Jodhpurs rule: More old-style U.K. pet video
By Gina Spadafori
July 18, 2009
Dog-trainers, quick! Get some jodhpurs!Get some plus-fours! Another fun find from British Pathe, c. 1954, click to view. Did you know you don’t start training dogs until they’re six months old? I can only imagine what a monster Miss Faith would be by then. Times have changed, haven’t they?
This site is kind of my favorite thing ever now.
And who knew the secret was jodhpurs?
Comment by Christie Keith — July 18, 2009 @ 6:09 pm
And check out these cool Alsatians from 1929. “They do as they’re told” — AND they actually look like dogs, not modern show German shepherds.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 18, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
You know what they’d call a dog like that if she turned up in a shelter today?
A shepherd mix.
Comment by Christie Keith — July 18, 2009 @ 6:35 pm
Sweet!
They’re so well-trained — they do as their told!
Something that should be engraved backwards on the forehead of every method-bound wannabe trainer nowadays.
The shepherds were working very happily.
I’ve often been told I’m delusional when I mention that back in the 70’s, extreme precision of heeling was not the Great White Whale it is nowadays, and that in the ring dogs were judged on “obedience” rather than precision — which for one, made it more about the training and less about the way the dog moved, so that a well-trained Newfoundland would post respectable scores even though he didn’t snap to it like a Sheltie. I have been accused of making this up. Well, no proof about the 70’s, but that heeling in the film looked mighty familiar
Wanna know how to keep your agility dog from knocking over jumps? Wall of fire!
That golden shocked me. I had no idea that the big light-yellow dogs even existed back then. So they really did all come from England! But he seems a pleasant fellow.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 18, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
As for “not training” dogs until they are six months old, I think it reveals more of a general cultural change.
When that was the rule — and indeed it was — puppies were taught to behave as a matter of course, generally by a stay-at-home Mom. This wasn’t training. It was bringing up the puppy. Just like saying please and thank you and may I be excused was something every four-year-old was expected to have mastered. It wasn’t education, it was bringing up your child. The puppy and the child both entered formal education (at six years or six months) having done plenty of playing, but also having been civilized enough to be educable.
I think it was mostly the failure of puppy-bringing-up that accompanied cultural changes around childrearing and family life that made it necessary for professionals to invent puppy kindergarten. And it is absolutely necessary for most modern lifestyles that include a puppy dog.
But as our own lifestyle has gone back in time — our first puppy was raised in a Boston apartment, second in a close-in older suburb of Pittsburgh, third through fifth in a sprawlburb with farmland at the end of the road, and number six moved to the farm as a young teen — I see us becoming much less structured about the puppy-raising.
The first thing I did when I got my last foster, a young pup, was stop training him. He’d been overstimulated by too much clicker-training and too many NILIF protocols; it made him nervous and anxious and pushy. Just the wrong things for this particular puppy. I let him be a little wild Indian on the farm, correcting the wrong and permitting the right, had the adult dogs teach him the ropes, took him out to socialize him, and didn’t sweat it for several months. And he did great.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 18, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
I was looking at a breed club website the other day—I forget which one, some giant breed or other—and it said that it was okay to take puppies to kindergarten classes but that you shouldn’t start formal training until they were 6 months old. I wonder if it’s just a difference in understanding of the definition of “training.”
Comment by Kim Thornton — July 19, 2009 @ 10:32 am
I believe the advice arises out of the way training classes used to be structured - round and round and round on lead practicing your heeling. Better stay in position, corrected if you’re not, and then onto the next thing which also required extended periods of unbroken focus. And so on until the class was finished, 30 to 60 minutes later (depending on the instructor’s class length).
Puppies weren’t up to the concentration of that kind of rigor. Heck - it’s arguable whether ADULTS were up to the concentration of that kind of rigor. But that’s the way training classes used to be run and hence the “6 month” rule.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 19, 2009 @ 10:45 am
That golden is a transition between the old-fashioned dark golden (what we call field-type) and the modern heavy, British show-type golden. That dog is a light gold, but nothing like they are now!
I was actually surprised that it was a golden, because in experiences with British Pathe, I’ve found dogs listed as goldens in the description that are actually Clumber spaniels or English setters.
Comment by retrieverman — July 20, 2009 @ 11:42 am
The true cream goldens didn’t exist until just a few years after this.
Comment by retrieverman — July 20, 2009 @ 11:42 am