I have a little ritual for each time I am getting my dog out of the car.
I open her crate; I let her jump out of the vehicle, and I ask her to immediately take a basic heeling position next to my left leg so that I can attach a leash to her.
There is no specific philosophy behind it, I just like doing it this way.
Every now and then I am being praised on my dog’s stellar obedience and being asked: must be good to have a fully trained dog like that?
I would not know that, because my dog is not “fully trained” and I am not sure such a thing exists at all.
Dogs are life beings, and they cannot be “fully” anything. They assume different personalities and exhibit different behaviors based on each specific situation. They have zoomies, they conduct mischiefs, they surprise you with their sense of humor, and they set their mind on something that you do not like from time to time.
“Training” dogs means teaching them how to make a specific choice in a specific situation and then insisting that this choice needs to be made every single time.
However, it is not possible to train for all potential life scenarios, and it is not necessary to do so. You train to the level where you feel that living with your dog is comfortable, and then you just maintain this level.
“Fully trained,” in contrast, presupposes that a dog has a certain ready-to-use level of preparedness, sort of like a can of peas. Of course, dogs are not cans of peas; you cannot train a behavior for hypothetical future consumption, you need to constantly maintain it in order for it to be functional.
Therefore, my dog (or any other dog for that matter) is not “fully trained.” She is simply prepared for many life scenarios and she is consistently being encouraged to make choices that I like.
Like other things in dog ownership, it is important to understand and accept that no dog is perfect and fully trained, not even that of the fanciest trainer you saw on tik-tok.
With that being said, any dog can be fully trained in one little thing, such as jumping out of the car into a heeling position or coming to you when called - something that you routinized, maybe ritualized, and are using consistently. Having a dog who fully understands one or more of such little tasks is, indeed, a pretty great feeling.