I was last night. Mark your calendars that is a once in a lifetime experience. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I'm a little stumped by what Richard said. Hey buddy you wanna run that "Rank is directed at the handler. Fight is directed at an opponent." part by me again. What exactly are you saying? Is my statement above wrong?

Are you saying Rank drive is never directed at anyone but the handler?

VanCamp... I find that your posts are almost always partially right.

In your experience, what does fight drive look like when you see it?... What is the dog doing that tells you that its in fight as opposed to some other drive?

Fight drive looks like defense without the distance increasing signals. It also looks like prey without the hectic energy and "gimee, gimee, gimee, gimee" play attitude. The dog is still charged up but does not display any defensive posturing. No hackles, or very little. No teeth, or very little. Full forward, confident body position. I call it "all ahead full". The similarities are that the dog will bite any part of the body that he can reach or get the best angle on. Similar to a defensive dog that will bite at any part of the body that comes into range. Also like defense the dog is totally concentrated on the decoy, not any equipment. The difference is that the dog in fight will want to take it right up to the decoy and force him to submit. The dog wants to control his movement and will fight until he wins control and submission.

I think it is basically social aggression in the dog. To stimulate a dog's fight drive you need to approach in a manner that is sending challenging signals. Dominate signals like hard direct eye contact, high and forward body position, and movement directly at the dog. That will really tick off the dog with fight drive. It is not fear based like defense and it is not predatory because you are not doing anything to stimulate the prey drive nor is the dog looking for a prey item. (Even if the dog thinks the decoy IS the prey item it looks different. Not as serious.) Also the prey dog will be acting in a different manner. The fight driven dog will be eyeballing you to death while barking in a deep timber, without the aggressive shows of defense. He wants to combat the decoy. Not hunt and kill him (prey), and not ward him off (defense). The drive satisfaction of fight is to force submission, and control movement and space. Things that are similar to rank/dominance.

I think that rank and fight are interrelated.
"Don't get dominate with me, you weak punk ass bitch. I'm a bad ass, come here and let me prove it by taking you're head off!"

A good example, I think, is my late PPD. He had it. Anytime a decoy would approach giving distance increasing signals then he would come unglued. No defensive posture or prey drive, he would attack with confidence and really try to put you on the ground and make you submit. He would also bite anywhere. A problem in our early Shutzhund carear. He would also out without any trouble off of a decoy that was submissive and unmoving. He had very little prey attachment, or need for the prey item.

Does anybody think I'm wrong here. I won't bite your heads off if you do, unlike on a normal post. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I really need some help understanding the relationship of dominance/rank and fight drive. I think that a dog needs some level of rank to have fight. A totally submissive dog isn't gonna have it, right? At least that is how it appears to me in training.

VanCamp,

The cable went out yesterday, so I couldn't get back on this.

Go back and read the definition of rank from Kevin.

"The dog, which desires to be the primary animal within the pack structure, is said to be "rank". This animal when seen in the extreme has difficulty accepting a position in the structure of the pack and continually challenges his handler for the dominant position."

So in effect rank issues will always have to do with the dogs membership in a pack. The leader of that pack should be the handler. The more rank issues the dog has, the greater the problems the dog has accepting leadership from the handler.

Dominance is related to the dogs attitude towards other individuals. Again this is often seen in the same dog, which makes it hard to seperate. Since people believe that you can't have one without the other, they tend to breed them together. So if you are looking at using the dogs attitude to other individuals (people or dogs) it is dominance you are using. To me fight doesn't require either, though dogs that have fight drive do tend to have high levels of both. Fight is a product of experience. Comming from defense and that the dog believes it will always win.

Dominance and rank issues are not always found in the same dog. In some breeds there is a strong dominance issue, but little in the way of rank issues. I guess that you could make an argument that these dogs do have some rank issues as they will not accept another dominant male in the "pack". As a result they will work for dominance over any other male they encounter. The breeds that tend to have both dominance and rank issues are the German bred dogs (GSD, Giant, Boxer, Dobe, etc.) and some of the other European breeds are developing this from being bred for both rank and dominance because of the belief that they are required to have fight drive.

In the LG breeds, the Black Russian Terrier, Cane Corso, Pressa, and some others there are high levels of dominance (particularly with males) with little rank issues. In other words the dog will accept the leadership of the handler with no problem, they will not tolerate being dominated by anybody or anything else. If you get them around other dominant males you will get fights. Their interactions with agitators where you are working defense or having the agitator attempt to dominate the dog with body position and/or direct eye contact they become much more aggressive. This is a dominance thing, not a rank issue.

In some cases I have had better luck in some of the German Breeds with taking the less rank animal in a choice of selection for work. I also will tend to foster this by raising puppies around a more dominant/rank dog so that the puppy learns to accept guidence from the outside. The problem with doing this is that when the dog matures you will often get fights between the dogs. I have plenty of scars from breaking up these types of fights. I am getting too old to deal with them anymore, so I now select opposite sex dogs when I am going to have multiple dogs in the house since I prefer to not have to keep them kenneled or seperated all the time.

Ok, we have a terminology thing going. I'm clear on that now.

About fight drive and defense. Yes, fight drive is encouraged and developed through both prey and defensive training, but I think that fight drive is something the dog is born with. I think fight is basically social aggression. A dog is born with a certain amount of it or not. Just like predatory and defensive aggressions. Through work in prey, then defense, he learns how to combat a human and gains confidence. But, a dog with fight also is hard to see in it's early stages because you are not trying to put defense in the young dog. You will see hard eye contact in a pup and a determination to control the movement of the helper and prey items. Very difficult to see in a pups year or so of prey play because these behaviors are very similar to prey behavior. I think it is there even in youth. Do you agree?

I am one person that thinks dominance is necessary to fight drive, I don't think submissive dogs have fight drive. I am not sure how much is necessary for the animal to successfuly engage a human in fight drive, but it has to be there. I think there is a correlation.

How that works and why, exactly, is beyond me. The only way that I can attempt to understand is in how you induce fight drive in a dog that has it. And that is by using challenging and dominating body language. I'm telling the dog that I am the #1 bad ass, what are you going to do about it? Dogs with fight respond with 100% confidence, engaging as if they were in defense, but without all the defensive shows. That right there tells me that the dog has to have a level of dominance. What do you guys think?

VanCamp,

I am with you. I am not sure how these things relate. I am not sure anybody does. I have always seen all of them written about as seperate, but inter-relating. THe other part is I am not sure how convinced I am that it is all genetic. I think there is a strong component of training involved.

A breeder I know made some comments recently about HD and it speaks to how I feel about this. The comment is:

Breed like dysplasia is 100% genetic, and raise your puppy like it is 100% a raising issue (Diet, supplementation, stairs/jumping, etc.).

I believe that there is a component of training and genetics. So for this, breed like these drives are 100% genetic, train like it is 100% a training issue. For most of us we are going to keep our dog for the life of the dog. So do what you can with training for what you want. If you are going to breed, breed the dogs that have the most of what you want for behavior. When you are training you have to take what you find, but there are things you can do to improve on what you are seeing.

OK, sounds good to me.

I wonder if the big dogs have seen this thread or are they just sick of responding to threads like this?

Richard Cannon wrote: Rank is directed at the handler. Fight is directed at an opponent.

LC: First of all Richard has this completely right. Fight drive isn’t directed back at the pack, by definition. Fight drive, by definition, is directed at an opponent, not of the pack.

Richard Cannon wrote: The two are seperate, but often found in the same dog. There are a lot of people that believe that you can't have one without the other.

LC: This is correct. In a good dog these two drives, as well as all the others are balanced. In the quote from Donn what he’s saying is that if you have “mega–fight drive” you have a dog that is out of balance. (He's saying that the term "mega-fight" means a higher level of drive than "pronounced" the term that most of use to mean "a very high level." More than likely, some of his other drives will be out of balance as well, including rank drive.

Van Camp wrote: Are you saying Rank drive is never directed at anyone but the handler?

LC: I’d say that’s the case, by the definition of it. Of course if you use some other definition it’s gonna change. We then have problems in semantics that we’ve seen before.

VanCamp wrote: I think that a dog needs some level of rank to have fight. A totally submissive dog isn't gonna have it, right?

LC: I think that one can exist without the other. But if it does, there’s a certain amount of imbalance present.

VanCamp wrote: Ok, we have a terminology thing going. I'm clear on that now.

LC: See how easy that was? LOL.

VanCamp wrote: About fight drive and defense. Yes, fight drive is encouraged and developed through both prey and defensive training, but I think that fight drive is something the dog is born with. I think fight is basically social aggression. A dog is born with a certain amount of it or not. Just like predatory and defensive aggressions. Through work in prey, then defense, he learns how to combat a human and gains confidence. But, a dog with fight also is hard to see in it's early stages because you are not trying to put defense in the young dog. You will see hard eye contact in a pup and a determination to control the movement of the helper and prey items. Very difficult to see in a pups year or so of prey play because these behaviors are very similar to prey behavior. I think it is there even in youth. Do you agree?

LC: I agree somewhat. You mention fight not being present in a young dog. I think that fight is closely related to maturity. You talk about fight coming through first prey and then defense but it doesn’t always. I’ve tested mature dogs that have never received any training that showed neither prey nor defense. They went right into fight drive. It hadn’t been evoked through training. It was there and needed the right stimulus to bring it out.

Richard Cannon wrote: I am with you. I am not sure how these things relate. I am not sure anybody does. I have always seen all of them written about as seperate, but inter-relating. THe other part is I am not sure how convinced I am that it is all genetic. I think there is a strong component of training involved.

LC: I think that if fight drive isn’t present, and these days its presence to any measurable degree is fairly rare, no amount of training can put it there. On the other hand, if is it present a good decoy can bring it out very quickly, with next–to–no–training.

Richard Cannon wrote: Breed like dysplasia is 100% genetic, and raise your puppy like it is 100% a raising issue (Diet, supplementation, stairs/jumping, etc.).

LC: I think this is good advice for just about everything.

Thank you Lou!

See Richard, I told you I was right! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Na, na, naaa, na, naaaa, na. . . <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Just kidding, big guy.