Is your dog training fluid? Or is it written in stone?

I was just on a dog message board discussing with dog agility with a couple of members. The core discussion was someone was struggling with their young 18 - 24 month old dog's behavior when training. He's a Cattle Dog/Rat Terrier mix and as she put it, he was going through some sort of teenage boy jerk-face stage. His behavior was becoming combative, not listening, brain falling out of his ears, and just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. She had a training session that left her in tears earlier this week. She said that there has been a lot of regression in their training as of lately. She admitted that she felt like giving up and wasn't sure where to in her training or how to get his brain back into some sort of thinking mode. I'll post some of my responses below (bold and in italics) and actually build a blog post out of them and some comments that will help that happen.

I do hate to say it, but....you can't rush or train maturity in dogs. It will come on their own schedule. Ocean is just now turning into the agility dog I have been waiting for him to be this year....at the age of 3. Next year....at 4, that will be the year it all comes together with Ocean. I started trialing him at 15 months old. We had a couple of rough years of NQ's after NQ's after NQ's.

Just keep at building experience and mileage with him. That's why I just kept trialing and training with O. All of that mileage does add up. Do the best you can...but keep in the back of your mind you have a young dog who needs to mentally grow up (and there's not anything you can do to speed that up.) Take your training day by day and you'll see small improvements over time.

I've been seeing this trend online a bit with message boards, on facebook, and in real life with friends who are struggling with younger dogs. Younger dogs who are living in the shadow of expectation of these peoples other dogs....both past and present. Or, they are living in the shadow friends' dogs of similar age who are consistently performing in classes, practice, or at trials.

On the dog message board another poster had commented that her dogs matured well at the ages of 3 to 3.5 years old. My final thoughts from the message board discussion are posted below and will close out this quick, impromptu blog post. I really would like people to really take this sentence to heart and think about this when they are working and training with their dogs:

"You need to be able to adjust your training plan to the dog that is in front of you at that moment....not adjust your dog to your training plan."

^^^ In my humble opinion, that skill right there, is what separates the masterful and great dog trainers from all of the other dog trainers.


This totally supports that saying in dog training - "You really don't have a dog until 3." In my experience, 3 years old is when the dog settles into itself and they have the mental maturity to handle the stress that working them causes. I started to trial Lars in agility until he was about 2 months shy of 3 and in obedience for his CD when he was a couple of months over 3. If I had started to trial him in either before 3....both sports would have been a hot mess. Lars really settled into himself between the ages of 4 and 5.

I do know there are dogs out there who are out there who are consistent and awesome at younger ages. But you absolutely cannot compare your dogs to other dogs....including your own. You're going to do nothing but get frustrated over why isn't my dog like so and so's dog or my other dogs. Because they aren't those other dogs....they are who they are. You just have to embrace who they are....and all of who they are, good and bad. You have work and train the dog in front of you. Some days you may only be able to work on simple, foundation things because your young dog can't think their way out of a paper bag. The next day, you might be able to do a sequence. You need to be able to adjust your training plan to the dog that is in front of you at that moment....not adjust your dog to your training plan.

Last night, Ocean was a little crazy practicing at home because it was cooler outside. He was forgetting the concept of collecting if I'm holding my place on the course and not go blowing by me. We went back to something that we haven't had to revisit in months - Calling him into heel after one jump. He needed that exercise at that moment...and we did it a bunch of times until he got his head together. I didn't get mad, upset, or frustrated because my dog who is a P2, Open/Excellent agility dog was blowing by me and we needed to go back to basic agility foundation 101. I did recognize that at that moment we needed to go a bunch of steps back in order to go forward last night. Training dogs is fluid...it's not always onward and upwards every training session. Sometimes it needs to flow backwards or stay stagnant because the dog in front of you needs that.