First, thank you, Ed, for all of your work in providing such a well-organized and informative site. New to the sport, the site as been invaluable. Now, for my question: my Fila bitch is 18 months old, survived a severe auto accident at 4.5 months, spent most of her youth in casts, and prey drive was not developed. The breed requires socialization (done; however, extremely protective on her property) and the defense drive is innately high. Having initially purchased her for eventual personal protection work (single mom/house broken into, etc.), I would like to get her started in formal protection training (obedience training has proved successful). However, from the information gathered on the subject it seems imperative that high prey drive be present as a foundation. She will stand off strangers, but without formal training her performance under stress will ultimately prove unpredictable. Where do I go from here? Slowly work formal defense and channel into prey? Try her at tracking as a means of stress relief? She's young, inexperienced, a quick learner, yet bores easily when tempted to chase (any object, I've tried a variety). 130 pounds of untrained defense potential can only go one of two ways: a bad experience will either cause her to slip into avoidance (rendering her useless) or she may become uncontrollable (making her hazardous). Any input would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

Hard call, I really have no idea what to tell you but I do remember one thing Ed had said in one of his vids and that was "It is much much harder to put prey into a defensive dog, as it is to put defense into a prey dog" Something along thoes lines, I may have misquoted that, but you get the drift I hope.

It's to bad that accident happened, that is kind of a critical time in a young dogs life and to spend it in casts really sucks. Sorry I can't offer any more help than that!

Work on developing prey drive on your own. Ball on a string, and/or tug (BIG tug). If the prey drive is there it will come up fairly quickly. The Flinks Tape is a good start. Once you get the prey drive established with you, transfer it to another person. Once that is established you can go through a normal development. Work the prey stuff away from home, especially with the other person. You don't want this to bring out the defense in any way. At home the dog is likely to become defensive in reaction to the quick motions of the Agitator.

The other method of bringing a dog up in this situation is to start with the defense. Just enough to get the dog to bark. I would use a sack. The agitator facing the dog, growling at him, if the dog moves forward at all praise him and the agitator should act afraid. Once the dog is coming out a bit use the sack to flip off to the side of the dog, don't hit him. Once he grabs the sack the agitator should assume a prey posture and tug against the dog. After a few sessions of this you should be able to grauate to a tug and then sleeve. The dog should always make the bite with the agitator in a prey posture or he should immeadtly go to a prey posture. The key with this is going to be a lot of motion. The motion will stimulate the prey drive. Once the dog is solid on the sleeve in prey, then go back to working to solid defense mixed with some prey to keep that active.

Thanks Richard! I knew one of you guru's would pitch in and teach me!

Thanks, Richard, for all of your information. I have two questions for you, though, and please pardon my ignorance, as I am quite new to this subject: (1) How does one assume the "prey" position and (2) in tossing the rag at her side, how do I get her to grip it in prey when what she wants to do is eat the aggitator alive? The second question is purely hypothetical, as I have not tried it yet, but thought you might add some insight so I'd know what to expect. Thanks for your time and all of your input.

Prey posture means giving the dog no distance increasing signals or challenging signals. Such as direct eye contact, forward body position, leaning over dog, any dominating position.

You want to act like prey, run away, no eye contact, body in submissive posture head down to side away from dog, side of body to dog, moving away from dog, whimpering sounds. Distance decreasing signals.

Don't mean to interupt, but can someone point me to a pic of a fila? I have no idea what they look like and was just curious.

Kory

Lizette,

When we are talking about fliping the towel or rag (we use a gunny sack), we are talking about the same thing you did in Junior High School, take and hold one end and "pop" the other end. It has to move quickly so the dog can't get it. This is a primarily defensive style of training. I would rather do it in prey, but if you have to you have to.

http://www.filadog.com