I finally got round to watching these. What smart little doggies. Is the Havanese on you short (or not so short) list?
Our dog loves learning tricks but with 2 kids 'helping' (plus foodie treats) she gets a little over excited so sessions need to be short and sweet. She picks things up really fast though. I should do more as it's good for her brain. She would love agility but she'd be terrible at it on account of the fact that her ears stop working when she's excited (and it doesn't take much).
I've always wanted a Saluki. They are such beautiful dogs. Everyone says you can't train them but there's one on YouTube that knows lots of tricks. I think people fall into the trap of thinking they are untrainable so don't even bother to try, and because they are naturally quite well behaved dogs (other than wanting to chase small critters as sighthounds do) people don't see the need. And I was constantly reading that sighthounds won't come if off lead and you must never have them off lead if off your property, but I found a sighthound organisation that explained the process that needs to be gone through to ensure they do have perfect recall. It won't happen overnight but with the right training they can very reliably come when called, even if they spot something they'd like to chase.
After reading all that I may have changed my mind about what dog I want but if I did go down that road a Saluki would have to be the very last animal to join the family so it could be well socialised with all our animals as a puppy. Apparently the Bedouin train them to chase and catch rats initially before they move onto bigger prey and one person said their sighthound was better at catching rats than her terrier. There must be a way of training them to hunt specific animals.
