OK, Maybe i can help clear this up!
First, the term "drive" as used in training working dogs is a way of grouping and naming behaviors so we can communicate about them for the purpose of training and propagating working dogs. Drives are not simply a trait that is inherited by simple recessive or dominance, or this would be easy, they'd either have inherited it or not, and they would have it as a phenotype or not.
But, when we view groups of behaviors and name them drives there becomes such a great variability in individuals it defies being quantified.
So, the important thing here is to remember that no drive exists, we just name particular groupings of behaviors as "drives".
Then we have to look at the definition of those groupings. Now don't get too worked up over the dogs evolution and why they once did things when and if they were once wolves. Domestication has taken the village mongrel, kind of a cockroach of the canines, and created sooo many variations that getting hung up on wolf behaviors isn't helpful.
The definitions are subjective although based on observation, they are the result of many many years of observations and are handed down to us from one german state's police dog program. Much of their terminolgy can be traced back to behavioralists like Lorenz when the term "drive" was still in use by behavioralists (now among researchers it is deemed an antiquated term, not useful in study since it really doesn't discribe the behavior you are looking at adaquetly to be quantified).
Now, among many in the police world, there is an educational process to help people involved in the vocation of police dog training to evaluate and train for the particular standards they seek.
To do this they have to be on the same page and that is where the use of drive as a term and in defining behaviors comes in. If I say to someone, that dog is functioning in fight drive it does not exclude other drives, it cannot because it is simply a defining term for the emphasis we interprete the dog to have in its work.
To be sure, we train together and look at a dog and how they react and compare notes. Until the internet this system was great. Now we cybertrain and a flat screen cannot, and will not, be able to provide the vast amount of information the dogs give us while they work.
Now the question of fight drive.
Well, first lets define what it is not. It is not the desire to grab a substitute rabbit, like a ball, or a tug, or a sleeve. It is not the desire to make a threat go away by posturing, barking, growling, looking bigger, or by biting. Nor is it the education provided where the dog learns that it can bite from this feeling of concern for himself and turn it into a comfortable feeling of holding and carrying a prey item by biting. This is a common misconception, that somehow when these are put together I have fight drive. It can look this way to the novice but it is not. Now while you get up in arms do not forget that many many dogs have some degree of fight drive and that this system does not negate fight drive. Here is where the confusion exists. Anyone in dogs can see that among the dogs trained in this classic way there are powerful fight drive dogs that exist.
It can also be seen that dogs trained to treat the sleeve as a big rabbit can also display fight drive, they just cannot NOT see the antogonist making it go.
Since, we see it in conjunction with many training approaches it is often seen as associated with the method and not the dog.
So, fight drive, which is most frequently brought into the picture among dogs being trained in classical ways and not often existing alone is confused as an interaction between prey and self defense. The truth being that it can, though seldom does, exist as a group of behaviors, that are desireable among the working dog because it is the only way that we can have a strong confident working dog that behaves in the following fashion: the dog fights when fought and escalates the fight based on its opponents level of combat. If the opponent becomes passive the dog has won, if the opponent retreats, the dog has won, if the opponent fights the dog fights.
In a prey centered dog that has little fight to fall back on, if the prey is pursued but turns to its pursuer prey drive says "hey, this prey is dangerous and too costly to grasp, time to back off" it may even be brought into defense where it would back up and try to scare the prey (now also acting in self defense) through posturing and barking and if backed into a corner even biting. Conversely, if the prey is defeatable and weakening between attempts at escape the dog intensifies its prey behaviors and its confidence rises (producing big grips in foundational training is based on this).

The difricult to understand part of this work comes from peoples' inability to understand that identifiying a threat and being afraid are not necessarily linked all the time.
I explain this to the people I train that are Law enforcement, that this is like making a tactical approach to an alarm, or traffic stop, you are not afraid but you are dealing with a threat. It is often that people equate threat with fear.
Now, the argument is made that this had to start due to a fear response or how could they have identified the threat? This is a little simplistic but, it is hard to imagine an animal who never ever became afraid of something, so this becomes a circular argument. The bottom line is that a dog doesn't evaluate the moment based on an occasional event in its life, that is why training takes so many repetitions in all areas, it responds based on some set of inate behaviors we select for and we capitalize on. In this instance we name them fight drive.

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Very well said Kevin!!!!! Perhaps I tend to over-simplify my ideas based of my poor typing skills or just in the medium itself. I would agree with you concepts and that the term "drive" is perhaps misused as based in true science, yet it seems to be the best way universally speaking when discussing working dogs.

I think if we had gone back to days when we did not talk "drive" it was more cut and dry. I remember going to the French Army Kennels with a friend and former Army Instructor and they did not even understand what I was talking about when using the terms we use about "drive." It was much simpler to them. The dog was either for the Army or Federal Police, or it was not and perhaps was better for sport. It was simple for them and from many of the dogs I watched, and a few I worked, they had what we would term "fight" drive. I did not have the time to watch a selection process for new dogs, but they did seem to pick dogs that worked for real within their program. This was back in I think 94 or 95 and I didn't even know or use the term "fight drive" then. It was, will this dog kick butt on the street for real, or is he a suit junkie playing a game. If the dog was loaded in "defense" it was easy to see it was a bluff or weak nerve.

As for the outline in which you (Kevin) explained it, it is perhaps one of the best guidelines for the use of "fight." I also believe there are some who may actually be working in "fight" yet call it defense as it is "not prey." This is perhaps where the "language barrier" of terms and ideas breaks down. The concept seems a bit odd to some even based upon your very well constructed post. They seem to feel the dog must feel a threat(fear) in order to fight. I just can not believe this to be true.

Josh, good point about the language barrier. In my conversations with Czech police
dog trainers and breeders, it seems they use the term "defense" as we use the term
"fight". They often describe a dog as having "terrific defense" with the term "fight
drive" noticeably absent as a descriptive term. Has anyone else found this to be true?

Keven, your description of "fight drive" was very good, but I get confused when it's
described with the absence of fear. If fear can be absent in "fight drive" what's the
stimulus that puts a dog in " fight drive"? If it's a threat, how is it possible for a K9 to
rationalize a threat with the total absence of fear?

John

Kevin;
That is one of the absolute best statements on canine behavior and interaction between people and dogs that I have ever, and quite probably WILL ever, read.

That was a well written piece that Kevin wrote. I agree that this cannot be settled over typing, as we can all be talking about the same thing, but use diffrent termonolgy to describe our points. It as what another post said that some people in Europe call fight great defense, others will call a prey fight, fight drive and the list goes on.....

I am closing this thread. Anyone who needs to cut to the chase can read Kevin Sheldhals post on fight drive. Kevin has a better understanding of dogs that are willing to fight with humans than 99.99% of trainers out there. Thats one of the reasons he was recently hired by the Army to go to Germany this summer and give a seminar to military dog handlers.

John, I suggest you re-read Kevins many posts. Dogs with fight do not need FEAR to trigger their work. You do not need FEAR to get pissed off and want to kick the shit out of someone - what you need is self control. If you really study what Kevin is saying you will come to understand why it is easier to get a dog working in fight drive to do a Bark & Hold than it is to get a prey drive to work in Bark & Hold.

What puts a good dog in FIGHT DRIVE is experience - the experience to recognize an ASS HOLE when he sees on. That's why a lot of people cannot train these kinds of dogs. They lack experience to give experience.