Last edited Mon Jan 11, 2016, 12:51 AM - Edit history (1)
I have had Border Collies, they are extremely teachable. They want to do things with you.
Standard Poodles, and their near cousins the Portuguese Wager Dogs, are the second smartest breed, but they often have they own agenda. My Poodle thinks nothing of going miles out of its way when off lead. When I had Border Collies and Australian Shepherds they rarely ran more then 100 yards and refused to get out of sight except for the briefest of time periods. They see me as their pack and want to stay with the pack.
Standard Poodles, are hunting dogs, and as such even as a pup the Poodle would do a classic hunting weave to see what she could flush. I put a go pro camera on her, and saw the roads she crossed when off lead and she had to have gone five miles from where I released her. I know because I recognized the home she went by and that house was caught on the camera.
Now my brother has an Australian Shepherd. When I take both dogs out and release both of them the Aussie tends to follow the Poodle. The Aussie tends to turn back sooner then the Poodle and has greater problems locating me on the trail. When I have the Aussie by herself, she acts like a Border Collie and stays close. The Aussie only goes out of sight when I release her with the Poodle. The Aussie wants to know what the Poodle is getting into and thus follows the Poodle on her long runs.
When I am on my bicycle, the Aussie loves running beside me (I use a dog hitch to my seat post when biking with the dogs). On the other hand the Poodle watches the bike, let it attacks her. Just a difference between the two dogs.
Another difference is the Aussie rarely pulls on the lead, she did this from puppyhood onward. The Aussie just refuses to pull, unless she sees something she wants and then if you say No, she stops pulling. The Aussie is happy walking with me on lead.
The Poodle is a tugger. On lead she wants to pull, no matter how often I try NOT to leave her pull. She wants to see everything, a leaf blows by, she wants to chase it. She sees a hillside she wants to run up it. She sees a creek, she wants in. I put her on sit and stay, commands she understands, but she still wants to tug. I stop when she pulls and wait for her to stop, she does stop but when I start to walk again the pulling returns, so I stop walking again till stops pulling, then we start again. She just does NOT want to learn to walk with anyone, she wants to run.
One more difference. My sister came to visit me and the Poodle. The Poodle liked her and played with her, but when it came time to leave, the Poodle sense my sister was leaving and making noise of taking the Poodle with her. The Poodle quickly said NO, by staying beside me and then right behind me till my sister left. The Poodle sensed and acted like she knew what my sister was saying and the Poodle made it clear that she, the Poodle did not want to go with my sister. I bring it up to show the Poodle understood what was going on, and made her preference quickly known.
The two dogs types are that different.
Side note: The history of the Poodle is unclear, we first read about them in the 1300s, but then the stories says the Poodle is an old breed and a peasant's dog. Please note in the 1300s linen paper is introduced into Europe. Linen paper was much cheaper then the old standard, parchment. So much cheaper that people actually use it instead of bark for day to day reports. Given linen papers cheap price, you started to get more and more writing. In fact without linen paper, the printing press is not doable. With linen paper, printing the writing on the paper became the most costly thing in producing a book, thus the printing press reduced this cost. In the days before linen paper, the most costly part of any book was the actual parchment the book was made of, thus something like the printing press made no sense. You be saving pennies on printing while spending dollars on the paper being printed on. The cost of the paper itself restricted how many copies people wanted, and given the costs no one made a book until It was ordered, and such orders were generally one copy every few years. In simple terms, it was cheaper to hand copy a book when someone wanted a book rather then print a bunch of books with a press when no one but a very few people could even afford the paper the book was printed on. Thus you can not have printing without linen paper, and what we would call newspapers would not be possible till pulp paper was invented in 1801 and then not widely adopted till the 1830s.
Back to Poodles. Thus the fact we have no report of them before the 1300s may be the result of the fact these were peasant's dogs and as such something not to waste expensive parchment on, but linen was cheap enough to record such animals. Thus the failure to report may reflect the recording technology of the time period as opposed to an actual lack of such animals. One theory on Poodles is that they were Gothic dogs, ie. Tied in with the ancient Goths, the people who took and sacked Rome in 410 AD, the first time in 800 years that Rome fell to an invader.
Something like the Poodle have been seen on Gothic memorials and even Roman memorials. The dogs are not named on the monuments thus we can not be sure, but it would explain the similarities between the Poodles of Germany (where modern Poodle come from, the French may have adopted the Poodle but even the name Poodle is from the German word for puddle), and the very similar dogs of Italy, Spain and Portugal, for that is where the Goths went after leaving Italy after sacking Rome. This includes the Portuguese Water Dog.
= new reply since forum marked as read
