Temperament Vs Training

Thyme the magnificent

This is a recent shot of my wonderful Thyme. Thyme is my partner in crime at school. She spends pretty much every work  day with me, hanging out in my office, and playing frisbee with me and assorted children at recess. Just today, I was on duty and took her out with me. A line up of twelve kids or so formed to throw the frisbee for Thyme. Later on in the day, she helped me to settle down a very angry student. Her judgement with children is impeccable. At this point,she is moving into that rare and fantastical place of assistant in the work she does with me at school. I don't have any idea how, but she just knows how to respond to people.  

She is getting ready to do her first agility trial in a couple of weeks and I am sure she will be great! She just turned two on May 6th. I truly can't imagine being more pleased with a dog or enjoying her more. Routinely, people comment on how well trained she is. It is true that I have invested a lot of (pleasurable) time training my lovely young dog. I am proud of the skills she has. Thyme has been so delightful to train that if she had been my first dog, I would have been in danger of getting a pretty big head! As it is, she is my seventh dog and thankfully, I have had many excellent lessons from animals on just how far my influence on their overall behaviour extends or doesn't :)                                                                             
                                                                     
Thyme's litter and their mother came to live with me when the puppies were one day short of six weeks old. Two years ago, I raised two wonderful litters for breeder friends of mine. I was given my pick of sixteen puppies. What a daunting prospect! I reared the puppies using my friend and mentor, Suzanne Clothier's, enriched rearing method and picked Thyme using my rudimentary understanding of Suzanne's assessment tool CARAT. This was the first time that I had purposely chosen a puppy for myself. I had a tall order to fill! I wanted great physical structure and athleticism. I wanted a dog with a desire to work. I wanted an animal who would enjoy both training in agility and working with children at school. I wanted a social, confident, kind, fun loving dog. I narrowed down my choice to three puppies; two females and a male. I took the litter of eight puppies to many different locations. I worked with them individually. I invited many people into my home and I watched and watched and watched. 

I loved Thyme's self composure and joyful leaping from the day she arrived. I ruled out her sister because she was not overly interested in playing games with me and because she was quite independent. I ruled out her brother mostly because he was a boy but also because he was a loud mouth and had higher arousal then I was looking for for school. He is actually hands down the funniest dog I have ever met and giving him up was very difficult! I also felt that he would be hard to integrate into my existing pack of three dogs. I loved each and every one of those puppies but there was only one Thyme for me.   
                                                                                                                                     
It  is very satisfying when people praise Thyme's nice manners, though I am pleased with her training, I know full well that it is only part of the picture. Train well a dog who has any combination of traits that are not in line with what you want a dog to be able to do and you will improve the animals ability to function in a man made world. You will improve an animal's ability to cope, but no matter what your do ... you will not be able to "make" an unbalanced dog balanced through training. Please do not misunderstand me, a good trainer can do remarkable things even with a worried fearful animal but ... puppies do not come to us as clean slates. 

As I see it, training is layered on temperament. Biddable animals with balanced temperaments who are not afraid are very straight forward to train. They will make their trainer look golden without much effort. Trained well, these animals will easily perform under a wide variety of conditions. Training can only mask weak or unbalanced temperaments  under certain controlled conditions.