#trainer in training
I am having Thoughts™️ this evening so here you go.
I was talking with someone about the differences between drive, energy level, and arousal today and how they affect working with a dog. For the sake of this post, we’ll say that drive is a dog’s desire to work that is focused on a particular instinct or satisfaction that they derive from said work, energy level is their physical capacity of how long they can work and how quickly, and arousal is the amplification of their state of mind due to excitement, which is the most “scientific” term of the three.
When I got Waves, I just wanted a pet dog I could hunt with sometimes and maybe dabble in a sport or two. She was deemed “not a very functional dog” for competitive sports because as a puppy, she much preferred to sit and observe a situation before participating. She wasn’t fearful or unsure, she often played and was happy to meet new people, she was just quiet. She didn’t display the typical signs of arousal (lots of wrestling, growling, biting, high activity) that are associated with “high drive” puppies. I met her twice and watched many videos of the litter and decided that something about her seemed like it would work well for me.
I’m a fairly methodical person. I like to make lists and spreadsheets and work toward discrete goals carefully. A puppy that was a thinker, one that might not have crazy drive but wanted to understand things, I felt I could work with that. And I have. We click. I can read her, I understand how to make her understand things. We move at the same speed.
Waverly is solidly medium drive and tops out at medium arousal unless we’re specifically around birds, but she is *such* a pleasure to work with. Her trainer described her as “biddable and always happy to be working,” but most folks in the wider dog sport world who like “spicey” dogs or “drivey” dogs would find her boring.
But she’s so consistent. She’s happy to work. She’s biddable. She wants to do what you want her to do and she wants to figure out the best way to do it. If she doesn’t know what I’m asking, she’ll wait for me to explain it better. She has the level of drive and arousal that allow her to stay in her own head while still enjoying the work. And I love that about her, especially for where I’m at. I think we’ll be able to reach some really lovely goals together because the way we work clicks.
The gist of this very long thought process is that sometimes the “best” dog isn’t the most talented or the most drivey or the dog with the most potential, especially just starting out. Maybe if you want a champion that’s what you need, but if you just want a dog to enjoy life with, to work as teammates in sports for enjoyment, it’s not really always that necessary. Sometimes the best dog is the one whose thought processes make sense to you, who learns the way that you teach. Sometimes they might have been “not a very functional dog” for some people, but you understand each other and it just works.
That’s my goal with the peanut. In all of her medium glory.
Oh the beauty of a consistent, stable dog. If only more people understood the joy. Get a dog you can live with.
Since we’ve started barn hunt, I’ve been hiding his dental chew for him every morning to give him a “hunt” at home. It’s getting harder and harder to fool him in the house, so I tried hiding it in the field at the power lines. It was really cool to watch him follow the same steps I walked with his nose to the ground.
