Originally posted by Dave Lilley:
Kevin... how do you train... to reward defense and fight drive without using prey? Defense drive: push the dog to a point it would rather flee then continue to press until it must bite (some dogs are naturally this way....pretty useless creatures) training of this sort raises serious ethical questions. The bites are furiously hard and frontal.

Fight drive: first, most fight drive dogs show a lot of prey behaviors. As noted by Helmut Raiser most dogs with good fight drives carry good prey.
But, in training such dogs and keeping them primarily working in fight drive the decoy must use combative motions and the dog must be refocused on the decoy if (and I say if) a sleeve is slipped. For service dogs I use a lot of muzzle work, decoys seldom flee but if an engagement with a decoy occurs the decoy assaults the dog and fights with the dog, then submits.

The idea that a dog must get some tangible item as a reward is a result of experimentalists work making it into dog training not as information to be used but as some sort of gospel on dog training or magical understanding about what dogs do and why that dog trainers feel should become the basis for a new technique. They aren't wrong by any means but, the picture of how all things come together in the dynamics of dogs training where variables change and individual characteristics are sought after and propagated among sub sets of dogdome are excluded from such information.
To challenge the reward paradigm just think about this. How many people have owned dogs that chase rabbits? The behavior seems to get worse the more opportunity they have to experience it. Seldom and often never does the dog actually get to capture the rabbit! Where is the reward system? Some behaviors just feel good to engage in for some dogs. These are the behaviors we have taken and selected for. Fight, prey, etc. In some breeds retrieve is trait we select for. I think about a Chesapeake that a friend owned. From the time the dog was a pup it would retrieve anything. It didn't need a reward for doing it. It just engaged in the behavior all the time and sometimes even when punished for it! Like when he would escape the yard and steal all the neighbors yard tools out of his garage and drag them home a block away piling them on the lawn.

The question of whether a dog is rewarded for defensive behavior is brought up. No, except in extreme cases where people are doing guard dog training and creating viscious behaviors in dogs no. Just look at the grips, a defensive grip is small frontal and hard as hell. A prey grip is full and strong.
So why do we use defense? When fight drive is lacking we resort to it. It is self rewarding and tends to load the dog so that it comes into a prey behavior for which it is rewarded at a higher level.
This creates practical training problems. The dog cannot unload without the visual cue of the equipment. Defensive behaviors increase and the dog cannot bite or if it does cannot bite well (unless of course you threaten it strongly, and directly, holding it in defense and get a shallow hard frontal grip).
Can practical dogs work in prey? yes. But, it is not the best way. Do dogs work in both prey and fight, yes, but this becomes difficult to control with high quality dogs and may be necessary with dogs that aren't at the top of the working scale.
Do dogs work in defense and prey. Yes. But certainly not my choice of animals or training styles.

Kevin, it seems to me that often times in training even quality dogs will show some defensive behaviors in protection work. At different levels and during stressful situations that they often are not ready for in training. But fighting through that little bit of avoidance or threat (defense) has usually been beneficial to my training.

How does that work, and should I modify my methods?

I too would like to hear what Kevin has to say about that Van Camp.

Originally posted by VanCamp:
Kevin, it seems to me that often times in training even quality dogs will show some defensive behaviors in protection work. At different levels and during stressful situations that they often are not ready for in training. But fighting through that little bit of avoidance or threat (defense) has usually been beneficial to my training.

How does that work, and should I modify my methods? Remember that it is not possible to flesh out all the combinations of character traits, drives, and thresholds that we artificially group anyway for training purposes.
A good way to think of it is that One drive or character trait never exists without the influences of others.
so, can a dog demonstrate defensive behaviors if they are also a dog predisposed to working in fight drive? Sure. Is training here good? Depends on your goal and all the other attributes the dog displays.
I use defense to load a dog so I can train in prey for those animals that don't carry enough prey for mike tastes, particularly in sport work. If the dog hasn't barked as well as I like in the blind, I will press defensive bahviors to obtain greater barking intensity for a better sport performance (realizing that I can't do this forever without causing problems down the road).

VanCamp,

I think there is a tendancy for Kevin to call fight what you and I call defense. The seperation of fight and defense in discussion is still fairly awkward for me. In most cases when I say work the dog in defense what I am saying is use a direct assult by the helper. The problem in discussing this is that the definintions people are using have to do with a pyschological response of the dog (fear). That isn't a consideratino in the type of work I am taliking about. The dog is reacting to the actions of the agitator when the agitator is being more aggressive towards the dog. It doesn't matter how the dog "feels" about it (afraid or not).

The terms I am used to using for this were always broken in to 2 things. Prey, a dog that is more interested in chasing down an agitator that is running away and not attempting to attack the dog. Defense, a dog that has a tendancy to bite under a direct threat from the agitator. These dog would tend to just let the agitator run away if he would and take that as a win. If the issue is pressed the dog will bite without hesitation. You always wanted some of each in the dogs, but breeds (or specific dogs) would have a tendancy. Breeds like the Belgians and GSD tended more towards prey. Breeds like the Rott, Giant, and now the BRT tended more towards "defense". Those types of tendancies strogly colored how the dogs were worked. In all cases the dogs needed both types of training, the difference was the mix and the timing for introduction of each. "Defensive" breeds got the aggression from the agitator earlier, prey breeds later.

The problem at this point is how to describe the action of the agitator to get the desired reaction from the dog. I have always used that the training was "defensive", I am now not sure what a proper description would be.

Well. . .hmmmmmmm. . .

Scott,

Yes there is a huge problem with a dog that is locked in "defense". The problem is they will tend to take more and more pressure to make a bite. They would much rather win with out biting.

Are you sire the dog is all defense? Will it do a "run away"? Will it make a passive, command bite? If it will do these things then the dog isn't locked in defense.

One thing that people tend to forget when training is that the idea is to expand the dogs abilities. Based on that you need to continue to work in both prey and "defense" to maintain the total amount of required behaviors the dogs need to be able to do.

Originally posted by Richard Cannon:
I think there is a tendancy for Kevin to call fight what you and I call defense. Bingo, you hit it on the head, Richard. What Kevin calls defense, most of us would call fear biting and we all disparage that type of work, but his fight is our defense. Semantics.

Can anyone tell me how you tell whether a dog is working in fight as opposed to prey drive?

Are there visual cues?