Hi all,

So in planning my new pup's imprinting, I would like to decide how to go about teaching the object guard. I've seen it done two ways (and am not 100% happy with either way).

Firstly, I've seen it taught as a "place" command where the decoy essentially serves as a distraction, until he's right up close and then the dog bites (almost as a reward for staying on the object) and runs back to the place. I am convinced the dog doesn't GET the object of the exercise, pardon the pun. And he almost always loses his basket.

I've also seen it taught as a defensive/possessive exercise, were the dog is encouraged to become aggressively protective of his food in the basket, or whatever. The exercise is very serious in this case, and the dog is definitely saying "piss off!" to the decoy. But then I've seen that encouraging him to stay on the place will create conflict, and gets harder and harder to do as training progresses.

Intuitively, I'm thinking the exercise should probably be a combination of these two methods (steps?) but have no idea how to go about creating the finished product. Thoughts?

I like to go with the first way, I start by teaching them a "place" comand type and I use food and a clicker once the dog understands to go to the object and stay on it then I will start walking around and as the dog moves its rear end to keep eyes on me I will mark that and give a food reward past that it is the decoys job to train it. If you watch some of the Micheal videos you can see that the dog is staying on the object until the decoy comes in the 2 meter circle then the dog bites once the decoy freezes the dog releases and goes back to the object as the decoy moves away and then you need to mark the dog for returning to the object, I have seen this done many ways either the decoy can give the dog a bite while the handler holds the dog on the object or the decoy can throw the dog a tug or toy, I have also seen it done with an Ice chest with a tug inside and once the dog returns to the object (ice chest) then the handler would mark the dog and pull the tug out of the cooler. I think that like anything there are a million ways to skin a cat you just need to find something that makes sense to you and stick with it, I have seen many dogs messed up b/c handlers don't see the progress that they expected so they switch up. They all work you just have to stick with ONE.
Hope this helps
Brad Hardin

No problem at all, and it's probably a topic that people here will want to read, but just pointing out that the unanswered question is a couple of years old.


The O.P. is no longer active, so most likely won't respond, but that's fine. I'm mentioning it only because you may not have realized the age of the thread.

yeah I hadn't noticed until now lol oh well