I have a 16 month old Dutch Shepherd male that I am training for a PSD. My problem is that he is to fixated on the equipment (sleeve) and not the man. I am reluctant to do much serious defense work yet at this age, but I know that to be an effective PSD he needs to focus on the man and not the equipment. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to increase his focus on the decoy and not what the decoy is using (sleeve)?
Thank you.

Hello there, just a suggestion, might help you out down the road......when we train our P.S.D. we want them to be totally suit netral, meaning that the sight of a sleeve, suit etc, does not put the dog in drive......as on the street the bad guys are never wearing a suit.......what we want is the dog to go into drive whether through a command, action/movement from the quarry or an odour (enhanced scent). So when we first start our aggression work we do numerous other profiles around a quarry or just a sleeve laying out in a field. We do our obedience, retrieval, long down etc......around these distractions so the dog does not always associate the suit to a bite, once the dog is totally neutral then we allow him/her the bite......This is only one small trick......but it is a start for you......muzzell work etc. down the line....good luck..........David BESSASON

David, that's a helpful suggestion; thanks for posting. Hope others have some more...

Something else you might think about and that is long distance civil work........Where you tie your dog out, and have a bad guy come out of the bushes a long distance away and act all sneaky towards the dog. If the dog barks or shows forward movement to the bad guy, then the bad guy should reward the dog by running away, or backing up to give the dog confidence. I'm not talking about close up front defense, but start easy and put some distance between the man and your dog.

Also, you might think about some Prey Guarding work........just some suggestions.

Generally speaking, what level of maturity do you need from a dog to start long-distance civil work? It doesn't sound like it would be that stressful to a young dog...

Randall, Davids suggestion is a good one. Another you may want to try is runoffs where the helper is without equipment. Have the helper run into a secure fenced area and when the dog approaches make sure the dog is aggitated with plenty of movement. Allow the dog to get very close to the decoy to build his drive for an unprotected person. Do not allow the dog to bite the fence though, you dont want him injured. If the dog can be relied upon to stay on a hidden sleeve, that may be used also. Nothing really beats muzzle work though.

Howard

16 months isn't too early, in general, to do some begining defensive work. In fact it's usually about 12 to 24 months when we start.


I almost always start working my dogs in defense by having the decoy work some prey guarding exercises. That's a great point to shift a little focus onto the helper. There is a whole art to doing prey guarding. From the first attempts to jack the sleeve back from the dog, to the helper dropping the sleeve during agitiation and challenging the dog directly and allowing the dog to drive/chase him off the field leaving the equipment behind. Civil work for me happens around the same time, but after the first steps of prey guarding. I also start the bark and hold at this time. I train the bark and hold late. Then I phase out the sleeve for a period in an attempt to get the dog to identify the man as a prey item in various runaway scenarios. Bitesuits help to make the transition sometimes.

But the meat of the work at the end of my civil training is done in muzzle and on hidden equipment. Then we phase equipment back in, mostly bitesuits when the decoy is exposed, only sleeves when there is an element of control (so the dog doesn't take a bite elsewhere. That isn't often a question though, I find dogs happily target the equipment if it is there.

This is for my PPDs, same concept though. 16 months, thats when the fun starts in my opinion. The boring part is over. LOL <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />