Hi board member
My club member discussed this topic years ago without any real result. I read recently a book written by a K9 officer and wrote about doing only basic OB with dogs before taking them to bitework. The reason is to built confidence and to make them less intoverted.By going through the bitework first, the dogs and handlers have more time to bond, hence fewer corrections are required when the final polish is done on the obedience field.
How basic should it be? I did with my dogs always some obedience parallel to bitework and I wonder how it will be if I reduce OB to 'basic'.
Does somebody have experience with both ways?

I'm not 100% sure what your question is. I think that puppy and youth training of a working dog (for protection) should be done in a way that does not diminish drive or harm the handler/dog relationship. So "basic obedience" done before, and during, bite work should be positive in nature. It makes no difference what skills you are teaching the dog, "advanced" or "basic". Your training will only be limited by your skill at getting fido to understand what you want, and fido's drives. Now, once the pup becomes more mature, he should be able to deal with much more pressure (i.e. corrections) in obedience without diminishing his drive.
Note: I am not saying that you never correct a puppy for behavior that you don't like or that you don't use some form of mild corrections, I'm just saying that during structured obedience you should not be doing any serious correction before the dog can handle it. That is what might possibly harm his confidence in later protection work.
One more thing, I don't see how working bite before obedience gives the handler and dog more time to bond? Did I read that wrong? I don't understand that sentence. This got too long so I'll stop now.

Usually, fewer corrections are required with dogs that have been trained with positive methods. They tend to problem solve more on their own to gain reward.

I took this sentence about bonding straight from the book (K9 bodyguards, Mike Harlow) and I was wondering too. I can follow very good your explanation about obedience and think that might be what he ment. Thanks

I have been sucessful with doing bite work first, with no regard for obedience. Of course, this is asuming many things.the dog you are working with has the potential to do the work (read drives and determination and heart enough not to quit). There is the point in time where obedience will be needed to continue the protection ( again, assuming we are talking about a sport dog) work. I have done in the past and will continue to do, as I am currently with my Otis grandson. I did this as well as changed my obedience to the Flinks method of obedience through drive and am thrilled with the results. give it a shot. If you go to heavy on the obedience before you start /progress in your protection work, the damage is often irreversible, however, if you do light obedience, you can always add more (mechanical correctness) as you go along.

If you are using the Flinks method, or similar styles of drive reward then you can start obedience ASAP. Also, I always start prey development work at the same time I start tracking or obedience- as soon as I get a puppy. There are a lot of things you can do in begining training that will only have a very positive effect on the dog overall. That is another reason why it is not really a question of obedience before protection. You can do it all, just thoughtfully and using positive methods.

The other benefit of starting obedience early I have found is that the level of correction required to get the dogs attention is much lower. This puppy I have started using treats with her for obedience. Prior to that I just used praise and a physical guidence in to the required positions. I would never put any corrections until the puppy is 5-6 months old, and then only mildly and on a flat colar. The corrections are very mild and the puppy seems to respond. Since the entire experience is positive there isn't a reduction in drive and the dogs don't see it as conflict with the handler. In addition the prey building work becomes a reward for proper obedience work. This helps later in training as the bite work can help reinforce the obedience. Poor obedience, no bite work. It doesn't take more than 1-2 sessions before obedience is perfect so the dog can do it's bite work.

I see several of you are far more experienced than I... we have a few laughable AKC obedience titleholders in the backyard, and have fallen in love with Belgians. Now our new Mal pup is from a working breeder who insists this pup has high prey but will need to wait on defense work. In such a case, while doing the preliminary tug training in prey, and tracking foundation (imprinting)... how awful would it be to deepen dog/handler relationship through obedience work? Seems there is a great deal of opinion against it, while I have trained much the opposite way with our other dogs, to no negative effect...
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I think much more study/thought needs to be put into this topic. Instead, two camps have quickly developed and they seem to shun each others ways. I don't see the problem working a pup in obedience. It does start out as a game but I move it beyond that as soon as I think I can without screwing the dog up. I have two mals that I brought up this way, and like FXDLrider said, "to no negetive effect." Of course I have nothing to compare them to, only that my dogs are wagging their tails all the way through OB exercises because they have found the way to avoid corrections and bring on praise.

I'm not so sure the "positive" techniques are all that they claim to be. In my opinion, this type of training should be renamed "frustration training". It reminds me of the donkey and the carrot. I do believe that their are several places in training for it,(building drive, arm to arm transfers, etc) but I don't believe obedience is one of them. I also question how good it really is for the handler/dog relationship. I was raised on a little of both and while I did not like being corrected, I assure you that getting me to obey through frustration techniques had its negative effects as well, to say the least. I refuse the idea that me being a source of frustration, more often than absolutely necessary, is good for my relationship with my dogs. Obedience is the last thing I want my dogs thinking is a game, but I'm not training sport dogs either. In my opinion, obedience commands should end up a fact of life in the dogs world, and certainly not a game at all. Especially so in a "real world" household.

Oh-man, lets not turn this into Inducement versus Compulsion. I think most people know that the best way is somewhere in the middle. The point that I want to make is that for some reason (that I can't even begin to explain) heavy handed obedience, worked before protection, can really screw the dog up. It goes counter to all the work that you do in building confidence and power in protection. It may not mess up a super dog, but the dogs that are not super, just good, show more avoidance problems in bite work if you are yanking their chains all the time. (before they are old enough and tough enough to take it) So save your correction phases, in obedience, for a little later in the dogs training. If you do that, then starting obedience before protection is no problem.