I'm sure others know the answer to this already, but I found, to my surprise, that yes you can train an older dog to do new things. Lady has always dropped a retrieve at my feet, whether it's a tennis ball, a dummy or whatever. I think the problem is that I've always treated after a retrieve which I know is wrong but here I am 5 years on and I don't think I'll be changing that just yet. Anyway I've been working on getting Lady to deliver to the hand in the garden. Basically starting with getting her to hold a dummy and then treat when she does and then hands it back to me on request, then moving on to short retrieves with a hold prior to hand over and treat. All that's been working fine in the garden and we moved on to full length retrieves in the garden all ok. When she did drop the dummy a few "ah! ah's!" and she remembered and picked it up and handed it to me. Over the past week or so I've taken her into the field to try the same thing by way of proofing and she's pretty reliably dropped the dummy and needed the "Ah! Ah!" to remind her to hand it to me every time. All a bit frustrating. Back in the garden as good as gold. Anyway persistence pays off and this morning I got success in the field for the first time with a tennis ball. The first retrieve was a drop-pick up one but after that they were all straight to the hand. Success starting to break through here! Just thought I'd pass this on if you have an older dog. They can still learn new habits and pretty quickly too it seems.
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? That's great!! Lady is still a young whipper snapper at 5
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? Not all plain sailing. ;D Tried her out in another field and find I'm going to need to proof her in a lot of different locations. :
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? A while back Molly was dropping the dummy at my feet and my trainer told me it was because as she got nearly back my hand went to my pocket for a treat. He told me to open my arms wide as she starts to return and gradually bring them together so that she can then drop the dummy into them - and it worked! It continues to work every time and I'm delighted so might be worth trying if you don't already do that. (Now we've just got to master not running in....)
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? That's great to read David , well done that girl ( and you too ) . Millie is , according to our Vet, somewhere between 8 and 10 and boy, has she learned some stuff in the 15 months we have had her , so I agree whole heartedly , its never too late
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? Over the past few days I've been doing a spot of proofing of the delivery in a whole heap of locations and Lady has pretty much got it now. About 1 in 3 or 4 retrieves she dumps the dummy but if I just stand looking at her you can see the cogs go around as she says to herself "Ooops! Forgot" and picks up and delivers. ;D I've actually managed to move on a bit as well. Another fault Lady has is running in on the retrieve. Whilst proofing the delivery I've also been working on that as it kind of works in naturally on a retrieve-throw-retrieve cycle. She will now hold the sit for around 3 seconds as well so progress being made. 8) Of course if I'd been starting out from fresh I'd have done this all at least 3 or 4 years ago. :
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? I think it's refreshing to hear from someone who's still working on helping their dog improve rather than some of the comments I've seen on FB recently that just kind of go "your dog should be doing that already by this age".......your experience is much, much more helpful ;D
Re: Can you train a 5 year old dog to do new tricks? Well I kind of thought the same as the FB posts really that I'd left it too late but decided to try anyway. I think it's true that Lady isn't really "learning-ready" anymore, but she is quite bright in dog terms and looks to see what I want her to do, and checks to see if she's walking the right way on walks and so on, so her brain is obviously still very much active and not on auto-pilot. It seems to me by observation that she can easily learn new stuff. The hard bit is breaking old habits and you can see that like when she drops the dummy and looks at me then remembers that she's supposed to hold it until I take it off her. I got a very similar reaction when we changed her night time bed. She used to sleep on a big dog bed under the kitchen table, but that was a bit of a pain because it got in the way of your feet when sitting at the table. We gave her an old sofa in the family room at the back of the house that joins onto the kitchen anyway and she really likes that as she can get fully stretched out on it. However, for a few weeks when she came in from the garden after last loos at night she would walk straight past the sofa and look under the kitchen table then remember and go back to the sofa. She's now fully tuned to the sofa but it took a while.
