat a turn a hundred times, each othe the exact same way.. LOL, He didn't much care for me and I didn't care for him. Some people think that a dog trainer should like all dogs and that all dogs wil like all people. That's just not true.
Anyway the breeder asked me to put an AKC novice obedience title on him. The funny thing is. is that when we'd get out of the ring everyone would come up and congratulate us for a great job and also how much "Apollo" clearly loved me. LOL, I never let them think differently. That year Appolo was the top winning obedience in the country.
The last I ever heard about Apollo was what a great dog he is... except, well when they go for a walk Apollo stays at his side anless to told to go play and that it's so strange, ever time he calls Apollo. Apollo stops whatever he was doing, runs back and sits right at the guys feet. Of course his owner had no idea why the dog did that but at least Apollo found the right home.
As for me, I'm about done with it. It no longer ignights a flame in me. I do both board and train and group classes. I've stopped taking the board and trains because I don't do a great job of it and it's not ethical to take peoples money when I know the dog is not trained like I promised he would be. Getting out of the house sucks and then when I start working there's no energy or imagination in my work. I start to fall behind and the people don't end up with a well trained dog I used to charge $2000 for a board and train. After paying that back a few times ( The owners didn't know, but I did and sooner or later they'd figure it out.) I decided to hang up my leashes. I also do group classes and no matter how hard I work n order for them to be successful way too many are screwing up.
I'm just done.
Who knows, maybe I find works that I want to do in collegee and then maybe the fire will come back. Cowboy the Airedale is a great duck and goode retrieving dog and the one time we went north he loved upland birds. I'd love to put a tracking, up;upland an retreaving title on him. Apprently not one AKC Airedale has ever done it. He can if I can get the fire back. Also he needs his companion dog title alont with his CDX. That all seems extreme but Cowboy is one heck of a dog.
I am excited for college though!
