It’s a common statement that is used on a regular basis as a “cliché”. But is it true? Is an older mature dog unable to learn new behaviors? Is an older dog unable to learn or overcome bad behaviors?
From my personal perspective and experience I am going to say this adage is just that, a cliché! It is not a statement that we, as pet owners, should let limit our thoughts when attempting to work with older dogs and trying to make changes .
As an initial word of caution, I do believe that we need to take age into consideration and make adaptations appropriate for the dogs age and or mental and physical abilities, but as long as the dog is physically and mentally healthy we should not let the dogs age be a limiting factor in training them. Especially if it means it will help to improve the quality of the animals “Golden Years”. The greatest limitation for an old dog will be based on the animals human partner and their limitations to make changes as opposed to the dogs limited ability to make changes.
My dog Champ is a seven year old working line German Shepherd (GSD). As a GSD Champ has consistently demonstrated a high level of prey drive and defensive drive. Champ’s prey drive was very evident early on. His defensive drive was more difficult to assess and was not as easily identified until he was older.
I got Champ from his breeder at eight weeks old. I had the goal of working with a high drive GSD and training him on my own for dog sport activities (life got in the way from this initial goal). Champ proved to be easy to teach, from very early on his drive for a tennis ball and food made training easy. His desire to chase or eat was so strong that he would quickly offer up behaviors to earn an award. It quickly became easy to pair the behavior with an hand signal and then with a verbal cue. This is typical for GSD and part of the reason why this breed is considered so intelligent. This of course is not limited to this breed any motivated dog will exhibit similar behaviors and be fairly easy to teach hand signals and commands for the elicited behavior.
What quickly became a challenge for me as a DIY Dog Trainer was not teaching Champ the behaviors that I wanted him to do but trying to limit him from performing the behaviors that I did not want. During my experience I have learned a lot and I have certainly adapted my thought process on the most important commands to teach your young dog to keep him safe and to teach him to be calm, attentive, and polite.
My challenges with Champ began at around seven to eight months when, what I realize now, were demonstrations of his defensive drive. As Champ matured physically he also started to mature mentally and his instinctual defensive drive started to display itself, demonstrated through leash reactivity towards humans that he did not know and dogs that he did not know. His aggression was viscous and fierce and hard for me to understand. Although this behavior created a lot of limitations in the activities that Champ and I could do together I learned to manage it. I avoided people and other dogs, we often walked late at night or very early in the morning. Champ learned to wear a muzzle when visiting the vet and or when I knew we would be around people that Champ was not comfortable being around. For example when attending family functions. I am not listing all of the examples that I could that required consistent management for safety but I am sure anyone who has a dog like this can understand the challenges that a dog like this can create, not only limiting your ability to do things that you would like to do with your dog, but ultimately decreasing the size of the dog’s world. This is not the type of dog that you can graciously take to social events such as parks or ball games. The dog has to remain home alone while other families and friends, with a better behaved dogs, are able to hang out.
The one thing that I knew about Champ however was that he could be integrated with people and with dogs that he did not know. It was just a function of time. Well at least that is what I came up with and worked for me initially. Again keep in mind I was a do – it – yourself dog trainer. I watched thousands of hours of trainers online who worked with aggressive dogs. They were high level instructors working with dogs just like Champ and demonstrating impressive results. However my experience certainly demonstrated the big difference between watching a trainer and attempting to implement techniques and working directly with a trainer, that had the opportunity to assess both my dog and I.
I have had success integrating Champ into a new family. Champ and I moved in with my girlfriend and her two boys, it took a few months before I could comfortably let Champ be around the boys without his muzzle on, but eventually he was able to do this and he and the boys got along well. For a period of time Champ was living his best life. Although after personal and dog related struggles, including biting a neighbors Corgi and costing us a thousand dollars in veterinary bills, Champ and I moved out.
Some of the challenges that my former girlfriend had with the dog, got me to realize that I needed more assistance in training. This led me to finding Steve Waltrip who owns Nitro K9 in Bothell, WA. Under Steve’s guidance I started at square one working on increasing engagement and basic level obedience. Steve’s technique of training is a balanced training approach but without the use of food or toys. The central pillar of his training is the use of the heel to increase engagement and discipline. Over the course of a few months I changed my communication with Champ ensuring that my communication was clear, consistent, and concise. See our article on clear, concise, and consistent communication here for more on this topic.
Champ is not a perfect dog. He still periodically demonstrates some challenges with his behavior, but overall the changes in his behavior have exceeded expectations. So the moral of this story is that, yes you can teach and old dog new tricks. The key is not the dogs age, the key is the willingness to keep working with the dog and improving training techniques. It ultimately comes down to commitment and a commitment to never give up on your dog. I am sure they will never give up on you!