Anya is our 2 yrs old Texas Dingo, don't know what she is but we call her that. She looks like a dingo, blond, amber eyes and a narrow wild canid build with large feet. She is about 25" at the shoulders and about 50lbs. (Pix in original post) She can run as fast as a sighthound or maybe a cheetah. She is extremely intelligent. It takes a lot to keep her happy.

She is an escape artist and we have done our best to escape proof our backyard. We installed a chicken wire dig guard at the bottom of our 6 ft fence but she has dug under it and can jump the fence fairly easily. Needless to say she is never outdoors unsupervised because she can easily escape. Ironically she is an angel in her crate.

I exercise her each morning with a flirt pole and tug, or just toss it and we do agility and obedience if she is interested, she also gets to play with Ravon. Their play is boisterous and quite intense. Then for a few hrs she will be fairly lazy until we go on a long walk or bike ride and then more backyard play and then finally she is a bum again. We usually go mountain or sand dune hiking on the weekends.

So it's pretty much like having a DS or Mal with a bit of the call of the wild added in. I'd like to do more formal training with her but she doesn't have the same desire to participate in silly human games with me over and over, she gets bored extremely easily with repetition so I have to find a way to train on as many different exercises as possible in the smallest of increments and as random and mixed up as possible. I wish I had ADD

She sounds like a fun and challenging dog, never a dull moment! It must be very rewarding to get to know her, figure out what her needs are, make sure that they are met, and watch her thrive. It sounds like she ended up with exactly the right person.

You're quite a bit younger than me, Tresa, but I'm drawing inspiration from your posts and the hard work you put in to keep your dogs happy, healthy, well-exercised, and well-trained!

Tresa, IIf I may I would suggest that you don't try training more then one exercise at a time. That can cause a lot of issues if to much it thrown at her at one time. Sounds like she has nice prey drive based on the flirt pole work. Do you marker train? It is reward based and with the right reward and a high prey dog the sky is the limit. As to ADD I have it. It can work in your favor. My days are either total concentration or total clutter in my head. I have an old sweatshirt that says "THEY SAY I HAVE ADD BUT I DISAGREE. OH LOOK, A CHICKEN

Cheri, she sure is, I don't know that I can truely meet her needs until I have a lot of securely fenced land to roam on, in other words be rich haha

Bob, both dogs are marker trained. The problem with Anya is is she in the mood for this particular exercise now I can't work on one particular exercise more than once in a while, each training session has to be different through the week and the same one can't come around for a while in between. Most dogs would forget after that long but she doesn't. So there is none of that lets focus on this thing a lot this week with her. If I do the same thing too much, no matter how high value the reward, she just isn't interested in doing it again. She is very different than any other dog. I haven't been able to keep her interested through a short 2-5min session without throwing in random things except for heeling and jumping, sometimes she will stayed focused on that. You'd think the drive and focus work would keep her focused on the reward, but it like she is thinking "I would do this for the tug but its boring so either throw the tug or forget this" Maybe she is manipulating me.

Have you tried working her with a flirt pole? I think that can do a lot for a dogs drive. Just getting them to chase it helps a lot as long as you don't let the dog catch it every every time. That can frustrate the dog and the term "Frustration builds drive".
I think dogs are born with a given amount of drive so I don't look at it as "building" drive. I know that is contrary to most trainers but I like to call it Developing a dog to its genetic maximum. Some will never have it and some are crazy with it at birth. Simple semantics I know.

Bob, yeah especially lately, been doing a lot of flirt pole teasing and occasional bites and she is pretty psychotic when the tug comes out. I am working on getting her to understand responding to a command starts the game or gets her a bite. So far most of the training has been for food.

I am going to try a suede or furry tug by hand next, what do you think would be best? She has a soft mouth because she doesn't have full dentition. She is missing probably 5 or 6 premolars.

I found one way around her being easily bored with an exercise, if she watches a session with Ravon first she will be more than happy to out-perform him. I honestly think she can learn something by watching him learn.