Let me first acknowledge that I have not had the time to read every post on the thread of How To Reward Defense and appologize for any conflict or duplication this may cause with the discussion. Matt sent me some of the early feedback and that is what I responded to.

As often happens in on line discussions, and probably in all discussion, I think there is an awful lot of over generallization going on about how dogs are worked in different venues and artificial boundaries being erected between how to train a dog for sport vs PP vs patrol. I think the best training approaches actually work well for all three. Of course different dog personalities naturally lend themselves more to one than the other and that anytime one has a serious need or desire to excel in any one of these areas the absolute smartest thing one can do is to start with the right dog. As we all know many dogs are naturally heavily biased toward one aspect or another of the working drives, leaving aside the debates about whether or not drives even exist or which drives exist. I think one of the most important functions of the decoy and the overall training program is to bring these drives into the best balance possible for a given animal and a given task. I think the ideal dog would be excellent at all three areas. The only area of dog work, relative to aggression, that I would really choose an unbalanced dog for would be area guard work. In this work a dog with little prey drive and an abundance of suspicion or defense needs virtually no training and will be naturally difficult to work around for perp. If the defense is quite high and the prey low the dog will not easily be drawn into dangerous contact but will make a very strong display, and bite when it’s area is actually invaded. Even here there are more character issue to be considered than just the defense drive, the dog has to have a naturally dominant personality so that it won’t just run into it’s shelter when someone invades. In any case, enough of that.

As to the original question of how to reward the dog’s defense drive, Matt’s response was quite correct but I think misinterpreted by many respondents. The basic concept he mentioned was that of channeling, discussed at length in Helmut Raiser’s book, which by the way was written specifically regarding schutzund, currently an almost exclusively prey oriented dog sport. The basic concept is to teach the dog a strategy for dealing with a threat which teaches the dog to be very confident against a threat and to use strong behavior against such threats with the dog developing a desire to engage the threat and kill it rather than just desiring to drive it away. This is, in my opinion, what people would refer to as fighting drive when it occurs naturally in a dog. The dogs which naturally act this way are by far the best overall dogs and have tremendous natural confidence. Through the proper use of channeling (and in my opinion some variations on traditional use of sleeves) one can teach most decent dogs to behave in this fashion, of course to varying degrees depending on what you’re starting with and the skills of the helper and the handler. When Matt refers the helper as “flushing in prey” what’s happening is that the helper, in response to the dog barking in response to threat by the decoy (or perhaps just the presence of the decoy), breaks laterally to the axis of approach. At this point, depending on the how secure the dog is in biting in prey, the decoy may pass by the dog and give a bite, loop around in a run-by bite or may just run off or back and forth a little. The point being that the dog learns that he can force the decoy to change from threatening behavior into rabbit like behavior and that the dog will want to catch and kill the rabbit. As the work builds it will easily progress to a point at which the decoy does not need to “flush” away from the dog but can actually attack into the dog and the dog responds in prey aggression. (At this point the dog truly wants the decoy to attack and it is not at all his goal to drive the decoy away, in fact the decoy running away would frustrate the dog) This is beneficial for several reasons. First, the dog will generally bite fullest and most securely in prey. Second, in prey drive the dog naturally feels superior to the prey. (although a poor decoy may be too focused on trying to be superior to the dog and thus mute this advantage for the dog). A dog biting in prey is generally not thinking about backing out, moving it’s bite or otherwise letting go and tends to be nearly oblivious to hitting, scratching or biting on the part of the prey.

Many people who work ppd’s or police dogs comment that prey biting leads to problems with outing. It is not actually the prey orientation that causes the outing problems but how the prey drive is rewarded. If the prey drive is rewarded by retaining bite objects then this will be true. Actually an even worse set of problems is created by such focus, namely that the dogs comes to learn that the bite objects, be they sleeves, tugs or full body suits, are actually the object of the exercise. A properly trained dog, whether for sport, pp or police, should always view biting and controlling the man as the objective of the work and the bite objects merely as attachment points. If trained properly the dog will very willing give up any bite object to get back at the man. This does not require any intense use of pushing the dog into uncertainty, quite the opposite, it should be the development of a very forward type of mentality. If one has to truly attack the dog to get his focus off the equipment then the whole basis of the bite work is wrong and as with everything in training the best solutions is to rework the foundation, not try to make a patch.

As to the following statement I would have some disagreements that it reflect the same type of work which Matt is refering to :
Funny... that is EXACTLY how they are training Ring sport here in Lansing. The helper gets tougher and tougher on the dogs... eventually they show some unsureness... sometimes hackles...helper encourages dog to fight through the unsureness... rewards by going to the ground or giving a traditional prey win.

But the consensus seems to be that "Ring sport is ALL (100%) prey"???

They just don't separate out the drives and determine... "today we will work on defense"... its built into the entire program... Am I missing something?

What is described here is a much more classical, and I would say crude, use of defense training which has two huge drawbacks, but first let me delineate the difference. In the channeling method, as soon as the dog shows the desired response to the threat (barking, growling, any typical forward defensive behavior) the decoy IMMEDIATELY responds (rewards) by breaking into a totally different behavior which immediately makes the dog feel in control. This is classic OC, the dog operates on the decoy by showing aggression and is immediately rewarded by forcing the decoy into a type of behavior which the dogs likes much better. This very quickly makes the dog feel in control and therefore quickly grows his confidence. The work which is being described in the above quote is what I would call “survival” training. There a much less immediate reward for the dog and the dog does not necessarily feel that it is controlling the decoy, often much more a matter of holding on and surviving. This work is improved and clarified if the decoy can identify a specific, forward or controlling response on the part of the dog and respond to that by the mentioned behavior of going to ground or giving the object. Of course a naturally very strong dog may feel in control but then that is simply the result of genetics, not the result of a “training method”. Overtime it is normal that the some dogs will develop increased confidence in their ability to deal with the threat. Many dogs however will not really become stronger but merely more reactive, displaying more active aggression towards a decoy earlier in anticipation of the decoy pressing the threat, this more active aggression may not, howeve, be particularly strong or deep. Often these dogs do not become very strong in forward behavior but rather are quite neutral in geographical terms, not really rushing forward to engage and often never become strong strikers. When combined with very aggressive or dominant handling this tends to diminish rather than build the character of the dog, often leading to displaced aggression and poor targeting and poor grips. As I said, there are always dogs which will excel with a given type of training but the success of a few dogs should not be taken as confirmation of good training methods, rather the ability of a method to improve a vast majority of dogs of different natures should be the mark of a good training method. (It is also worth noting that the better the training is the more difficult it becomes to evaluate the genetic strength of the dogs if one is only looking at the finished product.)

As for the statement that good personal protection dogs come from doing some sport training with dogs of naturally good character I would basically agree with that with several caveats. First, this really doesn’t give much light as to how to train the average dog to succeed at the task. Also, typical sport work often mutes, or blocks, the ability of many dogs to be good pp or patrol dogs by teaching the dog the wrong state of mind about bite work, as mentioned earlier in this response. I have worked with many dogs which had many natural talents for genuine protection work that needed massive retraining for personal protection work. Typically the first problem is that these dogs have never been taught to recognize a threat in any real world sense. If given an alert command, which most of them have never been taught, they would look right past Mr Big Bad Ass right in front of them searching for a guy acting like a decoy. Second, most of them will readily turn their back on a decoy while killing a sleeve. In fact many, if attacked and beaten by the decoy, will displace their aggression into the bite equipment, never even thinking of letting go of the equipment to aggress on the decoy, thus actually protecting themselves.

To sum up, in my view, defense drive in bite work is something that is really only useful in recognizing a threat and in the initial response to the threat, but which is vital for those purposes. A properly trained dog quickly learns to channel this into behavior which would be much more accurately described as prey or fighting behavior but is not defensive. If the dog is well trained any pressure or threat presented to the dog should just stimulate him to become stronger in his own behavior to overcome and control the challenger. A dog trained to this level would rarely if ever have it’s hackles up once it is engaged nor would it act highly stressed, rather it would act highly energized. BTW, many strong dogs will growl during a fight, as will many weak dogs. Neither can be characterized in and of themselves by the growling but require an overall picture of all behaviors displayed by the animal to really determine whether the animals is behaving strongly or weakly but still staying in the fight. Also, there is clearly no method that will turn a shit dog into a great one. Better methods great better success for more dogs more easily than poorer methods.

Mark, that was a very well written post. However, I fail to see the difference between your approach and the one that I described where the helper channels the defensive feelings into aggression and rewards in prey. Can you clarify the fundamental difference?

Speaking about defense work...Mark McCabe wrote:
A properly trained dog quickly learns to channel this into behavior which would be much more accurately described as prey or fighting behavior but is not defensive.

The comment made about Ring Dog trainers do not seperate drives, I think that this is very true. You have hit the nail on the head. While I believe that they put a lot of stock into prey work ,there is a certain amount of aggression that is in-born into a lot of these Ring dogs. It is thus training that does not capitilize on these drives. But without it, alot of these dogs would not be a strong as they are.
I have worked to date about 6 French Malinois that were under 15 months old. I can say that all of these dogs were just super dogs for police or schutzhund. I feel that they were of the highest quaility that one could ask for. Three are in top schutzhund competition today, or are on the road to getting there. I have also worked a young Czeck Mal that was papered but had a strong French influence. Another very nice police dog. My point is that if the French only worked in prey, then this would be what they breed for, thus the young raw dogs, would not have the abiltiy to perform other tasks. I do not feel that they identify the drives, but this does not mean that they are not there.