The other thing that I did not mention is that training a dog for one thing may make it worse at something else more important. It is possible that, for instance, a high drive working mal would become less of a good working dog in some proportion to how good a house dog it became, both because of time spent on one not the other and by inhibiting certain behaviors to emphasize others. If soldiers spent all their time cleaning the barracks and no time in the field training, they would be great janitors and lousy infantrymen. There are only so many hours in a day, and certainly, priorities must be set on how to use them.

I agree with Jeff D. I have an adult mal right now that was raised in a kennel and has not been shown house manners and he is coming along. Slowly but surely and it's only because of me not giving him enough house time. I want to buckle down on it so that I can have him more involved with day to day things. I am seeing very good progression though.

Was he crazy in the house first? Yup! He was picking up every thing, running around like a maniac, jumping on every thing, marking, he excessively nipped me all the time (we're almost totally done with that), he was also humping the hell out of my female pit bull and being extremely obnoxious. It was a mess but he's doing eons better now.

And I did not have to practically kill him to make it happen either! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I am a believer that if you can see the behavior somewhere else, you can make it happen. A great example is the crate. If your dog can relax in a crate then why would it not be able to relax and be calm in the house? Wasn't it all spastic and crazy with it's first experiences in the crate? You can teach the dog not to have displacement behaviors also so long as you're giving your dog some form of exercise to outlet his energy.

There are animals, like elephants, that can be taught to be tethered for hours at a time and remain calm. These are HUGE animals that can bust out of tethers easily and do what they want but they don't, why?

I had a pit bull who had more drive than my mal and he was calm in the house. Quite lazy at times. He was a huge leaker too when he worked. He whined excessively in the bitework but was really calm in the house.

I used to be of the same frame of mind where you could not make a high drive working dog into a house dog but I don't believe that is true.

Now, if you are of the frame of mind that teaching your dog not to bite certain objects will ruin the dog's bitework then you'll probably not be able to make your dog into a house dog. Or teaching your dog not to jump is going to take away your dog's drive for the work which I don't believe either.

Learning is contextual. Have you ever driven up to the club field and hear your dog start to get excited because he knows it's the place where he does bitework? They know where there at and what they can do.

Our animals ARE perfectly capable of learning to be calm in the house and super high drive in the field.

I think that chris had a good point with the contextual training, if you are consistantly calm indoors and are a maniac outdoors. eventually your dog will pick up on it.

my gsd pup is just starting to get the concept and is coming along nicely.

i think with patiance and persistance it is possible to have both but you have to have a significant amount of time to devote to both aspects of training. some people dont and have to choose.

hopefully i will have the time to do both if not kennel time

I would probably add that I am too stupid to do more than one thing, I chose to do dogsports. I am not wasting a year so my goofball dog can stay in the house. Besides his house is much nicer than mine, whats his problem <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />