I have a 2 1/2 year old female GS that I've had since she was 8 weeks old. I started out training in obedience (Nov. 2001 to April 2003) because it was difficult to find a good schutzhund club to join so I thought I would start with obedience. Let say here that I am a beginner and trying to learn everything that I can about schutzhund. I've read that it is very easy to destroy your dog, if trained incorrectly. During my obedience training the trainer made an obsevation that once my dog demostrated that she knew what I requested of here she was done. Let's leave the field or go onto something else.

I recently joined a schutzhund club in March. The training started off by evaluating the dog drive ability to bite a tug graduating to a bite sleeve. Let me say she has an extremely high drive at home but at this new field here drive is not as high as at home but progessively each time it gets better. She is learning to handle some of the distractions with all the people watching and so on. She will aggessively bite the sleeve several times and after about the fourth or fifth time she is ready to exit the field with sleeve, running tail high. I have her remain on the field until the trainer tells me to take her home to the car.

The trainer has informed me that this is a sign of avoidance and this should not be showing up in a 2 1/2 year old dog. In Addition, he does not know if it is going to be possible to put any titles on this dog. I am seeking some feed back from the experts. Whether they have experienced this and if so what can I do to get her to want to remain on the field? Other than me just telling her it not time to leave yet? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Hi Don

'Biting' a sleeve/decoy can be very stressful for some dogs--whether genetic in origin OR due to any previous training the dog had which could have resulted in developing certain inhibitions. Many times previous training conflicts with this 'new' type of training.

Without seeing the 'whole picture' it's difficult to make an assessment over the internet. I can tell you of one example though...A 2 year old bitch which was not properly socialized nor trained properly...then began Sch about 4 months ago. Defensive and unsure but would definitely go and bite and had a ton of prey.

Whenever she 'won' the tug she would pull and high tail it (tail up) back to her vehicle carrying her 'win' the whole distance--she wanted 'out of there' . This went on for 4 months. Now she will remain and never pulls to get 'out of there' after winning....She hits like a missle and her bites are very committed and hard but will she ever be titled? It's questionable. Her previous 2 years are an 'obstacle' to her progress and IMO will probably keep her from being titled. Her defensiveness, inhibition, and suspicion override her other drives.

But again each situation is individual and it's difficult to predict or assess over the internet.

Brigita

Thank you for your response, from my perspective at the other end of the leach it seems my dog is having a very good time. I will do more training away from home and see what kind of effect this will have on her. Thanks

Don,
To let you know, dogs react very differently to different decoys. My club is very lucky that half the members do decoy work - for a beginning dog that's not too sure of itself, we use our nice, very quick, non-threatening helper who uses prey to bring out the dogs drives. For dogs ready for trial, we also have a good helper who is absolutely up-to-date for trial routine and can show the dog exactly what will occur in a SchH trial. Lastly, we have an intimidating helper that can threaten a dog in a real wold fashion, for invoking defense or ASR/ K-9 scenario's.
We are truely lucky as a club to have a good mixture of people like this - most clubs don't have the choice that we do for training time, and all the dogs, from beginner's to police patrol dogs benefit from this.

One of the concepts that Bernhard Flinks stresses is that you can actually prepare your dog for bite work in your backyard with play.
These concepts are shown well in Ed's tapes numbered :
Training Drive & Focus With Bernhard Flinks VHS 101 E DVD 101 E-D

and

Preparing Your Dog
for the Helper
"The Foundation of Grip Training"

with Bernhard Flinks

DVD 310-D


From what you said about your current training situation, you'd benefit from viewing these tapes.
Good luck!

Will, thank you for your response, I do have the tapes and DVD that you refer to and I do refer back to them on occassion when neccesary.

Considering my situation is this a sign of avoidance? and can it be corrected through training? Our current helper does not seem to think so because a 2 1/2 year old dog should not be reacting this way. If I continue training will I do damage to my dog? The club that I belong to has access to some of the nationally recongized helpers like the ones you mentioned. Needless to say I don't think my dog is ready for a helper like theses. I feel this is something I have to prepare my dog for through training. But I'm not sure where to go from here and our club helper/trainer seems as tough he does not know what to do either other than just proceed as we are presently doing. He kind of suggested that I might be throwing my money away if I pursued training because he did not know if I could achieve a title on my dog or not. But he would be happy to take my money if I was to continue. Do you have any suggestions?

Is there any other comments from experienced trainers. I am trying to keep this thread alive so I can make a decision on how to proceeed with my training.

Considering my situation is this a sign of avoidance? and can it be corrected through training? Our current helper does not seem to think so because a 2 1/2 year old dog should not be reacting this way. If I continue training will I do damage to my dog? The club that I belong to has access to some of the nationally recongized helpers like the ones you mentioned. Needless to say I don't think my dog is ready for a helper like theses. I feel this is something I have to prepare my dog for through training. But I'm not sure where to go from here and our club helper/trainer seems as tough he does not know what to do either other than just proceed as we are presently doing. He kind of suggested that I might be throwing my money away if I pursued training because he did not know if I could achieve a title on my dog or not. But he would be happy to take my money if I was to continue. Do you have any suggestions?

What just about any experienced person is going to tell you is, that without seeing the dog and what the decoy is doing none of us can say.

It really has to become a personal decision. Will you be happy training a dog that may never trial? Do you have the money to throw away? If so, then continue on. Reguardless of how many people tell you this sport is not expensive, they are either blessed or do not live in an area where traveling and paying is the norm. If you really had your heart set on trialing you may need to re-evaluate your decision with this dog. She may continue on and be a dog that you can only trial with your home helper on your home field, but she may be a good dog for you to learn with.

Personally, I would find it very frustrating to work a dog who was not really into it. When you work a good dog and see how fast they can progress, it makes working with anything less seem incredibly foolish. That is just MY feeling though- there are some people who have attachments to a dog and continue to work it reguardless.

Also, I have seen dogs who were evaluated by our club and joined with low expectations. One in particular I never thought would be able to get into a bark and hold, he just did not have the confidence to be away from his handler. After a couple of years he did finally make a SchH1. This person had no intentions of breeding his dog, and is now totally hooked on the sport.

Don,
As other folks have posted, without actually seeing the dogs behavior first hand, it's really hard to tell you if your dog was in avoidance or not.

First off, almost none of us started in this sport with the perfect dog. When I started SchH in the 1980's, I had a soft Rottie bitch that would fly off the sleeve on a stick hit, but because I was in a strong SchH club with excellent helpers ( SchH of Orlando...a great club <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ) we were able to work past this and get the bitch to a SchH II. And a taste of success helped keep me in the sport for over 20 years now.
I see a lot of clubs now that won't even bother with beginners in the sport, or else they won't help people with less than perfect dogs work to the potential that the dog has. Not everybody wants to go to the Nationals, so if a dog can only get a BH, and the owner is happy with that, a club should consider the dog a "learning dog" for the owner and do what they can to help them achieve their goal.

You make a lot of observations that make sense - many beginning dogs show higher prey drive at home than on the training field, due to their distractability. For most dogs, the more often that they are on the field, the less they'll be distracted and their prey drive will likely rise.

Question - you said "But he would be happy to take my money if I was to continue" Are you talking about club dues or are you being charged for training?

And as far as "nationally recongized helpers " , I've seen cases were they have been a great assest to a club. But I've also seen many cases where helpers were doing decoy work simply to make money or convince people to buy a dog from them, all the while giving advice that the owners current dog can't do the work. Beware of people whose only answer to questions about your dogs problem is " it can't be fixed, but if you buy this dog......"

Deann and Will thank you for your response. I am going to continue training with my dog. I feel she is capable of doing the work and she is having a very good time while we are training. I have seem a great improvement in her since we started this training. Granted I am a beginner but I am willing to learn and I don't want anything to happen to my dog. I am trying to lookout for her. I attended the Bernard Flinks seminar last October at Ed's and I apply his training concepts to my training.

To answer your questions regarding payment we have to pay annual dues plus pay for the training that we receive each weekend.