Quote:

If they were not targeting specifically I would lean towards prey or pack.......but then again, why take a chance on it?

Exactly

Carol, will you please pm me?

Nope, didn't train a thing. I promise

They just don't like their mom being pinned down and tickled I guess. They get along with Doug just fine except for that.

Maybe it is "resource" gaurding....they know I feed them 99% of the time so they need to protect the food dispenser.... just kidding

I really work hard on the bond with my dogs and both the Mal and the Dutch are out of LE/PPD lines so I wonder if that is what kicks in.....the Bloodhound is just an ass anyway.
But at least I know if I am traveling, they would do something.

 Quote: carol boche

They just don't like their mom being pinned down

Ahhhh....now that sheds a different light on the situation...I am not so sure how mine would react to that either...we are a free ranging tickling, laughing group. Maybe I'll try it and see what happens "NOT". I have to agree: WHY RISK IT?

Also, my dog's lines do not include LE/PPD. I'm sure that would figure into the equation. I am curious about 2 things. One: how do they react if you are really arguing with Doug? And Two: why is the Bloodhound an ass....sounds like a recent indiscretion :-)

I am going to say this and I know it sounds crazy, but, Doug and I don't really argue. We choose to discuss rather than argue so I am not sure what they would do there.

The BH is getting up there in age and he has always had a bit of an edge to him. His thing is that if people get too close, he jumps at them and pushes them back.

He loves trailing and is great with his "victims" but on the way back he can just be a jerk. I chalk it up to aging and being a hound. So we walk a ways from the group and just chill on our way back.

It's funny you should bring this up; I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Carbon is just now 11 months old, and he's been 'protecting' me for about 2 months now.

We are a very playful family and if there was any wrestling going on, between me and anyone, Carbon would get upset and lunge at them and try to nip, regardless of who starts it (if I would playfully whack my husband in the butt, or if he whacked me in the butt wouldn't matter, the target would always be my husband).

We of course decided to try to eliminate wrestling when the dog was around. It's interesting because Carbon did not sound aggressive when he jumped up, in fact, he sounded confused about it. I may be projecting here, but he would bark and whine and seemed confused. Like he knew he was supposed to protect me but he really likes my husband...sort of a "why do you make me do this" sort of situation. The thing I'm keeping in mind, though, is that Carbon isn't mature yet. When he is, the dynamic might change and the whining/jumping/nipping might become more serious.

He did not get corrected when he did this to my husband, he was just given an 'out' command, and then a 'leave it' at first. This may sound strange to people, but in my mind (and luckily also in my husband's) he was doing the right thing. He was protecting me. That's a GOOD instinct, and one he was bred for. We didn't encourage it by praising him, either, because I don't want to actually encourage him to jump on my husband (we're newlyweds, after all, give me a few years! Just kidding!).

Incidentally: He DID get a correction, and a strong one, when he tried to do this with my 8 year old son. It NEVER happened again with my son. He's very clear on the fact that he is never to be anything other than gentle with my kid (or any kid), no matter what. It's harder to prevent kids from slipping up and wrestling or acting nuts, so as far as I'm concerned BOTH the dog and the kid need to have some manners and rules around each other. Just putting Carbon away isn't enough...in fact, it seems to build his intensity.

So, we don't wrestle around the dog anymore, and if we're in another room and we slip up, he'll remind us immediately by very quickly running into the room we're in and giving my husband the intense "stare." By that point, the sound of toenails running into the room has alerted us and we've stopped the monkey business by the time Carbon gets there. My husband calls him the "enforcer." Five minutes later, Carbon's back to being a big ball of love.

So here's my thinking: Some dogs are just naturally protective. It's one of the reasons man first found dogs useful and kept them around the campfire, after all. BUT, humans have taken dog's instincts and refined them and channeled them to make dogs both more useful AND safer to be around, and that's what I think I need to do with Carbon.

It's not enough to just have this raw protective instinct...that free-will instinct, IMO, is much more dangerous to an average person than a dog who is trained to only bite on command. Keeping him contained is not enough, IMO. He needs to learn when to restrain himself, and when to stop the aggression on command. The impressive part, to me, of the protection phase of Schutzhund is not that we can get dogs to attack, but that we can get them to WAIT FOR and STOP an attack when their handler says so, with a single word.

So to that end, I've decided that it's in everyone's best interest, including Carbon's, to drive the 4 hour round trip to get him involved in Schutzhund. I think that will make things clearer in his mind. I'm not going to eliminate this instinct he has, even if I wanted to. The best thing to do is to give it structure, and an "off" switch so to speak, and let him know that *I* decide when I need help so he doesn't have to make those decisions himself.

That's my goal with Lear - complete protection training and complete control and obedience.

Something that you have to think about though, Amber is that just because you put him into Schutzhund training doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to turn it on when you want to. I have had several breeders and a few trainers tell me that most Sch dogs will not attack a human once they've been trained in Schutzhund exercises. They only see it as a game and without a sleeve they will become confused. Doing the Sch exercises actually desensitizes the dog to a possible threat. I'm sure there are dogs that will attack but I've been told not all will do so. I was told that if I wanted to have a dog that will be a protection dog that it is important to make sure he is trained in protection, not schutzhund. Granted, everyone has an opinion on this and I have never brought this up to the board before so it would be interesting to find out what others think about this. However, the way it was explained to me made total sense.

 Quote: RobbinMann

Something that you have to think about though, Amber is that just because you put him into Schutzhund training doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to turn it on when you want to.

It's not a matter of turning it on...it's a matter of turning it OFF!

And I don't want a PPD; I don't need one. The protection exercises in Schutzhund should suit my needs nicely. I want to have access to more ways to communicate with him, and channel and establish rules to go along with his already pronounced protection drive.