# Am I being unrealistic in my expectations?



## Jelpy (Nov 8, 2009)

Kycan and Grendel Training results.

Well, I got the fids back from Training on Friday. The results are, at best, mixed. The good: Tasker and Lycan play beautifully together. Problem solved. Grendel no longer jumps up and puts her feet on my chest. also problem solved. 

The mediocre: Grendel does sit-sorta, stay-sorta, down-sorta, and come-sorta. Since that's more success than I had I guess I'll sit with, it's OK. Their website promised when training was finished they would be ready to earn their CD. I can't help thinking that Grendel getting a CD would depend on multiple show days with enormously generous judges, but who knows. Lycan isn't that great either, but I'm giving them a pass since he's blind, and apparently blind dogs just don't learn as well-or so goes the reasoning. I'm having my doubts on that, actually. I've started wearing bells on my left leg when we go walking and I notice that after a few minutes he adjusts his speed markedly to stay close to the bells. Why a dummy like me could think of that while a group of highly experienced trainers couldn't is beyond me. 

The Bad: Everytime I called I asked about the horse/dog aggression issue. Always I was assured it was no problem, so I figured that meant the behavior was extinguished. When Lycan arrived at the ranch, a medium sized dog walked about ten away away from him and Lycan made his patented 'lunge' move. A few minutes later we took him and Grendel up to the horses and sure enough, both dogs leaped for the horses' noses with a nasty snarl. The trainers told me they were testing me. My response is: If the behavior is extinguished as they promised it would be, there shouldn't be any testing. There should simply be no reaction. The owner of the training facility is coming over today and I'm planning to have her take them to petsmart and the ranch and see if they 'test' her too, or is it really just me. 

I dunno, Am I being unreasonable in my expectations?
Jelpy


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## Shade (Feb 20, 2012)

I'd be interested in hearing what the owner says when she comes to see your dogs. I'd be pretty mad myself if I was clear on my expectation and they assured me that they could handle it and especially now say they were met

Even if they were able to work on the behaviour at the training centre, I'd certainly hope they would take them offsite and work away from there as well to establish a good foundation rather then the expectation ends at the training centre and at home they're able to continue as normal

Let us know what the owner says, hopefully they'll help you out at home as well

Personally I wouldn't expect everything entirely to be fixed, but they should have been clear on the followup so you can continue to reinforce the behaviour they were working on


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## fuzzybunny (Apr 29, 2011)

I think sometimes a behaviour can be habitual. For example, one of my dogs used to be dog aggressive. We went through private training at multiple locations and she did great. After all our training was complete, we encountered a particular dog in our building that she had always barked/lunged at in the past. I believe this was habit for her so she resorted back to her old ways. All it took was correcting her with this particular dog and we never had the problem again. Perhaps lunging and snarling at the horses is habit for them so they need the training they received at the facility to occur at your place now.


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## Wetdog (May 23, 2001)

Handler and dog are a team.

If you want your dogs trained, you need to train them yourself.

If you want to get performance out, you have to put performance in. 

Shortcuts don't work, because you are not a team.

That is only my take though.


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## cliffson1 (Sep 2, 2006)

There is some merit to what wet dog says....how many times have I seen a trainer take the leash and the dog executes beautifully.....so was the dog trained ot not,,,,appeared so when in the trainers hands.....same dog. My point is that you have to handle the dogs yourself with the trainer present to get on the same page that the trainer was on. Some people have difficult time getting their dog to perform even simple tasks reliably.


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## Freestep (May 1, 2011)

cliffson1 said:


> There is some merit to what wet dog says....how many times have I seen a trainer take the leash and the dog executes beautifully.....so was the dog trained ot not,,,,appeared so when in the trainers hands.....same dog. My point is that you have to handle the dogs yourself with the trainer present to get on the same page that the trainer was on. Some people have difficult time getting their dog to perform even simple tasks reliably.


Exactly. Even on Cesar Milan's show, you see the dog that becomes perfect in his hands, go back to the owner and immediately revert to the same unwanted behavior. Yes, I think the dog is "testing". If you could simply send a dog away to have behaviors completely "extinguished", I think everybody would be doing it. But the owner must be as proactive as the trainer. Dogs aren't computers being programmed.


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