Is my 17yr old jenday conure too old to start training?

[hannah50942]

if the dog is too old to train then it'll be as hard as scratching your ear with you elbo

[Wolf]

if the dog is too old to train then it'll be as hard as scratching your ear with you elbo

OK then, but I have yet to find a dog that is too old to train, at least at the level of being a pet and companion.

[Pajarita]

I don't believe there is a dog too old to train. All my dogs came to me as adults and some of them were pretty old (I once adopted a 17 year old schnauzer mix as well as many others that were 14 and 15 - I like old dogs!) and they all learned what I taught them - granted that I don't teach useless tricks but skills needed for cohabiting with other animals and behaving well but they were still new things to them and they all learned.

[GMV]

Definitely harder to teach an old dog new tricks.

[Wolf]

That is usually because they need to unlearn behaviors that are in conflict with what you are trying to teach them.

[GMV]

i would guess you're right, but who knows why.

[Pajarita]

No, actually, you are wrong, Gordon. The 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' is a myth. It's as easy to teach a young dog as it is an old dog and, actually, in the greatest majority of cases, it's actually easier because the animal is calm and has learned that pleasing humans is a good thing (as well as common commands like "Sit" and phrases like 'Good boy!"). But what Wolf says it's true if what you are trying to do is to teach good manners to a dog that was taught bad ones. I adopted a one year old Golden Retriever which learned to play rough when he was a puppy (idiot people thought it was cute to playfight with the puppy not taking into consideration that it would grow to be over 70 lbs) and it took me almost six months to get that dog to stop jumping on us and grabbing our clothes, hands, arms and anywhere he could get his mouth around. He did not do it from aggression, he did it because he was led to believe that this was an acceptable way of playing but he would knock down my grandchildren (and their 2 year old daughter), tear our clothes and hurt us in the process. Now, if I had raised that dog from a puppy, he never would have learned that behavior and, if he had been, say, 8 or 10 years old, he would have stopped on his own already but, if he was still doing it, it would have taken me no more than a couple of weeks but the fact that he was still very young although fully grown made it more difficult (golden retrievers don't 'settle down' until they are three usually).

[GMV]

No, actually, you are wrong, Gordon. The 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' is a myth. It's as easy to teach a young dog as it is an old dog and, actually, in the greatest majority of cases, it's actually easier because the animal is calm and has learned that pleasing humans is a good thing (as well as common commands like "Sit" and phrases like 'Good boy!"). But what Wolf says it's true if what you are trying to do is to teach good manners to a dog that was taught bad ones. I adopted a one year old Golden Retriever which learned to play rough when he was a puppy (idiot people thought it was cute to playfight with the puppy not taking into consideration that it would grow to be over 70 lbs) and it took me almost six months to get that dog to stop jumping on us and grabbing our clothes, hands, arms and anywhere he could get his mouth around. He did not do it from aggression, he did it because he was led to believe that this was an acceptable way of playing but he would knock down my grandchildren (and their 2 year old daughter), tear our clothes and hurt us in the process. Now, if I had raised that dog from a puppy, he never would have learned that behavior and, if he had been, say, 8 or 10 years old, he would have stopped on his own already but, if he was still doing it, it would have taken me no more than a couple of weeks but the fact that he was still very young although fully grown made it more difficult (golden retrievers don't 'settle down' until they are three usually).

If you're right i would guess it is because some old dogs go deaf, and the owners mistake it for inability to learn new tricks.

[Pajarita]

Yes, a physical disability could play a strong role in the training of old dogs but I once adopted an old maltese female that was completely deaf (never did know her age because she was a Katrina dog and found on a bed floating in a semi-submerged house -the owner had drowned) and, believe it or not, she learned to read hand signals! She had the habit of chewing on herself (she had skin allergies) and, when she did, I would gently touch her side with my foot so she would look up at me and putting my hand up signal a 'No' by waving my index finger immediately followed by a gesture that meant chewing (I put my fingers together like making a mouth and open and close them as if it was a mouth chewing). It took a while but she learned what it meant.

I think that this is one of those sayings that came to be because we simply did not know enough. We thought we did but we didn't (kind of like with parrots nowadays ) We also thought it was OK to rub their noses in their urine and spank them when they peed in the house but we now know that's not the right way of housebreaking them. Our understanding of animals is still quite primitive, unfortunately for them.

[GMV]

Interesting you say that, because the first dog that me and my mom worked with at the animal shelter was deaf too, and we did not know it for a long time. I'm not trying to sound nuts but I think she was reading our lips to do the tricks, because we never signaled her, we would have if we had known she was deaf