Obedience with CsV

[saschia]

Originally Posted by Priska182

But Genzo have a really strong personality, I have small kids, and the breed is quite new in Canada so, I want him to be a real gentleman, obedient and trusty and any time. That's my first goal with him.

Hi, I think you don't have to worry too much about the stay command obedience if you just want a nice gentle family dog. Of course, it is good to have this command, as well as the others, but in my opinion, obedience and general behaviour are actually two different things. They often come hand in hand (as people who are able to train dogs usually also bring them up properly, and people who cannot teach a dog to behave normally are not able to teach obedience), but those are like with children. You can have illiterate and still great behaving people, and you can have well-educated people who are like small kids in other respects (and not for lack of social inteligence).

So if you have strong personality pup you should in my opinion first concentrate on the socialization, including the behavior with small children, old people, crowds and so on, teaching to calm down* and transfer the emotions to appropriate channels, and to develop the relationship towards cooperation and motivation. Teach the commands that are required for everyday life, like walking at heal, sitting and laying (it is much easier to calm down a laying dog than a standing one), coming, waiting without making ruckus, etc. And if you find that the dog (or you) enjoys training, then you can proceed to the real obedience, which in my opinion is more like teaching to respond to a command in a very precise way.

Command stay is very hard for a strong-tempered puppy, as it requires internal calming down, so you should proceed slowly, if he has problems with it. Do not get discouraged, but first of all, do not discourage him!

* I have a friend with two boys with some learning/developmental problems, who love Frei but at the same time are afraid of dogs in general and to some extent also of Frei. When we visit them, they always look very much forward to it, but at the same time they are scared of contact with Frei (but when I visit they ask me to bring her also). At the same time, Frei is a very friendly dog and though she is relatively calm, she is very enthusiastic to greet people she loves, my friend's sons of course included. So imagine when we come - the boys are happily running around, loudly greeting us, but keeping a distance from Frei. She is happy to see everybody and wants to jump around and lick everybody's face and grab their hands to show how much she loves them and squeals with pleasure. So every time, I have to make her sit, we all wait until both she and the boys calm down and then they come and pet her (they would only come when she is calm enough) and then she can be left to run around the house... She learned to calm down in their house very fast, it is a matter of five minutes or so, while at our home she usually needs ten minutes of running at top speed and jumping around in the yard and garden, with her mouth full of a toy or shoe or something.

[hanninadina]

Hi Stephanie,

I own beside 4 american wolfdogs 2 czechoslovakian ones. And my female Myla Crying Wolf has a very strong personality. I trained her from 8 weeks on. I got her with 6 weeks. And with 5 month she would even be able to pass akc companion exam. So I can only recommand to train a dog as early as possible. But of course the hardest thing is to teach these strong characters to stay! Therefore this command must be done in real small steps. When your pup is 3,5 month, it is enough if he stays only for 10 seconds. You can increase this time of course. All other commands, you see it very well in Patrik his video, are easily done by a czechwolfdog. Never forget they are more german shepherds than wolfdogs!

My male, U´Tala z Molu Es, passed german VDH-Hundeführerschein - means dogsdriverlicence from similar like AKC here it is called VDH -. And I got him with 11 month from people who could not have him any more. On one hand he is like german shepherd and listens very fast to all commands and can be very hyperactic - like working class gsd - and on the other hand he is a real pet dog!

But it is much more easy to train a young dog than to wait til he is one year! Even speciality judges and absolutely breed specialist like Oscar Dora train their pups with 10 weeks with all sorts of command, which you saw in the video. I saw it 2 years ago with my own ice.

Helpful is always in the time where the pups grow to confirm with food, meat. With Clicker I am not experienced, but I do believe that this must work very well too. I know that Monty Sloan from wolfpark is training their wovles with clicker and he told me that it works very good.

But Saschia is right, if you have kids at home the most important thing is, to socialize your dog best possible! There is not a too much for a young dog!

Christian
www.wolfdogs-siouxtala.de