Is It Worth Professionally Training Them....

[Guest Alefone]

My girl is 3 and a half and she is with us since the end of December last year....So far so good but I am wondering if Greyhounds can be trained professionally and if it's worth it.She di learn few things,like giving a paw but so far I didn't want to stress her to much till she settles in.I think that she is ready now and I would like to here your experience in training your dog:)

 

Thanks in advance:)

[Jackandgrey]

Do you mean going to obedience classes? Absolutely! I took Jilly when she was almost three. It was without a doubt the most bonding of experiences. She was smart as a whip and learned a lot. Plus it kept her busy brain tired! It is critical to pick the right trainer though. Positive training only. Of course you can do it yourself but the socializing with other dogs was a positive for her too.

[krissy]

Absolutely! It pains me that the public opinion is that greyhounds are untrainable. Certainly some are not as motivated as your more "traditional" breeds, but each individual is different. Summit is consistently the best dog in his obedience class. I taught him the basics on my own and then we completed a level 2 obedience, now we're doing an introductory agility course. I'm hoping to compete him in agility next summer, and this fall when agility is done (thanks winter) I think I will do a level 3 obedience with him. When he's too old to compete agility I think I may focus on obedience trials instead.

 

3 is YOUNG! Summit is turning 6 on Thursday. I got him 6 months ago and he hadn't been taught anything. In 6 months he's learned to sit, down, stay, roll, finish (formal obedience stuff), touch a target, FETCH (yes, I taught him from scratch how to fetch... a dog who wouldn't even pick a toy up in his mouth), watch me, back up, bow, the list is endless.

 

He has his own blog (in my signature) with lots of videos of his training. Training is absolutely the greatest thing you can do with your dog. It teaches them to respect and trust you. People think that a greyhound can't have recall. I'm still working on Summit's in wide open spaces (enclosed of course) with distractions (other dogs to play with), but in class he is the only dog that is off leash all class and I get compliments on how well trained he is that he is always listening to me.

[Guest FastDogsOwnMe]

That is so awesome with Summit! I had never clicked on your blog before.

[Batmom]

We've had a bunch of fun with the greyhounds in regular obedience and Rally. I have no interest in competing with them but the classes have always been fun and I've usually found out something about the dog that I didn't know from just muddling around at home.

 

Don't know if your reservations have to do with greyhoundness, age, or both, but my quintessential greyhound Batman didn't take classes until he was 7?. He and I both had a ball. The others have so far been younger but if I can work out the schedule I will take Gidget (5) this summer. She already knows the basic moves but I think she too will have fun.

[3greytjoys]

I agree that it's absolutely worth enrolling Greyhounds in positive obedience classes for so many reasons!

 

Whether 2 or 10 years old.. life with an adoptive family is completely different from a retired racer's previous career.

 

Greys are so eager to learn. Obedience classes help dogs ease smoothly into home life becoming well-mannered, confident, and valued family members.

 

Greys appreciate learning a clear understanding of our expectations through positive, gentle methods. It reduces behavior problems later.

 

Greys are highly intelligent beings that benefit from continued brain stimulation, and bonding with their forever people.

 

They gain socialization beyond their own breed.

 

Most importantly, we never know if an obedience command taught in class just might save our hound's life in an emergency.

 

Good obedience instructors teach humans skills they can use forever with that dog and their future dogs.

 

Another poster mentioned touch target training. Since I don't have a dog door, I decided it would benefit my hounds and me if they would ring a bell on the door leading outside when they need to do business. That little lesson has made our dog/human communication completely clear. Works great!

Edited May 3, 2011 by 3greytjoys

[cleptogrey]

obedience classes open up communication between you and your dog as well as ALL of the fun things that go along w/ training. not only will you will learn how to read your dog better but something new and unexpected may occur. emily (at age 4.5)went from a dead-head into a happy working gal and fantastic therapy dog in no time w/ obedience training. annie gained security and bonded w/ us really quickly even though she didn't particulary enjoy classes. felix- another story- he went the gammet-into thru agility including rally-o and never went thru they typical destructive puppy/adolescent phases. yes, somewhere around 9 months his brain was disconnected, but obedience kept him on track, me almost saine and the rest of the class amused w/ his no-brain antics.(btw the connection from his legs to brain did eventually develop)

 

go for it!

[GeorgeofNE]

Greys are so eager to learn. Obedience classes help dogs ease smoothly into home life becoming well-mannered, confident, and valued family members.

 

Greys appreciate learning a clear understanding of our expectations through positive, gentle methods. It reduces behavior problems later.

 

Greys are highly intelligent beings that benefit from continued brain stimulation, and bonding with their forever people.

 

 

Wow. Whole lot of memos here that MY Greyhound never got!

 

Eager to learn? Took him 18 months to figure out he could TURN AROUND in the house instead of walking backwards out of rooms.

 

Highly intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I love George. I would NEVER describe him as intelligent. And there other hound in my condo complex? Dumb as a box of rocks. Sweeter than all get out, but dumb.

 

And unless roaching on my Swedish foam mattress counts as "continue brain stimulation," he's not aware of that particular trait either!

 

 

To the OP--sure, there's a point! Bonding, hopefully teaching the dog something. Absolutely!

[krissy]

Wow. Whole lot of memos here that MY Greyhound never got!

 

Eager to learn? Took him 18 months to figure out he could TURN AROUND in the house instead of walking backwards out of rooms.

 

Highly intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I love George. I would NEVER describe him as intelligent. And there other hound in my condo complex? Dumb as a box of rocks. Sweeter than all get out, but dumb.

 

And unless roaching on my Swedish foam mattress counts as "continue brain stimulation," he's not aware of that particular trait either!

 

 

To the OP--sure, there's a point! Bonding, hopefully teaching the dog something. Absolutely!

 

It's true that some hounds don't really have the same motivation to work, so I'll give you the lack of eagerness, but I think greyhounds are intelligent. There's variation of course... we can't all be rocket scientists, but short of the individual who really ended up at the short end of the gene pool I think all these dogs are competent enough to learn the basic commands. I mean, seriously, my rabbit is clicker trained to do tricks and could be trained for agility if I actually had the time. You can't tell me your dog is dumber than my rabbit. Even cats can be trained and they're about the most unenthusiastic, I'll-do-what-I-want-when-I-want client you're going to get. Your dog may lack motivation but I highly doubt he's totally stupid. Summit usually backs out of places too. I don't think that makes him dumb, he just really hates our hardwood floors.

 

To the OP: your dog may or may not excell at training, but it doesn't sound like you were hoping to have the next obedience champion so I'd just go to a basic obedience class to learn basics like sit, down, and come. Honestly, you never know when those skills will come in handy. Just this weekend I took Summit to our weekly run in a baseball diamond with a bunch of other greyhounds. There were 2 rough collies and a lab in the diamond next to us. Summit loves to run the fenceline if there are non-greys next door. Well, someone had left the small gate (one which most of us didn't even know existed) at the far end open, and all of a sudden we see Summit on the wrong side of the fence. He wasn't going to go anywhere because there were other dogs and he just wanted to run with them, but he came to me when I called him. I think a lot of greyhounds would have torn around and done zoomies if their owner came to catch them. Lesson learned, we'll always have to double check the diamond first, though in our defence most of us really only thought there was one gate. If your dog learns nothing else from class it should be recall. It could save her life.

 

ETA: The hardest part in training a greyhound is the first thing you teach them. Teaching a greyhound how to learn is the toughest thing you can teach. I recommend starting with down because sit is just a lot less natural for most of them. Teaching down was the toughest thing (well, maybe sit was about the same, but that was his second trick) to teach him because he wanted the treat he just had no idea what I wanted. Once he did it once or twice the light bulb went on. Teaching everything else is so much easier because he gets that I want him to do something and I'm going to help him figure out what it is.

Edited May 3, 2011 by krissy

[JAJ2010]

Greys are so eager to learn. Obedience classes help dogs ease smoothly into home life becoming well-mannered, confident, and valued family members.

 

Greys appreciate learning a clear understanding of our expectations through positive, gentle methods. It reduces behavior problems later.

 

Greys are highly intelligent beings that benefit from continued brain stimulation, and bonding with their forever people.

 

 

Wow. Whole lot of memos here that MY Greyhound never got!

 

Eager to learn? Took him 18 months to figure out he could TURN AROUND in the house instead of walking backwards out of rooms.

 

Highly intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I love George. I would NEVER describe him as intelligent. And there other hound in my condo complex? Dumb as a box of rocks. Sweeter than all get out, but dumb.

 

And unless roaching on my Swedish foam mattress counts as "continue brain stimulation," he's not aware of that particular trait either!

 

 

To the OP--sure, there's a point! Bonding, hopefully teaching the dog something. Absolutely!

 

Consider yourself lucky! Miss Sunshine has a squirrel brain and is ALWAYS thinking of ways to get into trouble. She's too smart for her own good! :eek

[Guest Swifthounds]

 

 

It's true that some hounds don't really have the same motivation to work, so I'll give you the lack of eagerness, but I think greyhounds are intelligent. There's variation of course... we can't all be rocket scientists, but short of the individual who really ended up at the short end of the gene pool I think all these dogs are competent enough to learn the basic commands. I mean, seriously, my rabbit is clicker trained to do tricks and could be trained for agility if I actually had the time. You can't tell me your dog is dumber than my rabbit. Even cats can be trained and they're about the most unenthusiastic, I'll-do-what-I-want-when-I-want client you're going to get. Your dog may lack motivation but I highly doubt he's totally stupid. Summit usually backs out of places too. I don't think that makes him dumb, he just really hates our hardwood floors.

 

. There's variation in motivation level, intelligence, and desire but all dog's benefit from the sheer act of training. Whether a dog learns "sit" in 5 minutes like my girl or takes 6 months of daily work to get it like one of my bridge hounds, it can be done with any hound and the work you do along the way is invaluable to the relationship. Too many people blame the dog and give up before really getting started.

[Guest FastDogsOwnMe]

I find that my Borzoi and Whippets learn commands a lot faster than my Greyhounds. For example, it only took ONE session of loading the clicker then one training session later the same day to teach my then six year old Borzoi to sit, down, and stay- total of 45 minutes of training time. He still performs all three reliably with only occasional use. I wouldn't say greys are stupid at all, though. I think they just have to learn how to learn, so to speak. They receive training in their lives on the farm and track, but it's different from obedience training. They have to learn how to play your game.

[Guest Wasserbuffel]

ETA: The hardest part in training a greyhound is the first thing you teach them. Teaching a greyhound how to learn is the toughest thing you can teach. I recommend starting with down because sit is just a lot less natural for most of them. Teaching down was the toughest thing (well, maybe sit was about the same, but that was his second trick) to teach him because he wanted the treat he just had no idea what I wanted. Once he did it once or twice the light bulb went on. Teaching everything else is so much easier because he gets that I want him to do something and I'm going to help him figure out what it is.

 

I started with the touch command to teach mine to learn. Hiding a treat in my hand and rewarding her when she touched my hand with her nose worked very well as a beginning for how to learn. Once that clicked it was easy to expand our communication even further.

 

Training is wonderful and knowing how to communicate with your dog is invaluable. Not terribly long after we adopted her Jayne began to guard the couch. She was testing her boundaries, but it would have been a very bad idea for us to try and physically remover her when she was doing that, but we couldn't just let her keep guarding the couch. It was nothing to add the "off" command to our training. Problem solved, now the dog gets off the couch on vocal cues because it's rewarding for her, she was never manhandled and forced off the couch which might have made her fear aggressive.

 

I haven't taken my gal to any training classes. I just read training books and got information from GT and went with it. I figured, if I could do it on my own, I wouldn't spend the money. If I had run into problems, I would have looked to formal training, but Jayne's so easygoing and quick to learn that we didn't have to take that route. (I had in the past trained one of my cats a couple trick, both of them to use a toilet and come to a whistle, a duck to jump off a dock and lie down on command and a blind duck to respond appropriately to about 10 words, so I figured a dog would be easy. So, while I had never trained a dog before, I wasn't totally inexperienced with training)

[Guest quinoa]

"Took him 18 months to figure out he could TURN AROUND in the house instead of walking backwards out of rooms."

 

My (human) toddler did this for a week or so, before he figured out he could walk to the stairs THEN turn around to crawl down them backwards.

 

I have found greyhound training very helpful, and Rocket loves it. He will hop into the car any chance he has (for example if I open the door) hoping to go somewhere and get treats.

[Guest sheila]

While I haven't actually done much of anything in the way of training my hounds, I have adopted several that came from prison programs that knew several commands. My first boy was the master and would do all the normal things like sit/stay/shake/speak. He was even taught to carry his own coat in his mouth to the prison laundry! Of course no need for that here, but he did occasionally hold my purse at a garage sale or carry my newspaper home on a walk. He was a hoot and always entertaining to have a dog so well trained.

My current dogs are Billy and Jane. Billy will sit/speak/shake/heel like a dream. My Jane......her best 'trickss' are to *look pretty* and *breathe* but she does them very very well.

[Guest june]

I have one who loves to train; she has her CD, all her rally titles, a dozen or so tricks and is a registered therapy dog.

 

My middle girl is learning that training can be fun and is pretty interested and enthusiastic, but much more distract-able.

 

My third girl takes her retirement seriously and although she is pretty good with her recall (just got her a few months ago) she would much rather lay on the couch and doesn't even care all that much for walks.

 

They are all different and just like us each has their own interests and motivations.

june

[rschultz]

Yes yes Yes,,

our first trainer told us lexie could never be a therapy dog..we went to another trainer and worked real hard. she has been a therapy dog for over 4 years now..go for it.

[Guest eaglflyt]

Absolutely!

 

Ady Bea and I love doggy classes!!! We look forward to class all week long!

 

We completed Basic Obedience with flying colors. Then Therapy Dog classes and passed TDI Therapy Dog certification test and CGC test without any problems at all.

 

We currently go to both Freestyle and Rally classes. We love it and she's a wonderful student!!!! :yay

 

So yes, take your dog to class ... but make sure it's a trainer that only uses positive training methods ... and have fun. The bonding that occurs is incredible.