Look - I have taught my puppy to love the crate..... oh wait .... she has been good in a crate since the day I met her. But still, I can take credit for it! I have thought about this alot - and maybe I do understand why people go thru so many dogs for performance sports. It really has so little to do with training and so much to do with the dog's innate abilities.
Look at Ben and myself - he is awesome and when I run him I get so many compliments about how good of a handler I am and how it can't possibly be all his ability. But yet when I run Aidan, I leave the ring and no one will make eye contact. I am the same handler, but different dogs with way different coping mechanisms to ring stress.
It's the old argument about nature vs nuture and no doubt, you can certainly train a good dog to be better, but when you take a dog who does not take naturally to whatever you are asking him/her to do, even if you are the best trainer in the world, will you ever be able to reach the same goals as the dog who is "a natural"?
Hmm I suppose this is the age old question, but yes I do think with training, almost any dog with decent structure and mental stability (yes, hmm Aidan, mentally stable?) is able to be accomplished in agility. No not as much as Ben, but certainly Trinity colors my view on this question as she was WAAAY worse than Aidan.
ReplyDelete