Two years ago, I got this little puppy (Tigerlily) who is very different from any other dog I've ever owned or worked with. I am crazy about her, she is so smart and athletic and so good at retrieving things, but, let's just say, she ain't perfect!
My old shepherd/husky mix, Lassie, who died at 17 years of age, and my old Saint Bernard Sampson (who died at 8) were both very different than Tigerlily. I never had to leash either one around chickens or deer or squirrels. I didn't need a fenced-in yard. In the last decade of Lassie's life, I never even had a collar on her, because anytime I looked up, even if she was outside and I was inside, she had found someplace to get comfortable and keep an eye on me. I'd go for a walk, and she would just be there, glued to me.
Now what's REALLY funny is that I didn't train Lassie or Sampson much at all. I brought them with me everywhere, but Lassie had arthritis and I didn't like to bug her. Sampson used to come with me to college, and just hang out and wait for me to get out of class. It was just the way those dogs were. They didn't chase squirrels (Sampson did catch porcupines though, when he was young), and maybe my expectations weren't as high. But Tigerlily is different! She has a whole different level of energy and prey/chase drive.
I have been training her to do everything under the sun, especially freestyle, and she is fun to train, but still, she's often got to be leashed, because if a cat/car/deer/who knows what surprised us, she could be gone so fast. She could do something young and dumb, like last December, when she disappeared into the Maine ocean (we live on an island) after a flock of ducks. When I finally saw her out there, she was at least 1/8 mile out, heavy chop in the water, in an area of strong current, her head looked like a lobster buoy, I thought she was a gonner. Somehow, I screamed and clapped and she managed to get back to shore. But if I hadn't finally noticed her whereabouts, she would have kept swimming out, and gotten lost at sea. So wow, some dogs take a bit longer than others to grow up and get control of their prey-drive emotions!
I suppose I could wish Tigerlily had arthritic hips and bad teeth like Lassie did, because then she wouldn't want to chase deer and climb trees, she wouldn't jump up on the kitchen table, steal my eyeglasses and flatten them in her bed. A strong healthy athletic dog is more work. A smart retriever is more work. But it is so worth the extra time and effort it takes to train!
I forget sometimes that all my dogs were trouble maker puppies at one time. Once, Sampson ate my entire Thanksgiving turkey! That is not a joke. I came in, and there was this perfectly clean platter broken on the floor and it took me a few seconds to realize that our turkey was supposed to be on it. And Lassie wasn't housebroken when I first adopted her. That was a pain to fix. But the behavior problems didn't last long in the big scheme of things. Dogs grow up.
But right now, Tigerlily is only two years old. It took her one year to learn to ignor ducks on the beach, and now we can train off leash there. Next summer, she'll be ready to start competing in agility and we're already dipping our toes into first freestyle competitions. I don't plan on training ever being "done," but I know someday it will be, and I don't look forward to that day.
