I've always blamed myself for my dogs' bad behavior. But in the last year or so I've started to change my mind. I've spent years researching the problems I have and implementing the solutions, excepting only the ones that are so far outside of what could possibly be implemented in a normal household as to make them impossible. This is what spurred me to even apprentice for a dog trainer (a very well respected one) and to pursue a retail dog training job. I'm not the most accomplished trainer: basically I'm great at teaching puppies basic commands. But what I did learn over the last ten years is that a lot of a dog's traits are innate. This really started hitting home when I started interviewing people about how to teach a dog to heel off-leash. I knew what I had been taught in formal school and I knew I wasn't even close to accomplishing it with my dogs, so I set off to ask as many people as possible who I saw walking their dogs off leash. The overwhelming answer was, "I didn't train him to do it, he just was born knowing it." A lot of them went a step further to say "My other dog could never do this." Most of them cited breed differences as the reason.
So I took it further and started interviewing people about their dogs' good behavior when it came to incessant barking or getting into the trash. Again, same answer. "I didn't train him to not bark. Breed X (whether it was boxers, dobermans, whatever) just doesn't bark that much." "I didn't train him to not jump on the counters; he just never tried it." The same thing goes for me. I didn't train my dogs to not kill chickens. They just don't do it. I'm pretty sure that if I brought other dogs into the mix, they couldn't be trained not to kill chickens, because it would be in their instincts.
No one is as ready to blame me for my dogs' behaviors as I am. I've been doing it for years. And it's really self-evident that a lot of these problems are just in each dog, when I think about the fact that I've never been able to train Max to stop jumping, no matter how consistently I do what the trainers recommend, but I did the same stuff with Marla and she stopped jumping very young. Same thing goes for peeing. I didn't have a hard time housebreaking Max, but Marla at age three, I can't really call her housebroken. She peed right by me the other day for no reason. I let her out a million times a day.
As far as whether Max would stop being stressed if I crated him, I guess I wasn't clear there. He is stressed when I crate him, and not stressed when I don't. It's just that when I don't, I have to make sure the house is perfectly free of any garbage in a can or bag before I leave and that there are no dishes in the sink..and I stink at that so he always gets something. The dog knows how to open cupboards and the oven and jump baby gates as well. It's just an example of how dedicated I am to keeping my dogs. In order to keep my Max the way he's happiest, this is what I have to go through. So I do. For ten years so far. Any normal person would be put off having dogs after him. Me, I'm pretty sure I won't ever live without dogs again.
Sorry if I sound cross. I have beat my head on the wall for years blaming myself and trying to be consistent, follow the training advice and fix their problems. I've had to let go and realize that it's not all my fault. Some, or even most, of this is dependent on the dog. There are two parties involved in a training relationship, and I sure made my share of mistakes as a first-time dog owner, and different mistakes as a second-time dog owner, but it's NOT all my fault.
So moving on from the self-defense...I think Airedales and Basenjis are good suggestions. Thanks guys. Does anyone have a medium-sized schnauzer? Do they bark as much as the mini schnauzers do? I don't want a giant one because they really intimidate me for some reason.
