who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

[mollykins]

was there someone famous who said it?

anyways i have border collie who is almost / just about 9 (we're not sure when her birthday is) and when we rescued her a few years ago, she new sit, lay, stay and paw which she always did with her left paw. Recently i tried to see if she could learn shake, with her right paw, i didn't think she'd be able to distinguish between lifting her left and right and rmemebring which command is which. (thats why i used a completely different word)

Plus i give no hints, she'll do it even if i havent got one of my hands held out to her, which may gesture which paw she needs to lift.

[carmalee]

Just goes to prove what a brilliant breed BCs are - can see there being a whole new range of skills being taught to your dog. She will love learning anything new - one of my dogs favourites was I would hide part of her dry rations around the place then tell her to 'go seek' and she'd have such fund sniffing them out. Also used to hide a toy under the carpet, cushion - whatever - then ask 'where's your toy' - off she'd go and wouldn't give up until she'd found it. Aren't they just the tops?

[mollykins]

she's not a pedigree, she has a short hair but is mainly bc, we and the vet have guessed that shes probably got staffy and pointer/retriever in her aswell. (her head shape and the 'point' position she takes when she's found something makes us think that)

imagine a chunky, short haired border collie (with al the bc pattern) but with a head the same shape as a staffys

[fredpuli47]

But you're cheating, mollykins ! You headlined your post '....teach an old DOG'. Honestly, why do I bother ? I've said often enough on here that a Border Collie is not a dog.It's some alien hyper-intelligent being that looks like a dog. The aliens who sent it cleverly disguised it to pass undetected among innocent humans (and sheep). Yours, yet more cunningly, has been instructed by its creators to pass as not pure-bred, but don't be fooled. Give it a town map and a copy of What's On? and it'll take itself to the cinema, you mark my words (unless, of course, there's nothing on worth seeing, in which case the 'dog' will stay at home)
Paws? 'She' will do a lot more than paws, whatever age she's supposed to be.

[mollykins]

i just thought that even for a collie, distinguishing between raising a left or right paw was really clever.

[mollykins]

My dog makes this wierd almost howling noise but a bit more demented than that when we tell her she's going a walk, so we tried making that noise when we were about to take her out but not say the word walk, she reacted in the same way and went to the utility room where her lead is kept because she knew we meant what she meant when she did it, ie yay we're going a walk.

[mollykins]

anyway who first came up with the expression?

[fredpuli47]

The expression canot be traced to one creator.It's an old proverb.It was quoted , in those exact words, as 'an old proverb' in a letter of 1806.The idea can be traced to at least 1530: 'The dogge must lerne it when he is a whelpe, or else it will not be; for it is harde to make an old dogge to stoup' ( Fitzherbert 'Husbandry') and as a proverb to 1672; 'An old dog will learn no new tricks' ( Walker 'English and Latin Proverbs')

[mollykins]

thanks, i've always wondered.

[momac]

When we got our border collie some year ago,we brought her home from the dog kennels ,she sat down in the hall,so I said right lets start your training(she was 7 weeks old)I said lets try sit and before I could get to her she sat,so right I said lets try lie down and yes she lay down,she needed no training whatsoever,when we sat down to a meal she would turn the other way until we had finished eating,nobody trained her to do that,she was an absolutely brilliant dog and I believe all the more brilliant because she was B.C.