Airedales aren’t your average dog, and training them takes a decent amount of work. I’ve put together the following guide to teach you everything you need to know.
Training your Airedale take patience and teamwork. These dogs, while very intelligent, can also be headstrong and stubborn when they want. Because of this, they respond better to positive reinforcement and engaging training methods.
I’ve said it many times before, but getting an Airedale is like entering into a partnership. This is a dog who gives a lot and expects a lot in return; they don’t like to be deferential to anyone, and you’ll have a lot more luck training them if you work with them rather than trying to boss them around. It’s important to properly train your Airedale so that you break them out of the worst of their habits and avoid having them develop any bad behaviours later in their life.
Airedale Personality
With that in mind, let’s talk a little bit about what Airedales are like. A few of the defining characteristics of the breed include:
- Playfulness: Airedales love to play fight, and the rowdier the better.
- Stubbornness: Trying to get an Airedale to do something they don’t want to do is about as easy as moving a house. These dogs can dig in their heels (paws) like no other breed.
- Loyalty: There’s nothing an Airedale likes more than spending time with their family. They have an incredibly strong pack mentality.
- Intelligence: Because of all the jobs they needed to performed, Airedales developed a high intelligence and problem solving ability.
- Wanderlust: Finally, these dogs are easily bored, and they love to wander around and explore. An Airedale is never as entertained as when they’re going on an adventure, and they constantly need mental stimulation to prevent them from getting bored.
So, when you put this all together, you get an incredibly energetic dog that gets bored easily, who also possessive a large individualistic streak and a high amount of stubbornness. All told, it can be a chore to train these guys to do what you want.
The Airedale’s intelligence also has a tendency to work against them (or you, rather). Though they’ll always understand what you’re telling them, it’s a tossup as to whether or not they choose to listen or if they want to keep going what they’re doing. This indolence has earned them the nickname ‘air-heads’ because it seems like they can’t understand commands, but make no mistake: these dogs are super smart. They simply decide that they don’t want to listen sometimes.
Training an Airedale
With that in mind, you may be thinking that your Airedale is going to be a nightmare to train. The truth is, these dogs ca be affable, even cooperative when they want to be, and they’re highly trainable — as long as you train them right.
The trick to training an Airedale is to work with them and find training methods that engage and entertain the dog. Airedales don’t like being told what to do, and so they won’t respond well to being bossed around.
What they do like, however, is spending quality time with their family, and getting to solve challenges that interest them. If you find a way to make training fun for your Airedale, and constantly switch up what you’re doing so that they stay engaged, you’ll have a lot more success getting them to cooperate.
Tips
Below are some more tips that I have on training your Airedale.
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement has been shown, time and time again, to be a better method of teaching behaviour in animals than punishment and anger have been. With the Airedale, who holds a certain amount of pride and indignation, this strategy is even more important.
To train your Airedale like this, you want to reward them when they do things right and withhold this reward when they fail to do so. If your Airedale performs the trick you ask of them, give them a treat and make sure to praise them heavily. If they don’t perform the trick, don’t punish them, just withhold the reward.
Later, once your Airedale gets better at performing the trick, start varying the reward they get. Sometimes when they sit for you, give them a treat and lots of praise. Other times simply praise them and don’t give them a treat. Doing so teaches your Airedale to not expert reward, but instead to listen because it’s the right thing to do.
Now, this training method an get frustrating, especially for certain things like teaching your dog to come at the dog park. You’ll have to stand there yelling for five minutes for them to follow you, and then when they finally listen, you’ll have to reward them with a treat instead of punishing them for not listening.
However, as frustrating as it is (especially during the puppy years), I can say from a lifetime of experience that this is the best way to train your Airedale.
Patience
That alludes to my next point: you need a lot of patience to train an Airedale. In fact, if you’re a first-time dog owner, I would hesitate to recommend that you get an Airedale because of how much of a chore it can be to properly train them.
The issue with Airedales is twofold: their stubbornness makes you want to hit them sometimes (or at least yell at them), but these dogs don’t react well to being treated in that way. In fact, if you make an Airedale angry, they can become even more stubborn, and the whole thing turns into a vicious cycle.
Because of that, I would definitely coach patience when training these dogs, especially when they get a little stubborn or set in their ways. Instead of going head-on with them, try a different tact; come up with a new way to train them in the task you wanted, take a break to play, or call it a day and try again tomorrow. Treat it as a team activity, not as if you’re telling your dog what to do, and you’ll find that you have much more success.
Firmness
With that being said, however, there’s still a limit as to what you can let your Airedale get away with. Because of how playful and exploratory are, these dogs need to learn to have firm boundaries at a young age, or they can become completely uncontrollable.
Doing this is a delicate balancing act between not getting frustrated with your Airedale, but still punishing them for bad behaviour. The key distinction to make is: you SHOULD NOT punish your Airedale for failing to listen, but you SHOULD punish them for acting out in a way that’s unacceptable.
To make this easier to understand, let’s use some real-life examples. If you’re trying to teach your Airedale to go to their crate upon command and they don’t listen, punishing them will get you nowhere (and, in fact, might make the situation worse).
However, if you come home and find that your Airedale chewed a pair of your slippers because they were bored, you need to punish them. Make sure you’re being firm and strict, not angry, but you still need to let the dog know that that’s not okay. For me that’s always meant a stern voice and a smack on the nose (depending on how old the dog is); for you, it might be different.
The important point is to note that you need to be firm with your Airedale when the misbehave, because if not they could develop bad habits that will last them a lifetime.
Acceptance
Finally, and slightly in tandem with the patience, I would counsel a certain level of acceptance when you train an Airedale. You need to go into it knowing that, some habits, you’re just not going to be able to break this dog out of — and you probably shouldn’t try.
For example, you’re never going to fully stop your Airedale from wandering off if they go someplace new without a leash on. These dogs just have too much wanderlust in them.
Now, if you really try (and probably use a lot of unsavoury methods), you’ll be able to scare your Airedale into being so scared that they won’t wander off. However, by doing that, you’ll likely do a reasonable amount of damage to the dog overall, and you risk changing their personality forever.
Buying an Airedale is accepting that these goofy, stubborn creatures have a mind of their own. Their puppy-like playfulness and endless energy, while brightening any household, must come with an acceptance that they won’t always listen when you want them to.
Additionally, you should make sure to listen to what your Airedale is trying to tell you. If you have a well-trained dog who engages in bad behaviour, like constantly digging in your back yard or chewing furniture, this is your Airedales way of telling you that they’re bored. Instead of punishing them, I would urge you to try to find more time to play with your Airedale. Doing so will get your farther in terms of stopping this behaviour than punishing them will.
The Importance of Age
When training your Airedale, you need to start the process early and continue it for at least the first year of their life. Now, you want to train any dog as early as possible, but this is especially important with Airedales because of how stubborn the breed is.
If you don’t train your Airedale early on, they’re going to learn to think that certain behaviours are okay, and these behaviours will become habits. Once your stubborn Airedale has become set in their ways, breaking them from those habits as an adult is extremely difficult, and it might not be possible without extreme measures.
Another important thing to do with an Airedale when their young is to establish an alpha in the household — someone who the dog knows they need to defer to. Although they’re good family dogs, Airedales can also sometimes be territorial and unfriendly when they don’t want to be touched. This can lead to growling and biting at family members if they’re not properly trained.
Having an alpha in the house, who can punish the Airedale when they act like this, is the best way to ensure they realize how unacceptable that behaviour is. The earlier you work towards establishing an alpha, the easier it will be for your Airedale to accept.
Obedience School
If you read forums about Airedale owners, you’ll find mixed responses on how it went when they tried to sign their dogs up for obedience school. For some people, it’s the only way they can get their Airedale to listen; for others, the process is so embarrassing that they need to drop out.
The issue with Airedales is that they’re naturally very excitable, especially as puppies. If you bring your 6-month-old Airedale into a room with a bunch of other dogs, all they’re going to be able to think about is playing. This makes it hard for them to focus, listen, and perform what you’re asking of them.
On the flip side, especially if you’re a first time dog owner, obedience training with your puppy can be an invaluable way to learn how you, as the pet owner, should be training your Airedale. You’ll get expert advice on how to draw the line between discipline and punishment that we talked about, how to reward your dog properly, and what techniques you can use to get them to listen.
Personally, I would recommend obedience school to any Airedale owner (we went to it with Theo even though my parents had owned 4 Airedales before him). It might be slightly embarrassing, but if nothing else, it will help you learn how to train your Airedale.
House Training Your Airedale
Finally, one of the first things that you’re going to want to do is properly house train your Airedale. Fortunately, because of how bright these dogs are, this is a process that you should be able to do in about two weeks.
An important thing to remember when potty training your Airedale is that, once again, positive reinforcement works better than punishment. At the same time, don’t forget that you’re allowed to bring some firmness in when necessary.
So, the first few times your Airedale goes inside, don’t punish them, because they don’t know any better. Once you’ve rewarded them for going outside a few times, though, and it can be expected that your Airedale should know better, you can reprimand them (with nothing more serious than a stern voice, though).
What Can You Train Your Airedale to Do?
So, now that we’ve gone over how to train them, I thought it would be quick to give a quick rundown on some of the things that you can expect them to be able to do, and some of the things that you should probably just learn to accept.
Manners
Manners are probably the first and most important thing you need to ingrain your Airedale with. This includes both manners to you (no growling at family members, not biting your face, etc) and manners with other dogs (no humping, no playing too rough, etc).
Socialization is a major component of this. Because of their history as hunters, Airedales have a habit of being slightly aggressive and territorial if they’re not properly socialized from a young age. Failure to do so will make your Airedale suspicious and potentially even hostile towards strangers.
One of the best ways to teach your Airedales manners, especially in regards to other dogs, is to let them play and mess up in social situations. All the time when he was a puppy, Theo would pick a fight with a dog bigger than him, only to get sat on or bitten at while at the dog park. This helped him learn what behaviour is and isn’t okay.
Tricks
Airedales are smart dogs, and it should only take you a couple of days to teach them the standard slew of tricks such as sit, shake a paw, high five, and roll over. Once again, the best method to teach them this behaviour is through positive reinforcement and varied rewards. Slowly, as long as you taper off the treats you give your dogs, you should be able to get to the point where you can ask your Airedale to do the tricks without needing to wave a reward in their face.
If you decide you want to have fun and teach your Airedale some more complex tricks, go for it! Like I said, these are smart dogs, and as long as you find a fun way to train them, they can do almost anything you ask.
Leash/Dog Park Behaviour
This is an important one if you don’t want to be constantly dragged around while walking them, or have to spend an hour at the dog park chasing them down when they refuse to come. Because of how big and playful Airedales are, good leash manners and dog park etiquette are essential.
A good trick here is to always carry a reward with you at the dog park. Theo always gets thirsty, so we make sure to have a bottle of water along with some treats to tempt him to come to us.
Guarding
Airedales aren’t renowned guard dogs, but they can serve in this role if you want. Personally, I can’t offer advice as to how to train an Airedale to do this, because I’ve never done it myself.
What I can say, though, is that Airedales have excellent protective instincts, and these guards naturally understand who their family is and who may pose a threat to them. If you choose to train your Airedale formally so that they can better serve this roll, I have no doubt that they’ll excel at it.
Because of the Airedale’s intelligence, size, and fighting instincts, they make a formidable opponent for anyone who might threaten them or the people they care about. My first Airedale, Sammy, was around before I was born, and when I was a baby he wouldn’t allow anyone but my parents to even come close to me. Especially if you help them hone these instincts, Airedales will be excellent guard dogs.
Hunting
It should make sense because that’s what they were originally bred for, but there are some people nowadays who don’t see the Airedales as good hunting dogs. The truth is, unlike many specialist breeds, these dogs can serve a variety of different roles:
- Flushers or retrievers for hunting fowl: their intelligence, tenacity, and comfort in water means that Airedales make great bird dogs.
- Small game hunters: smart enough to track them down, quick enough to keep up with them, and intelligent enough to work in a pack, Airedales can hunt most small game.
- Big game hunters: This is what the Airedale was originally bred for. Even nowadays, many big game hunters will include an Airedale or three in their pack because of how brave and relentless these dogs are.
The important thing about training your Airedale to be a hunter is to find a way to make it fun for them. Coming up with a varied training regiment that challenges them both physically and mentally will ensure that your Airedale learns to love hunting.
What Can’t You Train your Airedale to Do?
Now, with all of that said, there are some things that you can’t train your Airedale to do, as I alluded to earlier. Getting into a battle over the things listed below runs the risk of damaging your relationship with your dog.
Stop digging
As I mentioned, if an Airedale is digging, that probably means that they’re bored and they’re doing anything to burn their energy off. Trying to break them out of this habit won’t work; instead, try to get to the root cause of the issue.
Now, it’s entirely possible that you exercise your Airedale for several hours a day, and they still dig. If that’s the case, I have some bad news: they probably won’t stop. They’re a terrier, and the word terrier literally means ground in French. These dogs, and their entire lineage, were born to dig.
Stay off of Furniture
I’ve spent a decade of my life fighting to keep my Airedales off of furniture. For the most part, they’ve been able to learn that there are certain couches, like the antique furniture in our house, that he’s not allowed on.
However, invite an Airedale up onto the couch to cuddle with you once, and it’s game over. Even if you don’t catch your Airedale on the couch, as a lifelong owner, I can tell you that they’re there. They might do it when you’re upstairs or when you’re out of the house, but once you teach an Airedale it’s okay to go up, you can expect them to remember that.
Not Explore
I truly believe that there’s no way to take away your Airedale’s wanderlust without taking away an extremely important part of their personality. These dogs grew up on farms and ranches, spending their days romping through forests in search of game. It’s in their nature to explore, and it’s part of the way that they kill their boredom and find new things to keep them excited.
Like I said, you can fight with your Airedale about this, but you may end up doing more damage than intended. It’s only my opinion, and I’m no dog expert, but I believe that having to deal with a wayward dog is much better than breaking the fun-loving spirit that makes the Airedale who they are.
The History of Airedale Terriers
Before you begin training your Airedale, I think it’s important to understand where they come from as a breed. Doing so gives a little bit of an insight into the way they act, and understanding them to this deeper level helps you train them.
Airedales were originally raised to be hunting dogs in the Yorkshire valley around the late 1800’s. They were touted for their energy, bravery, and intelligence, and they were often asked to perform complicated tasks (like burrowing into a bear’s den to threaten the animal into the open) without much supervision.
As time progressed and the breed became more popular, the uses for Airedales expanded to police dogs, where their sense of smell and natural protective instinct helped them guard docks against smugglers. After proving their mettle, Airedales were used during WWI as military dogs. They helped track down wounded soldiers on the battlefield to bring them to safety. They were also trusted to carry important messages behind enemy lines; there are countless stories of Airedales delivering vital information despite heavy injuries.
So, as you can see, Airedales have a long history as utility dogs before they became commonplace within households. This history shaped their personality and turned them into the dogs they are today.