My dogs love a ball but since our department no longer wants to use Shutzhund dogs, the local club is going to train them with food. I'm concerned.

Question

Ok, here is a question I have not found an answer from on your web site.

I am a former K-9 handler that left Law Enforcement in '95 and have just picked up a great female. I don't miss Law Enforcement, but I miss working a dog, it was the best 3 years of Law Enforcement I ever had. So I purchased her from a good kennel, which has great blood lines, in-fact, the parents are from your program. I got her to have something to work with my children with and introduce them to working dogs now that they are getting older.

Here is my question(s): After working K-9 for 3 years, obviously the training, as you would agree is different, and I am finding myself trying to understand how to 'transition' into.

Schutzhund philosophy, which from my reading of Schutzhund is a test of the dogs abilities in a nutshell.

Our police department and many others shunned away from the sport because so many departments received bad 'patrol' dogs that had all these titles, but could not work the street in any way. (Houston gave one of their handlers a SchH III and the dog had no teeth! - another story for another email).

Being in love with the Law Enforcement side of things, the really only way to train with a new dog, and not take away from the departments training time, I decided to look more into the sport, and found that there are good clubs and bad ones. I believe I have found one that is good.

After attending 2 local club meetings and training with them, I have had to ask myself what are the goals for the dog and myself. My service dog, as with this GSD were both very ?ball? crazy. I never had to train with food before and was always taught that having to train a working dog with food, you never really get the dog to truly ?work? for you. Now I understand the methodology and the reasons for it just never had to use them with my dogs.

Here is my question. In deciding to learn more about the sport side of competing with working dogs in Schutzhund and this style of training, and making the decision that this is not going to be a street working dog, but a stay at home, working dog/family protection animal, how do I get the precision obedience with the ball drive, versus using the food drive? Since this is for sport, am I better off finding a food that my GSD likes and work towards that for tracking and so on, or tie a string to the ball and use it over my shoulder for the obedience and so on.

I look forward to your response, and any video suggestions either your or someone else's that really lays out the sport in detail on what the judges are looking for, what points are taken off of and why. Thanks for your time.

Michael

Accepted Answer

Michael, You pose some very good questions. What you have seen in regard to problems with Schutzhund dogs trying to convert to police service dogs is a result of uneducated or scrupulous dog vendors selling dogs that were not properly selection tested for police work. It is not a local problem it’s a national problem. I see and hear of it everywhere. It is not the sport of Schutzhund that is bad it’s the morals of the people who sell the dog or the lack of education in the people who sell the dogs. There are a ton of people selling police service dogs that don’t have a clue about what kind of temperament and drive it takes to make a good service dog. Combine that with all the administrators that are clueless about dogs and it’s a formula for a problem. The fact is that there are great sport dogs that can do both sport and police service work. They key is to selection test the dogs properly. I hope to release a video on how to do this next year. Most of it is filmed – finding the time to edit is the problem. Your questions on training is also very good. The person who commented on food not being a good training tool also needs more experience in their dog training career. There are only four ways to train a dog:

Use food drive
Use prey drive (a toy or prey item)
Use the drive to please the handler (maybe 1 dog in 10,000 has this drive)
Use force

The fact is food drive works just fine to train with. The problem with food is that the work does not translate over to protection work. The problem that people see when they use food are not food related but follow-up related. They fail to properly develop the correction and distraction phase of training. In other words they are not consistent trainers. In my opinion using prey drive is the best way to train. Using prey drive works in obedience and in protection training. When trainers understand how to set up their training this method is just great. Very, very, very, few dogs love a handler enough so that only work for the praise of the handler. I only know of one dog that would do this. So its not something to go into. When dogs do not have food drive or they don’t have prey drive the only thing left to use in training is FORCE and I hate this method of training. Its OK for pets but it certainly is not the way to train a working dog. With all of this said – the training videos that I have been doing with Bernhard Flinks from Germany is the best drive training that I have seen in 30 years of being around sport and Schutzhund dogs. There are two training videos that I recommend for anyone getting involved with protection training for Schutzhund, police service work, or personal protection work. These videos are: