So many people think they want a high drive dog. This piece from Monique Anstee sums up living with a high drive dog quite well. Number 6 in particular resonates quite strongly with me.
Source: The Naughty Dogge
1) Even though we ‘know’, nothing can prepare you for just how much work a young puppy is. They want to learn. They are curious. They are busy. They play hard, then sleep harder. And they have so much to learn…. If you aren’t exhausted at the end of the day, you might not be giving your puppy enough.
2) Puppies are always learning, even when you are sitting on the couch and not paying attention.
3) Never give the option of not listening to you, or you will spend the next year trying to get that back.
4) Remember your breed and individual dog: their strengths and weaknesses. Diminish their weaknesses, and build their strengths.
5) Every action that you do with them should be deliberate with back up plans incase needed. In every moment with my puppy, I’m teaching life-skills or work, or coaching her on something. I leave nothing to chance, and hopefully that means I will have very little to ‘fix’ later. For example, if she is greeting a person, I am making it go how I need to have a bomb-proof dog later.
6) Dogs that are driven to work come with an inherent suicide wish. We must protect them from themselves. They will overheat chasing a ball. They will dive off a cliff to get something that shines down below. Driven puppies will die trying to do things that normal dogs would never consider doing. They must be very carefully supervised so that their cliff jumping, overheating, and other suicide attempts never become successful.
7) Rock Eating and Wood-Chip Eating are very dangerous behaviours that need to be changed immediately. In puppies that do this – this is the first priority in training them, before they kill themselves or need stomach surgery.
Maybe most important of all, never forget they are puppies. Embrace their Too-Tired-Zoomies, their sucking on your neck, their tugging on your pant legs, and their curiosity with every dandelion and daisy. They grow up much too quickly, and puppy-hood is a much needed stage.
