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Old Dog; New Tricks.
A mildewed maxim runs: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Some proverbs live because they are too true to die.

Others endure because they have a smug sound and because nobody has bothered to bury them.

The one about old dogs and new tricks belongs in both categories.
In a sense it is true.

In another it is not.
To teach the average elderly dog to sit up and beg, or to roll over twice, or to do other of the asinine things with which humans stultify the natural good sense of their canine chums, is as hard as to teach a sixty-year-old grave-digger to become a musical composer.
But no dog with a full set of brains is ever past learning new things which are actually needful for him to learn.