Hey all!
I for one would love to have a forum area devoted to reality-based protection sports such as PSA and ASR. A few people have sent me PM's requesting something like this ( to which I say.....send'em to the big guy, Ed! )

Soooo.....anyone else interested in this?


Hopefully Big Ed won't thump me for doing this before asking him........ <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />

Absolutely

I sure would. I'm trying to read as much as I can now about the various protection-based sports and I would love to have access to more info on ASR and the other reality protection sports. I've been on a long term research project, trying to figure out what type of shep I want and what sports I want to get into, and I would love to see a forum for the reality sports.

(and actually I've been wondering why there wasn't one on here already!)

I would love to talk about protection sports. I have just heard about them the past couple months. i.e. PSA, k9 pro sports, ect

I'm always up for learning. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

ANY chance to learn about another form of dog training is great! Count me in!

Though my new to lot of things but always into learning new things.

Count my vote. Well I am raising my both hands so you have two votes from me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Rashmi

Hey Will (and Ed),
I think it would be a good idea, especially with the ProSports on the rise. It could possibly help forward "the movement" to trying out these sports. I'm always up for good discussions on different venues and training. Count me as a vote "FOR" creating a ProSports section.

I like to hear about your ASR trials, but what I have watched of psa is pretty sad. I think it's the lack of formality? I'm not sure how I want to say that. I guess the exercises I saw were real sloppy. I am not slamming on anybody here it just looks like a sloppy version of things we already have. I don't like promoting that kind of thing when the rest of us are trying hard to do it right. What is it that you think attracts people to psa?

Jeff, I think that many of the PSA folks are hard core, serious trainers that have the same goal in mind that ASR does. But trials are hard to run and you may have just seen a bad example of one, I'd definitely give them another chance!!

I think that people go into ASR and PSA for a couple of reasons. Some folks are looking for more of a challenge, or they don't like the tracking aspect of SchH. And the challenge in the reality-based protection sports is of the dog's character and temperament - yes, it can appear that obedience is graded to a lower level than SchH, but the stress put on the dog is of a much higher level.

Next, sometimes they go into reality-based sports because they have a breed that isn't as accepted in SchH ( I see this a lot with the bull breed folks, they feel that they've gotten the bad end of the deal in other sports/ clubs and they want to be accepted ).

I do think there's a small sub-set of "wannabe's" in the reality-based protection sports that just want the tough dog image, etc ( and this goes more into the reality-based protection sports that I *haven't* mentioned by name here, every Tom, Dick, and Harry are creating their own sport, and many of them border on the ridiculous ) but these folks tend to have big difficulty in actually titling their dogs and they'll get an entry level title and go off and make a big website to sell some obscure breed of dogs and never be seen again.

I really wish that the reality-based protection sports could have combined into one organization, as we hardly have enough people to have one such organization, much less three or four. But that's not going to happen for many reasons.

These are just my personal opinions and do not represent the views of the the ASR organization, just for the record. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />