I've been meaning to make this post for a while. I wanted to ask for some opinions from DOG people (real dog people) that have experience with this breed.
I am not considering owning one. I have no interest in Terriers because of all their Terrier-ness. But this has been bugging me and I know there are a few people on here familiar with them.
I work in a grooming salon, we have probably 10-15 Westies that we groom on a regular basis. I remember when I started, my boss was talking about how awful they can be to groom... and I thought, surely not ALL of them can be that bad. (My boss used to own Westies and she's groomed for 10 years, she's met a few)
But a year later... wow. Only about 2 of all the Westies have decent coping skills.
I mean 90% of them are anxious and highly strung. Either screamers or biters or just stand there trembling.
Now I do think that a big cause of this is the fact that the home they live in treat them like cute, fluffy, white teddy bears and not dogs. They belong to people that don't comb out the knots because "they don't like it" (like they like it anymore when we do it), have no boundaries or rules for their dogs and little to no training or really decent socialisation.
So because I know it's not okay to tar all of one breed with the some brush due to some bad experiences (hell, if I went off numbers of individual dogs met and not taken into account homelife and lines I wouldn't like GSD's or BC's at all)
But..for those that know the breed, what are Westies like? What should they be like? Is that highly strung type personality somewhat built in and has to be worked around or should it not be there at all?
I am not considering owning one. I have no interest in Terriers because of all their Terrier-ness. But this has been bugging me and I know there are a few people on here familiar with them.
I work in a grooming salon, we have probably 10-15 Westies that we groom on a regular basis. I remember when I started, my boss was talking about how awful they can be to groom... and I thought, surely not ALL of them can be that bad. (My boss used to own Westies and she's groomed for 10 years, she's met a few)
But a year later... wow. Only about 2 of all the Westies have decent coping skills.
I mean 90% of them are anxious and highly strung. Either screamers or biters or just stand there trembling.
Now I do think that a big cause of this is the fact that the home they live in treat them like cute, fluffy, white teddy bears and not dogs. They belong to people that don't comb out the knots because "they don't like it" (like they like it anymore when we do it), have no boundaries or rules for their dogs and little to no training or really decent socialisation.
So because I know it's not okay to tar all of one breed with the some brush due to some bad experiences (hell, if I went off numbers of individual dogs met and not taken into account homelife and lines I wouldn't like GSD's or BC's at all)
But..for those that know the breed, what are Westies like? What should they be like? Is that highly strung type personality somewhat built in and has to be worked around or should it not be there at all?