Dogs And Capabilities

No two dogs are the same. That should seem obvious, but in the dog training world, many dogs are trained in programs that don't take that into account. 

When training a companion dog, my recommendation is to work a dog to be happy and go as far as their capabilities will allow. And what I mean by capabilities, I am referring to their natural aptitudes which can be developed into useful skills in the life they are expected to experience.

I am thinking of a dog I worked with a couple of years ago. Nice female pit mix of some sort. You'd really like her. Her one weakness was her ability to contain her prey drive. Her threshold for self control, with no influence from the handler, was not as high as I would consider ideal, thus it was hard for her to maintain a Sit/ Stay as easily as some other dogs I've worked. Not that there was anything wrong with her, just that she would more easily break her position when tempted than some other dogs. 

We stretched her as far as we could, and possibly the owner is still doing the foundation homework and she is better now than when the lessons were completed.

I look for each dog's abilities and then try to maximize them, rather than just putting them through a rote set of exercises. I give each dog a fair chance to be excellent, rather than being a slave. 

You might be surprised how capable your dog is, if you give him/ her a chance.

Plan accordingly.