Terriers and Obedience Training

If you've got a terrier, you'll know how stubborn they are. Westie (a West Highland White Terrier), and despite being the most lovable little soul, he's incredibly stubborn. Which made the process of obedience training that little bit harder and longer. In the following article, I'll give an overview of obedience training the Terrier breeds of dogs, and the various nuances it holds when compared with other breed types.

Why is it different?

Terriers largely have stubbornness in their blood. For centuries, they were bred to act with the confidence of their owners away and out of sight from them. So they naturally hold a greater sense of initiative, and a more individualistic will. After all, it's what makes them so great and gives them such a distinctive personality. But when it comes to training them, it can often test your patience and push it to it's limits.

A lot of terriers were bred to tackle pests such as rats, being able to reach all the nooks and crannys and having the speed that humans don't have. Whilst it's hard to generalize an entire breed, there's some characteristics that have obvious influences on the actions of your Terrier. Because they were bred to go out and kill pests, there's a certain element of fearlessness. This makes disciplining them or attempts to intimidate or overpower them a lot less effective in training them than other breeds. At best they'll be indifferent over the long term to training by indifference.

More so than a lot of other breeds, Terriers see themselves as equals. To them, their time is valuable, and so repeating tasks over and over again will make them bored - their concentration will wane and so will their capacity to learn. Obedience training therefore has to ensure that there is always a lot of variation with the tasks and practices you do, and ensure that there is positive praise to account for their feeling of equality.

One helpful tip from my experience of going through obedience training with my Westie is to observe, over time, the average time it takes for your dog to get bored doing a certain task. It's obvious when they are; their concentration will go and they'll be more unresponsive to treats and praise. For more effective obedience training, you should try to stop any form of exercise just before they get bored.