as a newbie to the various sports that "working" dogs compete in, i find the never-ending discussion about "drives", their definition, and their place in sport vs. "real" work, fascinating.

i only hope to one day be able to discern all the various drives, and, what i believe are, combinations of drives, that result in a behavior. and then to develope, strengthen or weaken those drives to culminate in the behaviors i want in a particular dog.

sounds good, doesn't it? <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> wish me luck.... <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

some observations...

when it was first said that KNPV dogs are trained in 100% prey, as a BIG fan of KNPV, i took that as a knock on the sport and the dogs. as i have thought about it, i don't know if it was intended to be that or not, but to a certain extent i agree. ALL dog sports are prey based.

next point...being that it is prey based, that does NOT mean that the dogs are incapable of working in another drive. that is true for KNPV and ScHH. with that said, i'd rather start out with a PH1 than a SchH1 any day of the week.

the idea that KNPV would be popular because there is no tracking? i feel this is a statement to over emphasize the degree of difficulty in tracking. if i'm reading in between the lines properly, that means that people over here wouldn't want to spend the time it takes to teach a dog to track for ScHH. i don't believe this to be true. yes, tracking is not easy to train, but if it is so difficult why are there 18-20 month old dogs getting their SchH1? and it is rare to see a dog under 3 get a PH1. i think it's safe to say that it take MUCH more time to train to a PH1 level than a SchH1 level. if i made the wrong assumption about the tracking statement, then this point still stands on it's own.

as far as a SchH1 dog doing a PH1 and vice versa...this is where i think mr. frawley's frustration with SchH and the SV come in. a lot of the SchH1 dogs in germany are genetically incapable of doing the PH1 routine. a lot of the GSD's being produced aren't athletic enough. same for the ring sports. it's not coincidence that there are very few GSD's doing KNPV and ring sports whereas there are plenty of mali's and DS's doing SchH/IPO. not a knock on the GSD breed, just a knock on the breedings.

bottom line is that NO SPORT TITLE GUARANTEES a "real" dog or one that could do PSD work, but given a choice, i'd rather have the PH1 as a starting point...

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Drives - are we to fast to categorise drives? If a dog will commit to a bite in a real time situation is the label we give his drive relevent? We have all most likely seen wolf documentaries where a pack of wolves takes a large prey down. During which there is a lot of growling etc. What "drive" are these dogs working in? Prey right (some may say fight). But is it serious work? Yes. Can a dog be seriously hurt? Yes. So can we train a dog to target a man using this same mindset/mood? If so would it be better to use this style of mood for bite training than going into an area that takes the dog down the path of uncertanty (Defence). Or indeed is this exactly what trainers are saying when they speak of fight drive? Hopefully something to discuss.

i believe this would be a very good debate and would love to see this in debate. i think it may need its own post so if one of the "boss men" could move it if need be. very good topic though