Quote: Rick Miller

you have to get a dog bread for a goofy amount of prey drive. Then, when the dog is disobeying due to it's freaky prey drive the dog has to go through all of this...for points?!

my dogs don't need me to feed them bread to have prey drive. Though i would be goofy(and fat) too if i was being fed bread to have more prey drive.....
lol, couldn't resist!

i know what you meant......

Hey, didn't I get you like this recently?! LOL!

Your pun...

yep!
so i got you back!

hey, the dog in your sig, is that what is called a dudley(sp?) lab??

Rick -

I don't know about cont max stim on two ecollars but I wouldn't think it was impossible. One of the times that Cajun ignored the cont max stim was when he was smelling a spot on the far fenceline where the neigbbors female dog had just peed. The only reason he got up to that high is he was far enough away it took me that long to walk over there and get him. He just blew the collar off and all he was doin is sniffin'!

I did not use an ecollar for Cajun during bitework but the intensity he had blew me away. He wanted nothing more than to rip the decoy apart.

Also, regarding prey drive I'm not sure where you are coming from but I think I kinda know. Are you talking about the prey drive of the dog being so intense in bitework that it doesn't want to let go of its prey? The foundation of bitework is prey work and you build on that but the dog is not supposed to view the decoy/bad guys as prey items forever. The dogs are started in prey and as they mature and are ready for the stress are brought into defense and hopefully fight drive. The decoy is not a toy or a prey item, ideally the decoy is a fighting partner.

Some dogs may not want to let go of the decoy for various reasons - poor training, a bad handler, rank issues with the handler, the dog does not feel comfortable letting go of the threat, etc. This is just as I understand it. I am sure there are more reasons and issues and I won't elaborate on training etc.

More drive makes it easier to train the dogs, they are more motivated to work. Again this also depends on the kind of training they have received, it is not hard to ruin dogs with bad training.

I have seen labs with tons and tons of prey drive but they could never be PPDs. You will notice that the top notch working dogs no matter the breed or the sport (field trial, agility, SAR, etc) they have drives that allow them to work, the more drive the more and better they work.

I do not think dogs that require super heavy hard extreme levels of correction are very common, or that they need it all the time. Sometimes the equipment used is for precaution/safety, its a just in case. Like using an ecollar in a fenced yard or on a hike. Cajun had a great recall and great OB, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be able to control him if something were to happen.

P.S. - any other, more experienced (I am not experienced!) PPD and sport (SchH, ring, etc) trainers/handlers out there want to add anything? I am sure I am missing stuff and if I am wrong I would greatly appreciate being set straight! Thanks!

I think we are talking about two different jobs here. A PPD is supposed to protect the handler, whereas the sport dog is there to earn points for the hander. I think it is much easier to justify breeding intense dogs who require excessive force to control for use in PPD and other working avenues, where lives are as hand than for sporting competitions where the only thing at risk is a pretty ribbon and bragging rights...

Carol has hit the nail on the head, unless you have seen this type of dog it probably doesn't make sense.

Drive is drive, and it can be the drive to bite or the drive to retrieve or the drive to do whatever...

Personally, I like these extreme dogs because we need them for our breeding programs (talking Mals and GSDs right now) You need extreme dogs to produce good working dogs. The most compliant and easy going dogs may be what YOU want but in breeding working dogs are goal are dogs capable of police service work. Many PSD dogs can do sport work too, but MOST sport dogs can not do police service work and when you start breeding specifically FOR sport and watered down drive and temperament so the 'weekend warrior' can get schutzhund titles or agility titles without having to really step on the dog in training, then you will watch the working ability slowly but surely evaporate from our working breeds.

 Quote: Cindy Easton Rhodes

Personally, I like these extreme dogs because we need them for our breeding programs (talking Mals and GSDs right now) You need extreme dogs to produce good working dogs. The most compliant and easy going dogs may be what YOU want but in breeding working dogs are goal are dogs capable of police service work. Many PSD dogs can do sport work too, but MOST sport dogs can not do police service work and when you start breeding specifically FOR sport and watered down drive and temperament so the 'weekend warrior' can get schutzhund titles or agility titles without having to really step on the dog in training, then you will watch the working ability slowly but surely evaporate from our working breeds.

I don't understand why it has to be all or nothing. It seems that you all think I want you to start breeding big fat cats or something...no! I am saying that if you are using three ecollars on a dog and it isn't a working dog, just a sport dog...then...what are you doing?! That dog is going to have to come home with you, ya know, and what is the dog going to do when it gets there...pace a big ditch in his kennel?

Also, I don't understand why you would refer to it as watering down. This implies that you haven't been breeding them to select the highest drive dogs for generations upon generations. It's like saying the organic tomato is watered down because it hasn't been cross-bred with different plants and animals to make it bug resistant or a more lucious color of red...remember when there were just organic tomatoes?...

What I want in a dog/what you want in a dog is not the issue here. When we continually up the ante with regards to drive in the sport world, it sets the bar ever higher for everyone else. That means in order to get your ribbon (and subsequent feeling of gratification ) you will now have to get one of these dogs that is extremely high drive, and perhaps have to put it through the same greif...that is if you want to win. Or I guess you could just settle for racing your figurative minature horse against all of the Thouroughbreds.

There are no rules in place to regulate this sort of thing. The truth of the matter is, you can train your dog in any fashon you want; when the dog gets out on the field, that is the judge of the dog's abilities. Sure, you can select dogs to use in sportwork that are nutty, bonkers for it and won't listen to you save a three ecollar reminder, but you don't have to. These dogs are not working dogs. They are not tools. They are dogs. To put them through that kind of compulsion for more points is not fair...

Rick, Rick, Rick......

Repeat, we are NOT breeding for sport, we are breeding for Police Service dogs or dogs that at least would be capable of police work. It turns out that many of these dogs end up in sport homes, but again breeding for sport only is a huge mistake. I expect Ed to chime in here at some point

It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and like I said before unless you have personal experience with an extreme dog, then I can talk about this all day and you aren't going to 'get it'.

I also never said I am advocating breeding dogs that NEED 3 ecollars, but I also think you have a lot to learn if you think that PUTTING 3 ecollars on a dog means you train only with compulsion??

If you walk your dog with a prong and an ecollar so you have your tools handy just in case, does that mean you are going to use those tools just because they are on the dog? Don't you think the average guy who doesn't believe in "being mean" to dogs and thinks you should walk your dog on a harness so you won't hurt their neck will be at a loss to understand to how you train your Lab? You don't have experience with the type of dog or training that I am talking about, and I doubt you have experience breeding working dogs. If people want a dog that they can handle more easily, then I advise them to NEVER get a working breed that comes from bloodlines that produce very high drive dogs! Get a pug or a breed of dog bred specifically to be pets, but please leave the working dogs alone.

Good dog training is all about setting yourself up for success, regardless of the drive and temperament of the dog. If having 4 ecollars and a harness and a dominant dog collar and a clicker and a ball and a long line are what I "may" need then I will put those training tools on my dog and in my pocket.

Good (I repeat, GOOD) ecollar training is not about compulsion anyway, its about having a way to communicate with your dog without a leash, regardless of where the collar is in the dog's body.



Edited by Cindy Easton Rhodes (01/19/2008 12:19 PM)
Edit reason: forgot to add some stuff!

 Quote: Rick Miller

I think we are talking about two different jobs here. A PPD is supposed to protect the handler, whereas the sport dog is there to earn points for the hander. I think it is much easier to justify breeding intense dogs who require excessive force to control for use in PPD and other working avenues, where lives are as hand than for sporting competitions where the only thing at risk is a pretty ribbon and bragging rights...

This is EXACTLY the kind of thinking that is the demise of working dogs, regardless of breed.

Breed two distinct types of the same breed, for different purposes... HORRIBLE IDEA.

Can we say Show dog vs. Working dog? look at GSDs, Labs, Border Collies, etc.......

It's criminal what breeders have done by trying to produce different types of the same breed, so that people who have no business owning a GSD or Mal or (insert breed here) can have a laid back version of whatever dog they think is 'cool'.

This will never happen here, and the good breeders I know are not willing to water down the bloodlines of good working stock to fill pet owners homes with mediocre dogs.

It all comes down to looking at the dog's original purpose... but this is an old discussion.....back to the ecollar thread.