While discussing with my friend, we have difference view in term of the drive. My understanding is once the dog is trained up to the defence drive level, and the dog is sent for the bite , it should ALWAYS be in defence drive.
However, my friend understanding is even the dog is trained up to the defence drive level, when the dog is sent for a bite, it will still be in prey drive when it bites the "agitator" and turn itself into a defence drive if the "game" is getting rougher and feel threaten.

Would appreciate if someone can give me some pointers ?

Thanks

Your friend is right.

A dog never stays in any one particular drive, and people seem to be overly fascinated with defense.

Getting bitten in prey hurts just as much as getting bitten in defense. Defense is where a dog is in self preservation mode, it stems from fear. What the dog does with the fear is the deciding factor on the dogs seriousness. But for a dog to be constantly working 100% in defense makes for one unbalanced stressed out dog that always thinks he's at war.

The best dog i've ever worked with is a severely dominant prey dog. The dog is a police dog with a great street record. What drive the dog is biting in is less important than what the dog does with his drive.

Defense to me is more about making sure that the dog knows what to do when he's pushed into that situation. It would suck if you train a dog in all-prey, the dog has a very high defensive threshold, then one day when you really need the dog, the bad guy does something to put the dog into defense and the dog turns around and runs away. Defense is a part of a dogs education, its not the dogs entire education or goal of the education.

 Quote: stanley yee

when the dog is sent for a bite, it will still be in prey drive when it bites the "agitator" and turn itself into a defence drive if the "game" is getting rougher and feel threaten.

Would appreciate if someone can give me some pointers ?

Thanks

Just to be clear. Are you actually sending the dog on a runoff to bite the helper? If so, be careful that you can articulate a very good reason for sending a PP dog on a fleeing person when the police ask. The only reason that I can see for doing this is if the suspect is running TOWARDS another family member, or innocent with the intent to do harm.

You can train a PPD in prey without sending the dog loose to bite. You have to train like its real, and the fact is that an attack will come close, fast and personal in most cases. Focus your training in that manner.

Howard

Hi

I've recently registered here and must say this discussion is one of the best I've read on English speaking forums on this subject. Competent advice given and accepted civilly.

I do Schutzhund and one of the important things I find is to ensure that the dog doesn't become "automated" because he "thinks" he knows what's coming next. This way you can still keep him "wondering" but, as someone so rightly said, the patterns of competitions don't go unnoticed by our canine friends even if the training is varied.

And it "knows" its going to come out of the battle unscathed

Gillian

Before I begin I will admit that schutzhund is not what it was, in the vetting of the GSD, which by the way was the reason for schutzhund. The primary reason the test has been degraded is to accommodate the conformation and temperament, or the lack thereof, of the dogs in its show community where the power and money now reside. That said, schutzhund was never meant to the last stop in a dogs path to its final job. Think of it this way schutzhund is an undergraduate degree on the way to a dogs chosen work. It should be a way of quantifying the dogs weakness and strengths. Is it perfect? No. Do weak dogs now get to be schutzhund 3? Yes. Are there now judges that are requested for working "show dogs" and other judges for just working dogs? Yes. Should you now want to breed to a dog *just* because it got high points in trials. No. Because of all of those facts do we now have to know what we are looking at in order to find the dogs worthy of breeding? Hell yes. Even with all that, today there are many great GSD’s in the sport. Because of schutzhund, today the GSD is by far is the most used and requested service dog in the world, moreover it is a world wide organization with ten of thousands of participants. Now for some there are tests and or sports for *real* dogs for *real* work and then there is schutzhund. To compare real work to a test used to identify those dogs that can flourish in that work, is nonsensical. It is done mostly by those who never have trained a dog in schutzhund. You will read that schutzhund tracking is not beneficial in the real world so why should anyone train in this manner i.e., foot step to foot step. Well maybe those dogs have shown to have the discipline, nose and work ethic to be trained for any style tracking which is the reason for schutzhund to vet GSD’s. You will here that routine protection prepares a dog for only that routine. Of course, those that say that, for the most part, have never trained for schutzhund because if they had they would know that what they see in a trial has little to do with the way good dogs are trained, because schutzhund training should have little redundancy. They don't understand that aggression without control is useless. That the hold and bark has little use in real police work. I could go on but I might suggest for those that think schutzhund has little relevancy for dogs doing real work, to look at the pedigree’s of those dogs doing that real work and they will find schutzhund degrees in most of the dogs in that pedigree. I wonder why.

With the exception of Norman's statement that the hold and bark has litte use in Police work ( I disagree there, it has valuable utility for crowd control, etc. ) his post is spot on.

Having been in SchH now since the 1980's, it has changed for the worst, and the majority of changes that have weakened the sport were driven by the Showlines people.
Bummer.

Will, I didn't mean to say I think, but they think the hold and bark has little use in police work. Otherwise thanks for your thoughts on this matter. Norman

Hey Will & Norman, how much do you think it is also driven by political and legal realities? Dangerous dog laws and insurance, all those types of things. How many people want that serious dog anymore? Even the people that are capable of owning one.

 Quote:

How many people want that serious dog anymore? Even the people that are capable of owning one

I think a lot might have to do with the fact that very serious tough dogs are hard to get top scores with. If you are not getting top scores then that can equal less $$$ because people want puppies from top sport dogs, they want to breed to top sport dogs, and they want seminars given by the guys on the podium.

Some of changes are also driven by politics, sure. The wackos in the Green Party over in Germany pressured the SV to make some bad changes in SchH, as per many of my German training friends.

Of course, SchH trained dogs account for a *tiny* percentage of dog bites, so it's the usual Liberal hypocrisy in action ( both here and across the pond ).