Aggression disposition - Page 1

In the last couple weeks I,ve been involved with a few threads concerning working dogs being good pet dogs or I should say working line dogs. Obviously a working line dog is going to have a disposition of more drives prey,aggression,activity,ect... hopefully just by it,s mere breeding. My question is, With proper training(which hopefully we are all following) instinctive actions(those driven by genetic drive and breeding) should still be controllable with proper training.

My example, My Axel is a great dog in the house and with people in general, shows good drives on the field. His down fall was the inability of his handler(that would be me) to learn early on to cap drive and work it to my advantage.  But always able to work well around strangers. Several helpers that have worked him in the past have all said that he has alot of aggression in him but with its training never was pushed  it(I guess you would have to know him to fully understand that comment). His brother Apache i,ve been told was a pretty serious dog and his aggression was evident from the start(not a problem if handled well) . My question is if two litter mates from the same breeding carry the same genetics is training and environment more a issue then genetic drives?.

This discussion is because of a breeding I,m considering doing and would like some input on the subject of Natural drives versus properer control training. 


   

Of course environment has a lot to do with how any dog turns out. Nurture vs Nature, is that what you are asking?

I think in any litter there are puppies that, if all treated equally, and say trained by the same person, will be different in some ways regarding some are easier to bring out their drives and some more challenging. However, I've seen littermates who all inherited great, great drives, & who all turned out to be good working dogs. I saw one litter, where all of the handlers were attending the same club. Some dogs didn't do as well as the others, because of handling. When one dog changed hands when she was older (2yrs+), she really improved.

Then I have the opinion that a great trainer can make a marginal dog look better than s/he is, but when it comes to littermates, it's easier to assess as you know or can see that the drives are there, even if they haven't been fully brought out.

Not sure if this is what you were wanting opinion on??