Can a pup who is raised and trained properly with a only a moderate amount of prey drive but stronger defense/territorial drives be a suitable dog for only home personal protection ????

I read about pups with insane ball drives but is this always neccesary for suitable home PP ? I have read Ed's drive explanations several times and I am still trying to piece them together. Thanks <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The quick answer is yes, but the bite portion of training is much harder to do in defense instead of prey - plus you'll need to wait until the dog is significantly older to be able to effectively work in defense drive as opposed to prey.

Anything that you can do to enhance your dog's prey drive at this point will pay you big dividends in the future.

Thanks Will

Try this if your dog lacks evident/strong prey drive...

Use prey. Go to your butcher's, ask for a complete bovine tail, hair, hide and all. Open up the hide at the base of the tail a bit (2 inches), tie a strong cord, rope, or leash at the hair end of the tail, at least 10 feet long. Use a short tie out with an appropriate collar/harness on your dog, toss the tail at him, while you hold the leash. As he begins to munch, pull it away a little bit, as he moves towards it and again munches, pull it some more. You get the point. In no time you'll be playing potent tug of war with the tail.

Then it's just a matter of covering the tail with a rag, a tug with that same rag, putting that same smelly tug in a sleeve, and move from there.

Important: use at least 10 ft of leash. It gets you out of a resource competition scenario/picture with your dog.

Prey is an instinct that ALL dogs have, some more some less. It can be conditioned.

Many dogs are conditioned NOT to display it from puppyhood. This is another reason why it's a good idea to use a long leash.

for a PP dog i wont do much of prey work, heck i wont do anything to enhance it at all.
at his early age he must realize that not everything that moves is a target, and biting is not play. unless i want a dog that would chase anything and everyone, including children at play.

Mila,
Well....you must train different then most of us in the business of producing ppd's then.
Hope your way works as well for you as the standard way does for most of the professional vendors.

I have no other pup to judge by as this is my first Mal pup and first dog I have bought specifically for home PP. She will play tug, espically when cloth is on the end of the fishing pole and is reliably retrieving kong form 10 feet. I just here about these " little alligators " <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> and pups with insane ball drive and really wonder if for home PP work this is neccasry.Back in the day, I did little of this with either of my two Pit Bulldogs and both preformed when called upon at home. Thanks for the input and good luck with all your dogs

Regards

Mila...very interesting topic. There's a big difference between a PPD, and what you want IT to do and a sport or PSD, and what they do. This difference is hugely accentuated if you train a PPD using only defense.

PSD and sport dogs sometimes need to cover a bunch of ground, or they need to use their nose to "catch" their PREY.

Defense ONLY works in close. That's it...only in close.

If it's a long bite...defense may (and should, along with fight drive) pick up markedly when the dog is on the man, but it's not the main driver during pursuits.

For personal and close protection, though, decent bites are possible to obtain with the majority of decent working dogs in defense...and that may be all you want.

To teach a dog to find a man in a building and then bite him you'll be using a bunch of prey drive...even if you don't think it's apparent. It's prey drive.

Some...very exceptional...dogs will take the fight to a man that's far away. Not many of these are available. Most will use prey, and a history of winning confrontations, to go long distances.

Then there's the issue of teaching a dog HOW to fight. You've seen it in the wild a million times. All predators play fight. This is very important. The only way to play fight with your dog - to build him up - is to use prey drive. This drive helps overcome stress due to obstacles, surfaces, multiple attackers, dark, confined spaces, elevation, off positions, etc., etc. THEN you get into the real deal, with a trained fighter.

You can also do it with defense, but it will take longer, you'll stress the heck out of your dog...that is, assuming your dog can take it. There is a tremendous attrition rate with this method. TRue, that if you find a dog that will do all that, at a distance, using fight drive, not defense, you'll have a very exceptional dog.

I have never seen one that doesn't switch into prey during the pursuit.

Finally, and this is important, dogs don't transfer biting (with good decoys, that is) a fast moving tug or sleeve...which is what they see as "prey", to biting running children. Dogs that will chase and bite running children...or everything else, for that matter, have that instinct IN them...from birth and genetics. You can and should extinguish that BEHAVIOR, but if the drive's in the dog, in the short run you will not eliminate it. You can only SUPPRESS it. Obviously, as I said, you can extinguish the behavior in the long run. This association between tugs, sleeves and children does not exist. If a dog chases a tug, it will also chase a child. If you teach it NOT to chase a child, and you teach it TO CHASE a tug, it will only chase tugs, and so on.

So: 1)I think it's very incorrect for dogs to be trained to bite using only defense, because they are unduly stressed, 2) Practically all dogs that will hunt a man for a bite, will do it in prey anyway, 3)Teaching dogs fighting technique using prey is a million times more effective, and 4)Using prey for training doesn't automatically translate to "Bite children that are running". That last part was an ingredient in the soup to begin with.

Will,

we train according to our need. Our dogs may be our only defense from bad people since i dont own a gun. they must be stable enough to function as ppd in our everyday life.

maybe that is why you pressume that i train differently.

Pardon my intrusion, but stability is nothing more than good genetics, good upbringing, and "massive environmental" exposure in conjunction with conditioned (and proofed) responses to a very broad range of circumstances. It has NOTHING to do with using tugs and prey drive.