Okay, I'd like to tell you a story. Don't worry, it's not very long and it's highly irrelevent to anything. I just wanted to share.
So, about a month ago, this black dog showed up at our house. He just kind of wandered around the house and ended up lounging in the sun in front of our barn. My brother went out and tried to chase him away but, once that first contact was made -- and he looked up at you with those big, sad, brown eyes -- there was no way he was going anywhere. In that first hour, he tred where no dog had tred before; we let him into the breezeway and basically into the house.
Anyway, after calling the police and the animal shelter, informing them that we had a hairy, black dog that had apparently been dropped off at our house, we went out and bought him a collar and went through the chore of trying to figure out his name. At one time, his name was a very unoriginal "Dog" -- in our defense, there was this John Wayne movie called Hondo that had a very loyal dog by that name; we love John Wayne movies -- but we settled on Toby.
And for the past month, we've been trying to teach him to stay around the house and to come when we call but, when your dog has the attention span of a two year old who suffers from ADHD, it's not an easy feat.
ANYWAY, I told you all that to tell you that we've figured out what breed of dog he is. Drum roll please. We've decided that Toby is a Flat-Coated Retriever, which explains the ADHD. Now that we know that, we've discovered that the way we've trained our other dogs -- a blue healer and black lab -- is in need of a serious renivation.
If anyone has any ideas as to how to train a dog that can't pay attention to you for more than two minutes, I'd love to hear them. I hate to have to leave him tied up when we're not outside when we've got this huge yard that he can enjoy with the other dogs but I don't want him running across the road to the neighbor's field and risk getting hit by a car.