Training Gives Dogs Options
Last night I had my friends dog come stay the night. It was a really easy thing to say yes to - he has had a tremendous amount of training, can be trusted around my pets and stock and you can put him in a crate anywhere and he’ll settle. Despite being a high drive young dog full of character, he could go to pretty much anyone for a few days and be okay - he has so many options should he ever need them.
Rescues see messages come through all the time with dogs needing somewhere to go - often due to heartbreaking circumstances the owners never expected to be in, and have no control over.
Some dogs are easy yes’s - they have been crate trained, socialised from an early age and have some decent obedience already. They can slot into to a wide range of different foster homes and find a home pretty quickly in a lot of cases. Lots of options.
The ones I hate seeing come through though are those with less options, stuck between a rock and a hard place. The owners love them so much, but they just didn’t see the value in crate training originally so now the dog can’t be left home alone because they’re destructive. They only ever lived rurally so have never bothered with a lead or introducing them to another dog. They didn’t need it to be social for their lifestyle, so it never really met any humans outside the family. In their lifestyle before it got turned upside down that may have been awesome, and with an experienced trainer fostering them they may well end up fine. But when resources are limited, the demand for help outweighs the supply and there is an easier yes in the next pen, that stuff that didn’t seem so important starts to become a pretty big issue with some pretty awful consequences.
Maybe you personally are quite happy if your dog isn’t crate trained, maybe it’s fine if they can’t walk on a lead or need to be kept away from anyone other than their family. You can manage it because that dog is your one and only. But what happens to that dog if something ever happens to you? If your home is damaged in a natural disaster and they need to go to a shelter where they’ll be crated or fostered out? What if you need to go be with family and someone else needs to be able to care for the dog?
Training isn’t just to benefit you and the dog while you’re together, though it’s definitely a lot more fun to live and adventure with a well mannered dog. Training is also the insurance policy you can control - to give your individual dog the most options they could possibly have should life take a turn. And the earlier that training starts, the more options they will have.
