Quote:
Originally Posted by Priska182
But Genzo have a really strong personality, I have small kids, and the breed is quite new in Canada so, I want him to be a real gentleman, obedient and trusty and any time. That's my first goal with him.
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Hi, I think you don't have to worry too much about the stay command obedience if you just want a nice gentle family dog. Of course, it is good to have this command, as well as the others, but in my opinion, obedience and general behaviour are actually two different things. They often come hand in hand (as people who are able to train dogs usually also bring them up properly, and people who cannot teach a dog to behave normally are not able to teach obedience), but those are like with children. You can have illiterate and still great behaving people, and you can have well-educated people who are like small kids in other respects (and not for lack of social inteligence).
So if you have strong personality pup you should in my opinion first concentrate on the socialization, including the behavior with small children, old people, crowds and so on, teaching to calm down* and transfer the emotions to appropriate channels, and to develop the relationship towards cooperation and motivation. Teach the commands that are required for everyday life, like walking at heal, sitting and laying (it is much easier to calm down a laying dog than a standing one), coming, waiting without making ruckus, etc. And if you find that the dog (or you) enjoys training, then you can proceed to the real obedience, which in my opinion is more like teaching to respond to a command in a very precise way.
Command stay is very hard for a strong-tempered puppy, as it requires internal calming down, so you should proceed slowly, if he has problems with it. Do not get discouraged, but first of all, do not discourage him!
* I have a friend with two boys with some learning/developmental problems, who love Frei but at the same time are afraid of dogs in general and to some extent also of Frei. When we visit them, they always look very much forward to it, but at the same time they are scared of contact with Frei (but when I visit they ask me to bring her also). At the same time, Frei is a very friendly dog and though she is relatively calm, she is very enthusiastic to greet people she loves, my friend's sons of course included. So imagine when we come - the boys are happily running around, loudly greeting us, but keeping a distance from Frei. She is happy to see everybody and wants to jump around and lick everybody's face and grab their hands to show how much she loves them and squeals with pleasure. So every time, I have to make her sit, we all wait until both she and the boys calm down and then they come and pet her (they would only come when she is calm enough) and then she can be left to run around the house... She learned to calm down in their house very fast, it is a matter of five minutes or so, while at our home she usually needs ten minutes of running at top speed and jumping around in the yard and garden, with her mouth full of a toy or shoe or something.