What Can a Trained Poodle Do?

Back when we’d first adopted our beloved Beau the black standard from the local animal shelter [A Poodle and His Clown] we were working as directors of a state funded after school program for at-risk and adjudicated young teenagers (12-14) at a local Jr. High school.

Beau was just 6 months old when we got him. He was about 9 months old when a volunteer from the local police force (good outreach) volunteered his time to help us with the kids. He turned out to be a great asset, kept most of the adjudicated kids out of trouble from then on by being their friend and mentor. One afternoon he brought a couple of beautiful German Shepherds - the ‘real’ shepherds that surprise people. Smaller than expected, low-slung in the rear. Seems he’d been promoted to K9 training and these were his babies. He’d trained dogs when in the military, our town was just starting a K9 program. His dogs were the same age as Beau, who as it happened had been to the vet that day so ended up at the school with us for the program that day.

We’d told our young policeman about Beau, of course, and he’d mouthed some platitude he’d learned in the Army about big poodles being excellent service/K9 dogs, but he’d never actually seen or met one. The moment he saw Beau - who was quite hairy at the time and already bigger than either of those shepherds - it was love at first sight. All that he’d heard about giant poodles suddenly clicked in his mind, and within 15 minutes he had Beau joining his pups in the “Obedience Show-Off Game.” He offered to include Beau in his training course for free, just wanted to work with him.

We politely declined, not really all that interested in having a K9 trained drug or attack dog around the house. But we were flattered, and our policeman friend went on to become a trainer for a service dog outfit (for disabled folks and search and rescue dogs in the civilian sector, said he wasn’t cut out to be a policeman anyway), finally did get to work with poodles, goldens, border collies and labs as well as shepherds. His dream job!

The thing that impressed us that day watching Beau play with those two extremely well-trained pups was how he took his cues from them on what the commands were and what they meant, and figured out for himself how to rig the system - with that impish poodle talent for doing something funny just for laughs, while at the same time beating those shepherds at their own game. Did I mention that poodles have big egos?

See, we aren’t good trainers. In fact, we generally don’t spend any time training our dogs. They’re expected to figure out what’s what using their own brains, and so far they always have. The poodles of course figure it out quickly (took Big Ras Bob exactly 2 hours to figure out exactly what we needed in a dog after walking into our home). They are that smart, and they do genuinely want to please. Plus, living with clowns is great fun for them - we always laugh at their jokes.

So yesterday I was surfing around for details and pretty pictures of standard poodles in training as service dogs. I happened upon a very cool blog from Dogviews, Roxi: Service Dog in Training. One recent post on that blog talks about the dog training methods of Cesar Milan - that guy with the popular “Dog Whisperer” television show on the National Geographic channel. Milan boasts that he “rehabilitates dogs, trains people.” Yet as Hansen points out in her blog post, he’s come in for a lot of criticism from professional dog trainers as well as some humane society spokespersons.

I’ve watched Milan’s show, and his methods are not materially different from those our policeman trainer used with his pups. He emphasizes body language and mind-dominance, which (along with generally reasoning with a dog smart enough to want to understand) is pretty much the ‘natural’ way of things for all the dogs we’ve ever owned and NOT formally trained. Dogs are smart, they want to love and be loved, and they want to have a real place in their family’s life.

Of course I’m quite sure there are dogs that don’t fit this profile, but I just don’t know them personally. To be our dog, you’ve gotta find a way to fit in, and our dogs have all managed that. The poodles have taken more interest in doing an actual job than the mutts have, but the mutts have their jobs as well - like letting us know when someone’s on the property and keeping deer out of the yard. They bark at bears too, but are smart enough not to try and chase ‘em away. At any rate, all dogs and dog breeds have their particular talents for which they were bred (or in the case of mutts, can pick and choose to display). And all individual dogs have their personalities and issues, just as people do.

It seems to me that to be a good trainer, you’ve also got to be a good “Dog Person” - able to connect and communicate with a dog on a real level the dog understands and respects. But then, it seems to me that Dog People need that skill all around, whether or not they actually do any serious dog training. A truly smart dog is going to do what his or her family requires and expects, will readily respond to body language, voiced disapproval and praise, and will organize for themselves how that translates by way of behaviors in home and out in public.

Do check out some of the links below to information about service dog training programs, and what they require of their dogs. One company - apparently quite successful - even teaches the dogs to read! And yes, they prize those standard poodles on that particular skill! I’ll be writing more about this training later, so stay tuned!

Links:

Assistance Dogs International

Assistance Dog Institute

American Poodles at Work

Canine Partners forLife

CPL TeamTraining: Marie and Showbo

Snowflake Foundation

National Service Dogs (Canada)

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Filed under Adoption, Dog Intelligence, Poodle Skills, Poodles, Service Poodles, Showing Off, Training, Working |