How trainable are Kerries?
Lisa Frankland, the owner and trainer of Lav, the #1 Obedience Kerry in the country in 1996, answers the question as follows.: Lav has a UDX. Since he is the first dog I have ever gone through formal obedience with, I don’t have a whole lot to compare him to as far as trainability goes. I do know that he has managed to beat more than his share of Border Collies, Golden Retrievers, and Shelties! From my observations, the main difference between training a terrier vs. training a more traditional obedience breed seems to be one of motivation. You ask a Golden to jump and it will reply, “How high?” You ask a Kerry to jump and it will say, “Give me one good reason!” This is not to say that Kerries aren’t willing to please, just that they tend to be a little less blindly obedient and a little more distractable than some other breeds. I have found that Lav has a tremendous sense of fairness, taking a correction well if he understands why he has it coming, but falling apart if he doesn’t. I ha
