What a good boy.
I did train my guy to sit and stay waiting for me to say “okay” before his meals. But taking direction for movement like that, I don’t think would have been possible. He’s a little on less sharp side of tools in the shed.
Best I could manage with my old dog:
Next dog will get more training. But I doubt I’ll equal that guy’s work.
For all but the last couple of seconds I thought it was the dog that was being tortured.
In the end I think the dog enjoys the mental stimulation. My dog always would play fetch more if I had him wait or stop after throwing the ball. If I just threw the ball, he would only retrieve a few times.
I do too.
But that poor screaming ball at the end.
With hindsight you can sense its dread at the impending engagement throughout the whole video.
Our dog is unsharp as well, and his predator drive is way too strong to make a good candidate for the kind of training Omar’s dishing out here. Our dog does have other skills, including chasing and chomping varmints–we have plenty. He’s a very vocal and slightly dangerous defender of our property. Attending to commands though, in the heat of a chase (after a ball, a squirrel, or the neighbor’s Siamese cat), is just not his thing.
Some dog breeds are carefully bred (over many generations) to be exceptionally nay uncannily good listeners. Border collies, other working breeds like the Australian shepherd aka Australian cattle dog, and Aussie blue heelers (some of which are reddish)… all these dogs have been wired for two things: enthusiasm or obsession with tasks and following verbal commands. And our human fingerprints are all over that wiring.
Has this been posted on the bOING in the past few years? Sorry if I am repeating material here but I love this segment. Neil Degrasse Tyson steps away from cosmic outer space stuff to introduce us all to… a dog:
Nothing beats this golden’s years of hard training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnu_2zTHueY
ITA. Used to have an Australian Shepherd, and they crave work, attention, challenges, etc. I’ve read that the cognitive skills of dogs average that of a 2-3 year old toddler, with some dogs (Afghan Hounds, I’m looking at you) being noticeably dumber and some (especially all the herding dogs) noticeably smarter.
The dog in the video is happy to be following those directions perfectly. It’s a game to him/her, at a high level.
I swear to dog my pooch knows a thousand words… Of which to ignore 
Around squirrels and skunks she is a nightmare. Around kids, especially young kids she is flat out amazing. She has earned the nickname ‘empath dog’, and except for her insatiable need to coarse after small animals (except for cats, cause she is part cat) she would be a perfect emotional support animal.
We had a friends 20 month old over yesterday (he is a… Handful), and Bruni the dog just gently herded the little fella.
Heh. Goooood dog. Good.
Our dog is likewise a skunker and squirreller and it’s borderline insanity for all of us. How many times can one dog get skunked at very close range before he finally “learns” to leave them alone? (Btw we definitely keep up all his rabies vaccinations, but even then, one never knows.) If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.
I have a friend who trains Belgian sheepdogs, which are long-haired, always black, not to be confused with the Malinois, which is short-haired and usually tan and black. Her dogs come with a built-in high drive for rewards [and not necessarily, say, impulsively killin’ varmints]. She has given me guidance over the years on how to train out our dog’s obsession with chomping skunks. Nothing has worked so far, he’s 8 years old now, and he reliably gets skunked once a year. He’s overdue, in fact, this year.
Folks, lemme save you some time and agony: tomato juice never works on skunked fur. If you really have to get the odor down (you won’t eliminate it, that takes months), you’ll need these three vitally useful things on hand:
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first, use Dawn “Ultra” or similar concentrated store-brand “degreaser” dish soap
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then, make a paste of baking soda and water, and coat the affected areas, let stand for 10 minutes, rinse with water
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last rinse: hydrogen peroxide, squirted on the stinkiest areas
As always, never get water in your dog’s ears. Standing water inside canine ear canals is bad and expensive to treat and can take a while.
Keep these by the door, outside, so you don’t have to go into the house to get them. Chances are you may be getting a wash down as much as your skunked dog if you were holding the leash. Wash outside if you can. Skunk smell lingers curiously long in a house, even one with an excellent, new exhaust fan in the bathroom.
A few years ago my husband walked our dog on a leash out here at midnight, got skunked slightly along with the dog (point-blank). Had to go to a job interview the next morning. Oh what an ice-breaker that was…
The peroxide is the magic bit, but the last time she got skunked? The yard (yep happened in our yard) smelled for five months.
Five. Flipping. Months.
So, there’s a rare gene mutation that renders one impervious to skunk stench. Oh, we can smell something we mentally register as “skunk”, but it smells fine. One of my daughters inherited the gene too.
Genetics is a source of endless wonder and fascination.
Oh dear oh dear. Ahem. It is funny though. Goldens are chowhounds, I admit. Still, usually a very even-tempered breed, and I often see them in their work harnesses alongside their blind, deaf or handicapped owners.
The best obedience- and agility-course dogs are pretty hard to live with, though.
You need really work them a lot every day, and if you’re not herding sheep or cattle or airplane luggage etc., you and the inside of your house will be in for a hard time. This is true especially for the Alaskan sled dog breeds: beautiful animals, but all cooped up in a house makes 'em destructive and nutty. There are legions of YouTube videos showing them acting out, chewing stuff up.
Humans are weird animals as well, I think.
Dang. Want!
Sign me up.
I also want the genetic mutation that renders me unresponsive to urushiol.
I could also stand to be a notch or two smarter, so if there’s a beneficial mutation that pushes me past my poor math skills, sign me up for that one.
Been there.
I had a dog named Stay. I’d say come here Stay! and after a while he just ignored me.
And I thought it was a link to the merengue dancing dog https://youtu.be/Nc9xq-TVyHI
(how do you get it to embed?)
post a youtube link in a new line, without spaces
That smell wakes me up from a deep sleep every single time. My husband sleeps next to the window, and all it takes is one “s-k-u-n-k!” to get him out of bed and shutting all three sash windows in six seconds flat.
