Speaking personally, I'd love to see alot more people in the sport. Look at agility. Started with just some small groups, only a few "guru's" of the sport, widely dispersed thru the country. Now, some many people are experienced at it and have attended seminars, etc that if you want to get into it today, you can find someone knowledgeable to train with almost anywhere. And trials, seminars, camps, etc are everywhere. If for no other reason than for more young people to get into the sport and learn helper work, I'd like to see it get more widespread.

It's a disservice to our sport to assume that people's minds can't be changed, and that protection work will always be seen as "attack training." Yes, there are invincibly ignorant folk out there, but many more are genuinely curious, even if they come with a prejudice based on ignorance and hearsay.

I always take the effort to explain, and am heartened by the number of times I see the light go on. The tack I take is simple: asked what Schutzhund is, I explain that it's a kind of triathlon for dogs involving three phases--obedience, tracking, and protection, which is a kind of martial arts for dogs. Then they can be brought to understand that, just as sending your kid to karate school isn't training him to beat people up, putting a dog through Sch isn't training him to attack people. You can talk about the discipline and mental/spiritual aspects of the martial arts and how the same emphasis, at a dog level, exists in Schutzhund. And so forth.

As James Cruiser noted, we need promo work to educate the public, and the best ambassadors are you and I. Make the effort!

OK, OK, I'll bend a little here. I agree more people being educated on Sch is a good thing; the involvement of motivated learners even better. I'm wary because I've seen too many people just shut down when you start talking hundesport. I have made several efforts to describe the multi-faceted nature of sch and its role in breed maintenance and improvement. This rarely has any effect.

I'd be happy to see more people in dogsport. I'd be sad to see the sport deteriorate by ignoring the practical limitations Lee spoke of, and the "political" aspects VanCamp wrote about. My argument, poorly phrased, was more along the lines of "proceed with caution".

Granted, I would exercise more caution than most. (An exercise I rarely, if ever, engage in with diplomacy, as my previous words clearly show.) I will definitely make the effort Dave writes about. But I ain't doin no daggone Animal Planet special <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> .

Dave, while I agree that it would be great if we could change these people minds about the sport, I find that it it just not that easy. One man I know saw a trial where the dog bit the handler right before biting the sleeve. I guess I didn't do a very good job of explaining (it was late and I had a headache). I have given up on some people, but will continue to try to enlighten others.

 Quote:

Originally posted by Sue DiCero:

And you have people stating that they are experts in an area of trainng that they really do not have any experience in...

And then there are those that extend the training due to the $$...

I think that describes a situation I was in pretty well. There was no club in my area so I found a "professional" trainer that had a GSD and said he had trained a dog in SchH. The clicker puppy stuff was okay, but when I had to go out of town I thought Auster would enjoy the extra interaction of staying with the trainer instead of a kennel. $600 and two weeks later she was being picked up by a prong collar for a crooked sit at 11 months. She's never been the same since and I discovered that she had a fear of large men when I took her to handling classes (the trainer was a large male, no too hard to figure out). Auster's 4 now and I can't trust her off leash. For most people, that would have been enough to sour them to the sport and dog training in general forever.

Now that I know just how horrible the situation was, I should call the trainer and tell him my two cents on the things he did to Auster and the many other dogs that he "trained."

is it true that in europe, people with pets go to schutzhund clubs to get their dogs trained? just basic obedience i mean. here, there are plenty of pro trainers who charge plenty of money, write books, yet never competed in sch. maybe if sch clubs offered basic ob training to general public and did a good job with it, people would stick around to watch the schutzhund training and that would foster more interest and possibly understanding of the sport and working dogs

I don´t know how it is in the rest of europe, but in Sweden there are clubs everywhere. SCH is a quite new sport here, but there are plenty of clubs where you can train the SCH/IPO-programm. Something I think is uniqe for our country is that there is also a big organization, the swedish workingdog club, which was founded because of the needs of militarydogs in the first and second WW. They also has clubs everywhere, and has bee around long before the different SCH-clubs was founded. At the clubs of the swedish workingdog club they have puppy-training,obedinece,tracking,protection, both SCH and policestyle protection. Because of this organizations close links to the military, you also have the possibility to train your dog for different servicetasks, like patroldogs for the army,search and rescue dogs, scentdogs for ammunition and mines. They also works with other dogrelated things, like education and research about dogs mentality, organize mentaltests, and lots of other things.

Kim, I agree that you're not likely to change someone's mind after they see a dog bite its handler.

OTOH, today I had a notable success. I was renting a car, and got into a conversation with the agent, a young woman. I described Schutzhund as above (triathlon, martial arts, etc.) and her first comment after I described the protection phase (with emphasis on the desirability of an automatic out when the decoy ceases resistance) was: "Wow! That really must teach the dogs restraint--that's completely against their instincts."

One small step...

I think the biggest problem with Bite training dogs in America, for sport or personal protection is lawsuits. We have roughly 6 % of the worlds population and 80% of the worlds lawyers. This problem is much bigger than just the dog world.
Hell, my own homeowners insurance company told me not to put a beware of dog sign on my gate because that would be interpreted to a jury that I knew I had a liability. Fear of lawsuits keep people from entering the sport as well as keeping trainers from teaching it. Just my opinion.

How do you know if your lawyer is Lying ?
His mouth is moving !!

Wow. Lawyer bashing. How novel. Does your diatribe apply to those of us in LE, too?

"Behind every lawyer there's a greedy little client". Your problem isn't lawyers, it's the people who hire them (among other things). You can just as easily blame all the hippy-dippy left-wingers who hard-wire their kids and friends to believe that a dog biting a person is an inherently bad thing. For that matter, blame your neighbors, who get jury duty and award multi-zillion dollar verdicts because Scruffy the Schitzo latched on to Bobby for 2 seconds. Or blame the people who half-train dogs or don't train them at all. Their dogs bite more often, and do more damage, creating the brunt of negative press we all deal with when talking to people about Schutzhund/Ring/etc.

Throwing around numbers like 80%/6% doesn't change the fallacy of your argument. We live in a nation of laws. I agree that many are unnecessary; some are downright bad. Should you find yourself on the receiving end of a bad one, I doubt you'll be calling a plumber.

BTW, not putting up a sign can get you cooked as well. And if you hear someone say they're keeping out of hundesport due to fear of litigation, they're not telling you something.