Well my entire girl is just over 2 years old. I had another 'experienced' trainer with a Sch3 dog write her off as not being a good prospect for anything but obedience and agility due to weak drives. That was about 6 months ago.

Now fast foreward to a couple of weeks ago, I have been taking her to Lure Coursing a couple of times and today she goes BANANAS! big deep bark, constantly pulling, extreme focus on this bloody plastic bag on a string! This was for 4 hours straight! It was like something just clicked in her and her real Maliness just came out!

Now last week I had her assessed by 3 new PP/Schutzhund trainers and they tell me she can definately be a great Schutzhund (even PP). She shows good speed in prey, and growls and barks when stalked and will lunge out when the stalker jumps at her or me and go for a bite (though she has not learned this) She has just started this now!

My questions are : can her, well I suppose you could call it her 'workability', be turned on so quickly. I mean you can nearly pinpoint the time when the little bit in her brain went 'CLICK' oh I'm going to behave like a working dog now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> I mean I would like to think I havnt been hindering her progress, and the only change in the past couple of months is I got an adolescent entire male Dogue de Bordeaux as her friend? Is she considered a late bloomer, she has been a slightly nervous bitch due to her early upbringing. Or am I just going mad? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

What type of dog is it? Some breeds of dogs are definately late bloomers, particularly the bully breeds. We had an Am Bulldog that the owner decided to write off because at 8 months he wasn't opening his mouth for the tug. Something clicked recently and now he bites just fine.

As far as your dog, you can't change genetically what the dog has to offer (weak drives, strong drives, weak nerves, etc) but you can do things to improve them (like the lure coursing) and cover them up. You can take a dog that is weak in the grip and give it enough bites where it'll bite the sleeve. Unfortunately, at some point in time, there is a good chance that the weakness will show itself, for example a dog with weak nerves may in trial get a helper who isn't playing the game the way he was taught and suddenally the dog see's him as the boogie man and takes off. Another example is you can take a dog that has low prey drive and teach it how to make prey. The thing is with these dogs is they will never have the natural passion that will make them a very GOOD schutzhund dog. But if your bitch is doing everything well, keep it up and don't push her to her limits or she may revert back to her lazy drives/weak nerves, whatever may be the case.

she is a Malinois. The trainer has made her enrol in advanced obedience and a socialisation class (mainly for the legal side of her training as we have a rather over opinionated RSPCA)

Maybe thats why he wants to get her to do PP before schutzhund? The trainer wants to teach her to search for the decoy in a factory first instead of using blinds.

she was a very nervous dog between 6 months and 14/15 months, absolutely no confidence and her fear periods were shocking. I'm a little hesitant to desex without knowing if her problems are hormonally driven (when she's in season she's a totally different animal, will have a go at anything)

With some dogs there is this click-moment.

I've known a Malinois that was just not into it. The owner wanted him to be trained in Belgian Ring (Saint Hubert version) and was having trouble even to get him to bite. At 20 months or so during a training the dog was fooling around like we were used to see but at one point during an attack he changed. And what a change it was. From a pet to a killer in a split second. Previous the decoy had to do everything to get the dog biting. Now we were choking the dog to let go. 3 times the dog blacked out and 3 times he rengaged at anything and everything that was around him.

After a few months of training he became a good ringdog

Never heard or seen something that spectacular afterwards

Greetings


Johan