SidecarFlip wrote:
the OP is out of luck with an adult dog, has to be initiated and done when they are young (ours is 9 now).
No, not at all.
As someone who has been actively involved in rescue for over three decades and has worked with innumerable adult dogs-- they're all trainable. It can be a little harder to get an adult dog out of an ingrained bad habit than it is to prevent a bad habit from ever developing in a puppy. But I've yet to meet the adult dog who wasn't trainable.
And BTW--I had a lab/chow mix many years ago. She came to me an adult, pregnant, starved and abused (with both fresh wounds and old scars to prove it), and extremely fearful of men. It took a long time, but with the help of my now husband and a kind male neighbor she got completely over her fear of men and we were able to turn her into a confident, outgoing, "bomb proof" dog. She was a really fabulous dog, one of my favorites.
