Hello everyone, I would like abit of advice from experienced dog owners re: the following,
Relative of mine has a girlfriend with a 15mth old male cross breed (collie/retriever) who is quite mad and i believe alittle aggressive with strangers. I don't know all the details but i suspect she has never really trained the dog. Question is, Is 15 mths too late to start training the dog and if she did start do you think she could have a well behaved dog in the end?. I felt that a mixture of those two breeds would make an intelligent dog capable of learning. I'm i right?.
Wanted ideas from people of experience before i get back to her with words of wisdom etc.
Budmag.

We got our older, mongrel dog from Battersea - he was about 1 - maybe a bit older. We started him at training after a few months (took a while to find good classes). Took longer to learn than starting from a pup (we had quite a few problems with him), but we are still going to the classes over 3 years later and he is doing quite well at fairly advanced obedience work and also agility (our trainer told me only last week that our dog could give quite a few collies a 'run for their money' :)

I think that you get a lot more satisfaction if the dog is well trained and it is fun meeting other people and their dogs :)

Daisy

Hi Budmag,
It's never too late to teach a dog new 'tricks'. Even 10 year-olds can learn new things, it just takes a little longer, and you have more bad habits to 'uninstall'.

Intelligent dogs (like intelligent people) get bored very quickly and then get into mischief for something to do. The dog will be happier with training. So go for it!!!
:)

Hi Bugmag,

As Jeangenie says, it's never too late to start training, just make sure she finds a quiet training class where the trainer is experienced with rescue dogs (these are often older dogs) and knows how to handle problems with adult dogs, they are very different to pups with problems!!

Do encourage them to go and do training, with a cross like that, they should do really well.

manda
X

Hi just to say, definately - its never too late to start training and both dog and owner will benefit.

When our last dog came to us as a local street rescue he was at least 2 yrs old. This was 18 years ago and all the dog trainers we contacted told us not to waste our time trying to train him !!! I refused to accept this and decided to go ahead anyway. It wasn't easy and I had to be very creative at times, but I persevered and was eventually rewarded with a very obedient dog whose recall and distant commands were spectacular. He was never up to competition standard tho as he would not repeat some commands if he could see no point ( eg. "if you keep losing your stuff don't expect me to keep fetching it for you!" lol) and he definately had a mind of his own, But training seemed to give him a real boost and helped him to bond with the family, turning him from a very depressed dog into a happy contented one and giving him a way of communicating with us too. When we eventually found out his parentage I was even prouder of the achievements - He was half Afghan hound !!!!

As manda says - they should do really well
Regards
Dill