Expectations of dog behaviour

I was reading a thread about this on dogchat and thought it might be an interesting subject (well I think it would be ).

We all strive to have the best trained/behaved dog we can have right?
But do you think people have too high an expectation from their dogs?
If you have a dog with a certain issue do you work and work and work with the view to "curing " it and then feel a failure if you don't achieve that cure?

For example, Maggie is a cat chaser. I haven't in all honesty done huge amounts to dissuade(sp) her from doing this as her prey drive is very strong and more than I know what to do with. I try and get her chasing a ball or frisbee instead which she loves but if she saw a cat she'd be off and i think would kill it if she could.
I manage this situation as best i can by basicallly always being on the look out and if I see a cat we'll leave the playing field (where she's off lead) or if it's on the move will wait until it's out of sight or over the wall then we'll carry on playing.

To me this is acceptable, I'm not actively training her not to chase (have no idea how too), but I'm managing the situation.

Do we expect our dogs to be too perfect and display only good behaviour and if displaying undesirable behaviour do you feel the only option is training it out of them or are you more relaxed about it?

Obviously things liek jumping up, chewing etc can be more easily stopped, but if you have a dog who doesn't particulary like other dogs do you try to keep socialising and train them to be accepting of other dogs or do you just manage the situation?

Do we expect our dogs to be too perfect?

Actually, I tend to go the other way - I tense up when an unsuspecting commuter ruffles Daisy`s ears, even though I know she won`t react. It`s difficult to accept how far your dog has come, sometimes.

I think to some extent, many things can be well managed,

for example in your sinario, cat chaser,
Often the best thing to do is work on other aspects of training, eg, work on a stronger recall, or training your dog to lay down on command no matter where it is,

to put the dog in the situation of having a cat move in front of it and try to stop it from there would be very hard.

I do think many owners feel under pressure to have perfect pets, so long as the dog is not a danger to itself or others I think people could relax a little bit.

That's interesting, hadn't thought about it from the other end of things.
Did Daisy have issues with strangers or people touching her head before?

You know, I would never have thought of that!

Sometimes I can get a bit fixated on this one and only issue Maggie has (and some people can make you feel pretty rotten about a dog that wants to eat cats....especially cat onwers...understandable of course)
and I then think that maybe I need a specialist trainer in to help me sort out this problem and get all in a flutter.

Luckily I'm now at the point where I just accept Maggie for who she is and just manage the cat chaing, but now you've mentioned it will be trying to do more on recall and a down command! Cheers

Try to find Maggie's strenghts in training, when you know the things shes really good at, then try to adapt them to suit you and help in the sinario of cat chasing,

Hi,

My dogs are quite well train - zne being the best at most things (as he's older) and Yiannis jsut ding his own thing (although he has perfect recall).

I don't want perfect dogs - maybe when they're older and I can catch them if they're naughty but at the moment they're between 17 and 7 months old; so to me they're stil puppies.

Eventualy I'd like to train them all to a high standard in obedience, agility and maybe flyball (not Zane) but it all takes time. Any problems alng the way may be dealt with by furthe training but it depends on what it is and what I feel shuld be achieved by it at the end of the day.

I don't want my dogs to be so well behaved they oerpate like robots. That's no fun. They need to let off steam, play, be a bit naughty and do silly things. Not all the time but occasioanlly it adds fun to my life and they make me laugh.

They're not show dogs but I'd like to train them to the best stadard I can. I'd alsoliek Oscar to handle them (they already do everything he wants them to) but again it has to be fun for all concerned.

I had them all as pets an djust like kids if things don't go according to plan we can't send them back. Even when I've had a few days of complete chaos, I'd never change it.

So I feel I'm a bit more relaxed about things. Yes I like to have thm behave when out in public etc. But it's not the end of the world if they don't.

Laura xx

Thank you.

I think in this day and age of not being the most dog friendly society (or so it feels) anymore, we have to have the best behaved dogs possible to sort of put the best image out there for people to see.

But I think this leads to a heck of a lot of pressure to have the perfect dog and I know from my last experience of owning a dog that we wanted to get it sooo right that we ended up getting it comletely wrong. I mean we followed training books and classes to the tee but sort of forgot along the way that we and the dog were allowed to make mistakes.

I think there's a lot of pressure to have perfect dogs and sometimes we can be so obsessed with getting it right that we actually create problems.

Anyone else agree?

I do think there is mega pressure on owners,

It always helps if training is fun, some training clubs are very regimental, some are more relaxed,

not all dogs are good at everything, some dogs may only be good at one thing, but if you take that one thing, you can mould it into many other things that are helpful.