DDR, Czech and West Germany working bloodline - Page 8

Daryl I admit you made me think about what  actually is trainability. 
 It is not just about the IQ of a dog.  I have learned that people learn different way and so do dogs. For example most  people , let's call them "A", learn about problem analyzing 1 then 2 then 3 then 4, and that is how they arrive to XYZ.
However  some  people, let's call them "B",   learn (1+ 2+3 +4)(together) =XYZ ... all as one problem where they  see all these 1,2,3,4 as one complex problem XYZ. There is less "B" type people and thus all teaching in schools is geared to "A" group. The "B" people are then thought of as unintelligent or unable to learn even so they are often the ones with high IQ.  If you force on the person A to utilize learning system  B and vice versa then they will look unintelligent even so they have high IQ. The same way some people force systems on the dogs just because they have learned such system somewhere and are not aware of other systems or are  unwilling to learn and apply such different system for what ever reason. They usually say : "But I have trained many dogs with my system and it worked, thus something must be wrong with this  dog."
And they are often or usually wrong. 
It is up to the trainer to recognize what make his dog tick. There is always something which will click with the dog. Training is not  using mechanically a system. Training is fluid process where it is up to the trainer to figure out the dog and go along with it. 
On top of it I believe training of a dog is  not just putting a dog in specific box and then use the system of that box , but it is for the trainer figure out the dog by looking at the fluidity of the problem and tap into it. I recomment book; Animals in the transltion Temple Grandin where since she is autistic could see the problem with animals different way then it was accepted for ions. 
That is what I am talking about.  

I view trainability as, in part, being the desire to learn and will keep working with the handler to figure out what is wanted. There are some dogs who have no desire to figure it out nor any ability to repeat a behavior just because it was rewarded. A highly trainable dog also generalizes well--a behavior learned in the house should need only a little re-training when the environment changes (such as from inside the house to in a public park). And there's also the element of a dog being able to stay focused on the interaction with the handler instead of the environment. And, of course, the ability to motivate the dog matters too--food drive and prey/toy drive make training a lot easier.

One of my most trainable dogs loves to learn and to figure out what I want and then has the focus to stay on task. She can and will learn a behavior in 2 repetitions and quickly is able to generalize to new situations or environments. There's an element of training style there--she gets bored and frustrated if I don't move forward fast enough and she has little patience for too much rote repetition and will decide that that means she is doing it wrong and will start trying different behaviors to "improve" and get the reward. She pays keen attention to me and will pick up on small behaviors on my part and decide for herself what the cue for a behavior is--so sometimes I have to clarify what the cue is supposed to be. So, she keeps me on her toes.

Christine

Excellent post Christine

Christine - sounds just like a few Border Collies I have known ! (She
isn't, is she ?)    Lots of ppl in GSDs have gone over to BCs cos so many
of them are quick like that.  I've found it spoils their expectations some-
times though; the baseline is that if you want a dog to transfer a command
from one set of circumstances to another, you do have to usually teach it
in both places/scenarios - some ppl seem to expect that their dog will just
be able to pick it up, and then get disgruntled when otherwise perfectly bright
dogs don't make the connections without enough training.

Excellent description, Christine.  When you have one like that, cherish it :-)

I love that trainability--I am talking about my Jubilee who is Belgian and German working lines, and her trainability comes straight down from her dad who got an awful lot of it from his mom. I think Nessel through Quattro brought in "workhorse" attitude and clear, strong drives. Frost was more than a bit extreme and hectic in her drives:

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/dog.html?id=552965

Christine

Oooh, she's dang pretty, too!

I don´t know if speaking of todays "DDR" dogs is correct when these dogs have been breed outside DDR almost as long as the former DDR-dogs were breed in DDR. The DDR-dogs before 1990 obviously have had more or less influence in certain lines, so I guess they weren´t that bad. I agree certain dogs/lines are better for todays sportcompettion, if it´s a better dog just because of that some would probably argue against. Some of the west dogs of today are also probably more close to what people liked about the DDR-dogs, and being a larger genepool I suppose it´s easier t find a good dog there compared to the 100% "DDR"-lines of today. Don´t know where the DDR dogs went after the wall, a few of them used in breedings, born not so long ago after the wall fell down was nice dogs, even if I guess they was not the perfect dog for IPO-sport compared to some of todays studs used. However sport is not everything, I guess it is a good thing if not every single dog has the more common westdogs in the pedigree.

Nicely put Johan...

That is true Johan DDR is gone thanks God. That is why we are now talking about DDR type dogs.  The influence of DDR dogs was tremendous and generally for good.