How Clever Is Your Dog?How clever would you say your dog is? Does it pick things up quickly? I've just read about a TV show called Test Your Pet that's due to be broadcast in this country in May, which is supposed to find the nation's cleverest pet. It'll be interesting to watch, and my guess is that a dog will probably end up as the winner, but we'll have to wait and see... I don't know how many dogs will be competing, but I *do* know that a 3 year old border collie will be one of the contestants. He knows an incredible 56 different toys by name, and will find any given one in the dark when told its name, including ones with names such as 'stegosaurus' and 'iguanadon'. He takes just four minutes to learn the name of a new toy, and once learnt he seems to have fantastic powers of recall. His owner produced a bag of toys that had been put away for two years, yet he was still able to pick them out when told each of their names. He picks up litter and puts it in bins, and responds to 22 different commands. Out of interest I've just done a quick count of the number of commands I've taught young Tufter so far, and I can think of 20. There are still a few more I've yet to get around to teaching him, but learning the names of his toys won't be on that list! |
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The fact that Benjamin, the border collie in question, can respond to 'stegosaurus' and other complicated sounding words is no big deal. Unusual yes, but no big deal nevertheless. So long as you're consistent about it you can teach a dog to respond to any signal you like. If you really wanted to you could teach the dog to come when called by using the command 'drainpipe'. Instead of calling 'Tufter, come here' I'd simply call 'Tufter, drainpipe'. So long as I encouraged him to come to me at the 'drainpipe' command, and made a big fuss of him when he did it, he'd soon come to associate the word 'drainpipe' with having to come to me. Dogs don't instinctively understand language. They learn by association. It never ceases to amaze me how often people expect their new dog to automatically understand what 'sit' means. It's absolutely incredulous to me, but apparently intelligent adults don't seem to realise that dogs don't come into this world already programmed to understand human speech. They have to be *taught* what it all means. And you do that by careful and consistent repetition of whatever command you wish to use to associate with any given action. The command you choose is irrelevant. That's why people all around the world are able to train dogs. It doesn't matter whether they speak English, French, Russian or Greek. So long as they're consistent they will be able to teach their dog to associate coming, sitting, or whatever with any particular word or phrase they wish. In this country working gundog owners seem to have evolved a language all their own to train their dogs. I've no idea why, but for some reason while most of us teach our dogs to sit at the command 'sit', working gundog folk teach theirs to do so at the command 'hup'. And instead of telling the dog to 'fetch' like most of us do when we send Fido for his ball, they give the command 'hi lost'. My guess is it's all a bit of snobbery, trying to somehow suggest that their dogs are better than an 'ordinary pet', which of course is complete nonsense. (I've seen some working gundogs in my time which were trained to an absolutely *appallingly* bad standard.) But the point is the actual language you use is totally irrelevant. What matters is *how* you use it - your technique. Be consistent, use the tone of your voice correctly, get your timing right and use plenty of praise. Do all that and I promise you the sky's the limit in terms of what you can teach your dog. You only have to look at the incredible diversity of roles that we've managed to train dogs to take on to realise just how much raw potential is rolled into that tongue-lolling, tail-wagging bundle of fun that greets you so lovingly as you come through the door. Guide dogs for the blind, hearing dogs for the deaf, drugs detectors, bomb detectors, sheep herders, livestock guarders, epilepsy-predictors, game retrievers, pest controllers, police dogs, tracker dogs, mountain rescuers, security guards, not to mention all the 'fun' stuff like agility, flyball and identification of 56 named toys! The list just goes on and on. Dogs have this fantastic capacity for learning. It's true that some are naturally brighter than others, and their aptitude undoubtedly makes their trainer's job easier. But that doesn't mean to say that if your dog is slower to pick things up that you won't get there eventually. My old bitch Bracken is a deerhound. I have lots of friends in the deerhound world and having owned deerhounds for over 10 years now I feel justified in saying that I know the breed well. Much as I love the breed they are not very bright. They just don't have a lot going on in those beautiful heads of theirs. They are difficult to train to a high level of obedience. It's not that they're wilful or stubborn - they're just not very clever. I've never yet met any other deerhound owner who can walk their dog to heel off leash for any distance. Neither do I know of any others who can drop their deerhound into a 'down' position from 100 yards with a wave of their arm. But I can do both with Bracken, and plenty more besides. And I also trained my first deerhound, Teasel, to exactly the same sort of level. With both of them it took me a mighty long time to get to that level - several years in fact. I'm not telling you this to blow my own trumpet, merely to show you that it's possible, even with some of the daftest dogs, to train them to a very high level of obedience. So don't give up on your own dog, no matter how big a mountain you think you have to climb. Just break it down into small steps and take one step at a time. Be consistent, get your timing right, be patient, learn to gain full control over your tone of voice and be unstinting with your praise. You can achieve great things if you put your mind to it. And if there are any problems you're struggling to resolve please feel free to drop me a line at andrew@dogtrainingblueprint.com and I'll see if I can help. Recommended reading "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".
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