Fight Drive in Dogs

By Ed Frawley

URL Copied!

I assume that anyone interested in this question has some understanding of the drive necessary for protection work. If you need more information, go to the article on my website about it.

My definition of FIGHT DRIVE is this: “A dog has fight drive when his protection work carries the forwardness of prey drive with the intensity of defense drive. A dog with good fight drive is willing to engage a helper or suspect in every circumstance, under every condition, regardless of whether training equipment is present or not. A dog with fight drive knows he can win every fight with a human that he gets to. He is ALWAYS willing to carry the fight to the suspect.”

Fight drive is not something a dog can be trained to have. It is a genetic part of the dog's makeup. A dog either has it or he does not. American bloodline dogs (German Shepherds, Dobes, Rots) have zero fight drive.

German Show bloodline German Shepherds have little to no fight drive. If one ever finds a German Show Bloodline animal with a little fight drive, it is not enough that the dog can genetically reproduce itself.

Fight drive also carries an experience factor. In other words, a dog can be genetically predisposed to having fight drive but unless it gets training and experience fighting humans it will never develop fight drive.

This is the reason young dogs cannot have fight drive. People who claim their young dogs have fight drive are almost ALWAYS wrong. A young dog can have active prey drive or it can have an elevated level of defense but it cannot have true fight drive because it is not old enough to get the experience necessary to fight humans and feel comfortable in that fight.

In other words, dogs don't just wake up one morning and mature to a point where they automatically have fight drive.

It is a result of good genetic makeup combined with good training to produce confidence that the dog can win in every encounter every time.

When people say that they have a one-year-old dog with a ton of fight drive, they are always wrong. It is impossible for a one-year-old dog to have fight drive because it's not old enough to have the experience to have it. The fact is a 1-year-old dog is not even old enough or even mature enough to have a fully developed defense drive. Without a mature defense drive, a dog cannot have fight drive.

When an owner thinks he sees fight drive in a young dog, what they are seeing is usually a dog with very intense active prey drive.

A dog that is intense on the training field is not necessarily a dog with fight drive. In fact, most of the time, a dog on the training field that seems intense lacks fight drive.

When a dog is willing to carry the fight to the helper or the suspect at any time anywhere, it has fight drive.

This goes well beyond a Schutzhund field or a dog that is willing to protect his home against intruders. I tell friends that you need to see and experience fight drive in a dog to understand what it is. Once you see it, you will never forget it.

It is not necessarily a dog that is vicious, sharp, or dangerous to be around. That is a misconception among people new to protection training. My current police dog has extreme fight drive, yet he is very social. He is good with children and people.

Anyone can walk into my office without any fear of being challenged or attacked. Yet when I work with him on the street, he has an instinctual feel for bad guys. This dog senses a fight before it happens. He exudes self-confidence and "fight drive." When suspects see this, they know that they are not dealing with a normal dog. They quickly see this dog is challenging them. He is doing more than just barking at them. He exudes a power and intensity that they can feel. They know he is willing to bite them and bite them with an intensity that will defeat them. The beauty of this is that 99% of the time, this takes the fight drive right out of the suspect and makes them comply with what I want him to do.

Dog with true fight drive will cause the bad guys to surrender.

Shop Training Supplies

Enroll in Training Courses

About Author

Ed Frawley

Ed Frawley is the founder of Leerburg. He has been training dogs since the 1950s. For 30 years, Ed bred working bloodline German Shepherds and has produced over 350 litters. During this time, Ed began recording dog training videos and soon grew an interest in police service dogs. His narcotic dogs have been involved in over 1,000 narcotics searches resulting in hundreds of arrests in the state of Wisconsin. Ed now solely focuses on producing dog training courses with renowned dog trainers nationwide. If you want to learn more about Ed, read about his history here.

0 Comments

There are no comments.

Have a question?
Ask Cindy

Sorry, adding comments is currently disabled.