David, I was thinking along the same lines that you are when I read Jeffreys post that you highlighted.

I am pretty sure that this is the same dog that was 9 mo old that the OP mentioned in a 2/11 post of his.

The things that he said that you highlited in your post are not things that I would want to see happening in an almost 2 year old dog that I am thinking of doing any protection work with.

But maybe we are both wrong.

Thanks for the insight guys, these are behaviors that have concerned me. Most has stopped, and as far as using the knee she does not jump anymore and it is never done with force, just raised to prevent her from jumping and using my hands to get her down. She appeared to respond very well to that.

As far as marker training goes, she did just ok with it but over time responded much better using praise, she just soaks it up. While younger she did well with the markers, she just kind of stopped caring about food rewards and would rather keep doing whatever it is we are doing. I never complained about this because she can go for up to an hour sometimes in training without getting bored or wanting to do something else. Typically, I am the one who will want to take breaks in training way before she does. I have never seen this as a negative, and it is what allowed her to rocket through the last two courses we have done at the local k9 university. She mastered hand signals and off lead training in a very short time.

I talked with the head trainer over there again the other day and his views pretty much mirror all of yours. While we might be able to improve confidence a bit, nerves will unlikely change. He will properly test the different drives before making a determination.

You can still use marker training with praise for the reward.

I'm glad you guys are doing well. Let us know how Heidi's testing goes!

 Quote: David Winners

You can still use marker training with praise for the reward.

You can also use toys or a tug or tug session.

Since we say "good" right when the behavior is done that probably is operating as a marker, I didn't even think about that. The praise or tug session reward is usually instant afterwards. All I know is it works, I will update in about 3 weeks once she is done with her evaluation.