I was wondering what any of you would suggest if you were in my situation.

I would love to bite train my puppy for sports and personal protection, he's fairly young so I'm not overly concerned with rushing anything. I am going to teach and play tug in his obedience training coming up soon so I will be setting myself up for any other training.

I don't really have the proper equipment or the know how. I looked up Shutzhund and Mondioring clubs in Phoenix, Arizona area with no luck, aside from one in queen creek (which is about an hour and a half from me) not very realistic. Should I just back off of the idea or are there any real options? I am fairly willing to give up on the idea if I don't get any good ideas. My thoughts on protection work is, either do it right or don't do it at all, and I'm ok with that.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Spencer, I've looked around here (via the internet) as well, and found the same club you did.

With the gazillions of people in the valley, there HAS to be more than one outlet for Sch or a ringsport.

For additional leads, might be worth attending one of the Queen Creek clubs Saturday morning trainings, or calling a breeder or two who sells Mal's, Dobe's, or GSD's to see what they know about local clubs training PPD sports. Seems like I've come across a breeder or two that is pretty actively training, and likes to put titles on dogs for their business. If I can relocate the breeder(s) I saw, I'll pm you and maybe you can fire off an e-mail asking about local training.

A trainer of PPD dogs in the valley would also likely know about any active clubs, I'd hope. Maybe there are some clubs that just don't advertise on the internet??

As for the training questions, I have the same questions as you and the same basic preconception: If you can't do bite training the right way...find another sport.

There is a certified helper in the valley - he might be a good source of info. I'll try to remember where I saw his name...

Good luck!

wow Rob! thank you I never would have thought of that lol, I'm dumb! That's a great idea I bet I easily will get plugged in if I attend a session and ask! haha geez. I deserve a slap in the face.

Yeah I just couldn't agree more about doing bite training correctly. I love my dog too much to put him in a bad situation. I also am the first "dog trainer," or at least the first to really look into it, in my family and they are really stand offish to bite training. They don't really understand it, even though I try to explain. The point being that I never want them to be uncomfortable in my home, being afraid of my dog. So when I do it I'm going to go all out.

Thanks

 Quote: spencer martin

my family and they are really stand offish to bite training. They don't really understand it, even though I try to explain. The point being that I never want them to be uncomfortable in my home...

Oh, hell, my wife and her family are the same way, and the general public is not too far behind. I will say that my father in law was very impressed the other day when he saw a border patrol Mal alert at a car going through the checkpoint east of Yuma. Dog apparently went apesh*t - must have got a good whiff of some drug.

The natural progression in bite training is innocent enough - from smaller tug to larger tug to soft sleeve and so on. It's possible that if the fam actually sees the dogs at work and sees how natural it is for them, they'd relax some. Once they know and trust and have a relationship with your dog, it's pretty hard for them to picture him as dangerous to them. With 2/3 of Sch training in "non-bite" activities, it's easy for everyone to see how much time you put in and how disciplined the dog becomes. As several of the experts have said, a Sch trained dog is LESS likely to bite out of reaction or fear, not more likely. A well-bred dog just becomes more self-controlled.

Spencer, tracking is another activity I think you could add to your OB work any time (although the hot season in the valley provides less-than-ideal conditions). Maybe early a.m. or night time...

I'm jealous of where you are with your pup right now - I'm still over a year away before I can get my next pup - but I'm following along with huge interest. If you do locate a club, let us (or me) know, would you?

Keep having fun. Oh and my order went in to Leerburg for some more videos. Jeez, they might as well have a direct line into my bank account...

Spencer, Ed Frawley agrees with us (from his website):

 Quote:

So, if you are just getting into the bite training, do not make the mistake of thinking that you can skip bite development and jump right into defensive work. It can not be done if you want to maintain the mental health of your dog and if you want to have a social dog that people can be around without fear.

and

 Quote:

Protection training (when it is done properly) is one of the most demanding and difficult dog training tasks that there is. Most dogs can learn obedience, scent work or agility, but few dogs can be trained in handler protection.

Finally, even if a person WANTS to do protection training with a dog, there is...

 Quote:

... dogs inherit the drives for protection work. It is a genetic factor and neither a factor of training nor a factor of breed. In other words, if a dog does not have the genes for protection work you are not going to train the drives into the dog.

That last paragraph leads me to wonder whether a person would be better off having his pup evaluated by a pro before even starting into bite training. No sense driving a dog to an end point for which the dog is genetically unprepared. If you knew a dog was not built for bite work (temperament-wise), you are better off putting training efforts into other venues. The dilemma is that I would think you need to have this information fairly early so you can lay the foundation while pup is still pretty malleable. Here it is - Ed say's around a year:

 Quote:

Even though a dog may inherit the defensive gene, a dog's defensive drive does not start to appear until it reaches puberty. For some dogs this can be 1 year of age - defense does not fully develop until a dog reaches mental maturity - this can be as late as 3 years of age, depending on the bloodline.

So there is a developmental reason that most of the young Sch1 dogs are at least 18 months old.

Last Frawley quote (my time ran out on the one above :blush:

 Quote:

The owner can take his dog through the prey drive training to the point where the dog has learned many of the moves (or skills) he needs to do bite work. In fact, if the trainer’s neighbor would come over some day and see the dog biting the sleeve on the handler’s arm, even though it was in prey, the neighbor would think that the dog was attacking his handler, when in fact the dog is just playing an advanced game of tug of war with his handler.

When the handler needs to work in defense, he is going to have to find an experienced helper to work his dog. There is no way around this. We will give you some ideas in our video of how to do a limited amount of defense work without a skilled helper, but the reality is that there is only so much that can be done before you need someone with experience. I will say this: For personal protection work, if all of the foundation work is done properly, the amount of additional help that is required is much less.

I thought this gave some good insight into how much bite work could be done in your backyard (or by yourself) before you need to enlist the help of a pro.

It's all fascinating stuff. Spencer, you are in a very good position with the amount of work you've already done with your dog, and his young age.

(Most of the quotes I got here: http://leerburg.com/drives.htm)

Service Dogs of America has a Protection Alert certification that sounds very interesting - described here:
http://camelotshepherds.com/PA.htm

"this title allows people that may be opposed to a biting dog but are not opposed to having a warning dog an opportunity to train and learn about protection."

Enjoyable. All of it.