Recently I had the opportunity to attend two NAPD trials.

As someone that is more familiar with Schutzhund and Police k-9 work, I was curious to see what NAPD had to offer in comparison.

Although I like the diversity in the protection routines, I was struck by how poor the obedience was in most dogs at the NAPD trials.

Examples:
Dogs literally being pulled around by the leash during "heeling".

Dogs that completely ignored their handler during "off leash" exercises.

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It seems that the NAPD concept is to focus on protection work with the most minimal emphasis on obedience possible.

Were these trials atypical? Is it a good idea to encourage "advanced protection work" with minimal obedience?

It seems that the NAPD concept is to focus on protection work with the most minimal emphasis on obedience possible.

Were these trials atypical? Is it a good idea to encourage advanced protection work with minimal obedience?

I would think no. Minimal obedience - no. Usually more time is spend on obedience than on protection work - unless you are concentraing only on it. Would they have the time and effort to do this - I doubt as the dog should be on the street as soon as possible. The protection training is based mostly on drives, while obedience would require more concentration and brain work. Having all that in mind, I would say that if you can control your dog in regular obedience you would have more control during protection.

Lack of obedience training sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.Any bite dog needs top line obedience to be safe.
Paul

Dave,

Unfortunatley your description would probably be fairly accurate. It has been getting better every trial I have seen. It has been so bad that the rules for the trials had to be changed. They went from all dogs being off leash, to requiring the dogs be proofed on lead. That goes for both obedience and protection (there have been some problems with "out").

I think the problem has come from 2 areas. The people participating have not been involved with other dog sports. As a result of this they have not been involved in doing the type of obedience involved with compitition. This has been fostered by the idea that NAPD is trying to widen the population participating in trialing. Part of the goal was to get people involved that had protection trained dogs that weren't trained primarily for "sport". The trials also function to proof the dogs and to point out weaknesses in the dogs training. Over the last 3 years dogs that have been comming back have been getting better. The handlers are learning how to train for the trial. Second, in many of the cases I have seen the primary problem has been handler error. On some of the scoring sheets I have seen 50-60% of the deductions were for handler error.

This goes for the protection phase also. The handler errors are the biggest source of reductions in the trial. Including the errors the dogs make.

Several of the top compititors have been involved with other dog sports and they are used to competing with the attention obedience style. Several of the dogs that compete regularly in the west are very good. One of the things compitetors are learning is that if they want to title and compete for the top spots they will have to significantly improve on their obedience. The dogs need to learn to function better with high level distractions.

Richard... thanks for your honest assessment.

Based on other responses, there is some confusion about what NAPD is... National Association of Protection Dogs...nothing to do with police dogs.

It seems that dog sports with NO tracking or agility elements seem to attract people who just want a dog that BITES or is agressive but don't want to take the time to do obedience or control work.

Usually when people tell me... "I HATE tracking"... they have problems with obedience also.

Dave,

I think that is a bit of an unfair chacteration. I think the issue is that many people are more interested in functional protection work rather than doing a lot of training that isn't useful in the real world. I hate tracking, I rarely need to have my dumb bells jumped over a fake wall to get them back. In fact I don't own any dumb bells. None of those things demonstrates any greater control than what obedience shows.

As I pointed out before, I don't think that the basic obedience in NAPD is the problem. If you take those dogs off the field and put them in a real life situation, most are under very good control. A bigger part of the problem in NAPD is the level of sophistication of the handlers in the trial setting. The biggest part of the obedience problems are handler errors. Most of the people involved in NAPD have never participated in any form of a trial at all. Since the situation is new, the handlers tend to get overly amped up and give the dogs the wrong signals. I think that the compitition is a good thing for the community of protection dogs since it brings in people that would otherwise not participate and gives them an opportunity to evaluate where their training and handling skills really are. As I said before, as the years have gone by the level of obedience work has improved.

People that are taking the time to trial are interested in winning in the trial and obtaining the titles. If they want either of things the obedience level will have to come up. There are some compititions out there that require NO obedience and in some cases the dogs won't out at all. The compition is based on how hard the dog bites.

NAPD is a new sport. As the level of compition comes up and the compititors get more experience the dogs will improve. It is more difficult to train for as you never know what you will face when you get there. Unlike Sch the trial is different every time. The obedience is different, and there are difficult distractions involved with the obedience. The dogs are faced with difficult obstructions to making the bite. Unlike Sch where there are no distrations involved with the obedience, no obstructions to the bite, and the same trial every time. I have seen dogs competed from other sports, some with high level titles, that will fail at the NAPD trial. The dog that has won the National title several times is a PH1 import. I have seen him zero on several protection exercises. Part of my point is that it is easy to sit on the side and criticize the dogs on the field. Why not try entering the next time it comes around?

In my opinion, most of the errors that I observed were due to LACK OF ANY substantive formal obedience training.

One guy was bragging about how he spent "6 hours" the night before teaching his dog to heel.

To me, it didn't appear that MANY of the competitors had ANY intention to win. Some of them seemed to want to show off how hard their dogs bit... others just wanted "a title."

Dave,

That group is fairly isolated. I don't know of anybody from out here that goes all the way to Michigan to trial. At that level of obedience they will never title their dogs with NAPD. There is a minimum score in BOTH obedience and protection to title a dog. If you don't get the obedience down you can get 100% on the protection phase and still not title the dog.

One good thing about that is they will certainly learn the weaknesses in their training.

So when is the next NAPD trial in the Arizona area and how do I researchthe whole thing, from top to bottom? Sounds interesting and would like to know more.

The NAPD website has info on trials...next in April in Arizona.

http://www.napdweb.org

Hey Richard, as soon as my pup matures, I'm going to see if I can get 3 or 4 of our really nice area Schutzhund dogs together and compete in NAPD. Maybe if we "kick their butts" some of the locals will train harder.