Ann,
What a wonderful little story. After reading that I'm really seeing my Mikko as the "sharper" dog.

Thank you all for helping me to feel a bit more at ease. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

 Quote:

The sharp dog notices EVERYTHING and reacts to it, and as a pup his barking drove us crazy! Any movement: squirrels, birds, leaves blowing off trees...would require some noise.
Any unusual sound: doorbell, garbage truck (he can hear it 5 blocks away!), jets, cows mooing, coyotes howling...all worth a comment.

Understanding your dog's temprement is a huge key to training your dog effectively. See Ed's article on his defintions of Sharp/Soft/Hard dogs... it will help you determine how to approach your dogs training...
http://www.leerburg.com/pupqa.htm#sharp

My dog is somewhere in the middle, he has some sharpness but you can see him debating with himself wether or not something is worth reacting to, 9/10 times he'll ignore what's going on outside, he's aware of it, but people could be screaming at a party 3 houses away, I would think that this would make him bark because of sudden loud noises that could be interpreted as threatening, instead he perks his ears, tightens his lip and stares in that direction, when he sees nothing is going on pretty quickly he returns back to playing, but if a neighbor catches him by surprising appearing from behind the trees, he will go off at them, they are a potential immediate threat because they were acting suspicious. So far his judgement has been excellent. Even when playing tug with him in drive building exercises, he knows I am going to pull the tug away, so when I give him the word, he doesnt immediately lunge for the tug and miss, you can see him waiting for the perfect moment to strike and take me by surprise.

My dog is also not a hard dog - he is not extremely soft, but until I realized he was as soft as he was, I was being too hard on him which was ruining our relationship, I often felt as though my dog resented me after training with him. As soon as I realized he was a soft dog, I adjusted my handling to reflect this and now I am getting amazing results from him, he has gotten to the obedience level I wanted him at in less than 4 weeks that I had spent 4-5+ months working on before. The trainer I had worked with had told me to use a choker, after 3 months of watching my dog prefer to choke himself rather than heeling, I just stopped using it altogether and held off on training with him entirely. I was led to believe that using treats in training was a bad thing, the old "train with treats and your dog won't listen unless you have a cookie with you" myth. I started using hotdogs to train with my dog and using only verbal corrections for the initial training, to help build our bond and make training enjoyable to him, and using an e-collar with the level set very low to work on off-leash control. Using a softer approach with him, walking him with a harness and e-collar instead of a choker or prong collar has made him perfect at heeling, he very very rarely needs a physical correction, the word "no" works better. I use the prong collar when I take him out in busy public places, but he doesn't need any corrections, it's just there "in case".

I know this was a thread about sharpness - but I feel these things are all intertwined. Understanding these things has made me a better trainer and has made the bond between me and my dog unbreakable. He enjoys his training sessions very much, and the progress he has made in such a short time has made it far more enjoyable for me too, enough for me to want to pass my new learnings onto others that are trying to figure their dogs out <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />