Chaos in a Box
When I gave my talk at work about ten things I've learned from training dogs someone said, you should have brought your dog (which I should have because it would have been fun--even though my boss thinks Billie hates him--but I couldn't really think of a reason that bringing her would be necessary). And, he added, then we could see what a perfect dog looks like.
But, and this should surprise no one, I don't have perfect dogs. There was probably a time when I wanted a perfect dog, probably when I first started training when I thought all well-trained dogs met some ideal perfect image. My first Rottweiler shattered that illusion.
My personal philosophy for working dogs (and I don't advocate this necessarily for all breeds or all dog owners) is chaos in a box. Certain things are absolute--they must come when called, they must not bite people, they must not destroy the house--those things are the box. But inside the box there are decisions they get to make themselves--jumping over the sofa, telling the other dogs off, telling me off (as long as they are also doing what I asked them to), doing two agility runs and no more, not meeting people, or not meeting dogs (btw, I find it vastly amusing when people say, 'can our dogs meet,' and then don't bother to listen to the answer.)
They have to make some decisions themselves because no dog with big teeth should ever be lacking in confidence. And they have to live in the box because no dog with big teeth should ever be asked to decide the rules for engagement. Chaos in a box can produce obedience champions and really great agility dogs and tracking titled dogs--in fact it's more apt to than not. It can also produce dogs that aren't the easiest to live with. These are the dogs (not mine, by the way, 'cuz I'm not training at this level at the moment) that are precision itself in the ring and then drag their owners out of the building afterward.