How to train
5 Year Old German Shepherd
Training Older Dogs. Is It Possible To Train Older Dog? Pro's & Con's
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David Harris here with protection dog
cells and today we're talking about is
it ever too late to start training your
dog I get calls all the time
people are pretty upset you know they've
got a dog that's giving them all kinds
of trouble and they're wondering is it
too late is it too late to fix this
problem and the answer is no absolutely
never too late I once got a little
miniature schnauzer in for boarding on a
commercial boarding kennel the dog came
for boarding the dog was 11 years old
and it was going to stay for 16 months
the family lived you know we're in the
military and they had gotten transferred
to a place where no dogs were allowed it
just was impossible the dog wasn't going
to go this dog had been a part of their
life for a decade they didn't want to
get rid of him and quite bluntly he was
so badly behaved no family member was
going to take this little dog he was 11
years old
and he was not housebroken and he would
not come when he was called and he was a
little bit dog aggressive and I felt
sorry for him so instead of putting him
in the commercial kennel for a year and
a half I brought him home with me and
boy did I regret that really quick when
I realized he's not house broke
he won't come when he's called he's a
he's a handful around other dogs but I
went to work and I trained him and
believe it or not when he got ready to
go home all those months later he was so
much better than he was before
so I've rehabbed ivory trained dogs as
old as 11 12 years old once trained a
dog that I got a call for a dog that was
12 he'd bitten many many people over his
lifetime owners loved him tolerated him
put him up and tried to keep him out of
trouble but finally they had decided it
was over you're going to have to put
this dog to sleep and when they called
me I was kind of like well he's 12 and
they're like but he's in great health
and I'm like okay so I came over and I
looked at the dog I evaluated the dog's
temperament he was totally mentally
sound he had just learned a very very
bad habit and I went about training him
and almost instantly
he went fine you don't want me to bite
people that's okay I didn't really like
it anyway I just thought they wanted me
to
there's a communication problem so can
you train older dogs absolutely and
sometimes it's even easier than training
a puppy in a lot of ways because the dog
is physically and mentally mature so
they you know what like housebreaking
you know housebreaking where the puppy
takes months they're not physically able
to hold it for very long
mentally they're not ready you know for
any kind of discipline or pressure just
like potty training a job takes patience
takes time but a two-year-old dog that's
never been in the house but is social
friendly good temperament he's easy
doghouse break within two three days
four days you can have that doghouse
broke so being older sometimes has
advantages disadvantage to train an
older dog is habits this dog has been
doing this behavior for a long time so
he's in the habit of doing that behavior
and breaking bad habits takes time
sometimes it'll take 3-4 weeks
to change a bad habit but it can be done
so if you're patient it doesn't really
matter how old the dog is all the
training principles still apply if the
dog likes the behavior he's going to do
it again if he dislikes the behavior
he's going to stop doing it the
challenge is to communicate to him what
behavior you like what behaviors you
dislike but we'll save that part of the
video for another day I've got great
educational videos there's a great
information online about training dogs
this video just is a dog too old to be
trained and the answer is no if he can
walk if he's healthy if he's hungry if
he likes people you can train him have
fun
