I wonder how hard a dog must be for be able to do a good job as a PP or PSD. A to hard dog is difficult to train, especially if you want to do both sportwork and PP with your dog, in another topic on this board it was stated that only a few people could train a hard dog to the top levels of protectionsports, and I´m not so experienced like those people. Isn´t a medium hard dog with good nerves and courage a good choice for police or PPwork? Or is hardness related to the level of courage and good nerves in a dog? Does a dog need to be hard to have great courage and nerves? Hardness is defined as the ability to recover from stressfull situations, so it does seems like it has something to do with the nerves in a dog.

Good question, I was wondering about this also. I'm interested to read what everyone has to about this.

Stig,
I thought a hard dog was one that could take corrections without changing their attitude aftyer the correction was given.

My preception of a PP or PSD would be one with extreme confidience, solid temperment, strong defense driveand fight drive. With Confidence and solid temperment paramount.

Let's get the experts views on this one!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Hardness is for most dogtrainers defined as a dogs ability to create memories of positive and negative things, the ability of a dogs memory to remember unpleasant things during more or less time. A hard dog could take a correction without problems, and it quickly forgett things that could take a soft dog a long time to recover from, like for example a dog that are put in a situation where something scares it, a hard dog quickly forgetts this scary situation and could go throu this situation again without problems, while a soft dog take a long time to recover, the memory of the scary situation last longer in the soft dog.
Anyway, I heard that even most K9-officers don´t want a dog that is to hard, the reason for this is that many of them have not so good trainingskills when it comes to dealing with hard dogs, some are good but the majority aren´t. It also seems like hard dogs are rare even among mals and GSDs from workinglines, in all the mentaltest and policedog test that I´ve seen result from here in sweden, most dogs are rated a bit soft, some mediumhard, but not many are rated as hard dogs, medium hardness is also what is rated as ideal in the swedish korung and the policedog-test, very hard dogs gets the lowest scores.

Always cool to hear from the herding folks.

Ellen,

I like that description. Based on that type of description I would also say that Hardness is absolutely required.

I think what Stig is referring to is more "Handler Hardness". Often described as the dogs ability to recover from corrections. In extreams it combines with dominance to create a dog that will "turn" on its handler if it feels the correction is too strong or un-warranted. These dogs will often displace aggression when it is frustrated,. When the aggression is displaced the handler is the closest available target.

This seems to be becoming more popular in some circles, in particular among some sport people and some PSD. This type of "hardness" is seen as making a "tougher" dog. I have never bought it. Often the breeds I have dealt with are less likely to respond to physical correction. They do respond to verbal correction better. They seem to be sensitve to the "displeasure" of the handler rather than a physical correction. These dog are tough in reaction to an outside confrontation, but don't require a physical confrontation with the handler. These dog will usually require a couple of confrontations to establish a proper relationship in terms of dominance. But that is really a seperate issue in my mind.

Based on that my opinion is that a dog does not need this handler aggression to function as a PPD or PSD. In fact I think that it can be counter productive to a point. The dog that is overly hard will also not respond as well to commands when they are in conflict with the dogs natural drives. That concerns me. This seems to lead to dogs that don't out well in PP or PSD. This is another reason that the most dominant dog in a litter may not be the best choice for PP and PSDs. The dog that is a little less dominant is more responsive to commands.

The thing that concerns me is that it seems people are breeding for these handler hard dogs. It seems that people WANT this type of dog. For some reason these people think that the aggressive attitude to the handler will translate to a more arrgessive attitude to an outside stimulus. This isn't always the case. In many cases I think this attitude is fostered by not teaching a dog how to respond to a correction when they are puppies. That response has a learned component, and if it is not taught early it is going to require a higher level correction and confusion in the dog as to what is desired when it recieves a correction. It seems that people believe that any correction early in life will create a long term decrease in drive that will ruin the dog for sport, PP, or PSD work. I don't believe that that is the case, in fact I thing the opposite is true, because early lessons in correction allows for greater concentration on the dogs part and a lower level of correction in later life. This lower level of correction results in a lower reduction in drive in response to correction.

Ellen and Richard........Excellent posts! Always a learning experience. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

How long have you been waiting to get that out, Rich? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

It isn't the first time..... and probably won't be the last!!!!!