#anyways all my dogs are nasty giant gremlin creatures

[darkwood-sleddog]

Do you have any books/articles on how to train primitive (specifically northern) breeds? I’ve seen a lot these past couple of years that stubborn dogs aren’t necessarily that, just that you might not have the right motivator/approach, so do you have any advice on how you built engagement and managed to train your dogs? (As I’m assuming mushing does require a some level of obedience) Asking as someone who wants a northern breed but also wants to do obedience and wants to know if that’s possible😅

Obedience with northern breeds is absolutely possible, but if you want to do competitive obedience that is like giving yourself a handicap...very possible to achieve success but it will be much more work for you than your peers with border collies and retrievers as these sort of sports don't cater to most northern breeds best qualities. (I actually know quite a few Malamutes in competitive obedience, but again. It's not breed typical so this sort of desire for biddability I would absolutely bring up with any breeder you decide to purchase from. Slash for example loves working with a handler one on one and doing obedience work and I can work him for longer periods, Sigurd reaches a boredom threshold much much sooner and would not be good for this sort of work, but he listens beautifully in harness and on hikes.)

With primitive dogs it's all about finding the proper motivator for them to want to do something for you. Everything with primitive breeds is about want and desire. They're incredibly smart and a huge majority of primitive breeds also have a survivalist aspect to them which makes them individualistic and able to make decisions on their own (or as I like to call it the "why? factor").

Most primitive dogs when you ask them to do things without showing them what items/behaviors of high value you have to provide in exchange for work:

Now I will say for my own circumstances, my dogs are not perfectly obedient (far from it), and teaching them to mush and do what I ask of them in that context is very different than asking them to do things outside of a working environment. Mushing was the easiest thing I taught my dogs, more than even basic daily obedience tasks, because running in harness is the ultimate motivator for drivey working bred sled breeds and they are more willing to listen to continue to be able to do so (vs disobeying a command in harness and having me stop the whole team to reset).

A really great blog is Couch Wolves, it's all about working with primitive dogs and learning to appreciate their individual way of thinking. The authors are extremely qualified and have worked with a number of difficult and primitive breeds in an obedience setting.