Well, I attended (spectator) my first ASR trial in Bunell, FL this weekend. I gotta admit, I'm intrigued.

The trial reminded me alot of SchH in the early 1980's. Not as organized ( actually, the trial was nicely organized and ran smoothly ) as SchH trials that I attend nowadays, but a much higher fun factor. Every single person there was friendly and helpful - now that's *different* from many SchH trials that I've recently attended.

Most dogs that we train in SchH could not pass these tests due to their difficutly level ( apparently, there are only 2 dogs that have ever passed an ASR lvl III test ) but those that pass will defend their owner under a wide variety of real world settings. Almost everyone of the dogs at the trial would make suitable PSD candidates.

I don't think that you'd be able to train a dog in both SchH and ASR at the same time, the needed drives would conflict with each other too much - there was a *strong* SchH II dog there that lost points for basically being in sport mode - but the owner is re-training it for future competition and he was philosophical about the point loss.

If you ever have a chance to attend one of these trials, go...it'll be worth your time.

So you and Fetz are going to be starting training ASAP right Will?

Actually, I have my doubts than even Fetz could handle the lvl of training needed to do ASR, however one of the National lvl ASR decoys thinks he'd be successful at it if I give it a try after I get his SchH titles done. Only a small subset of dogs could possibly be successful in that sport, from what I saw.

I originally thought that the dogs would be in prey drive for the exercises, much like a ring sport trial or KNPV trial, but the dogs need to go civil at entry level just to be able to go forward to the more advanced exercises. Muzzle work and hidden sleeve exercises pretty much proved to me that these dogs didn't care whether the decoy was in equipment or not, they'd engage in a heartbeat - a nice change from SchH.

I believe that dogs with an ASR title would be primo PSD's, I wish Kevin could observe a trial someday and give us his opinion.

Will,
Check your PM's
Scott

I agree with you Will; ARS is MUCH more demanding than schutzhund. I like the idea of dogs actually proving they can protect their handlers before being given a protection dog title. I think in ASR, a title actually holds water.

What does ASR stand for?

American Street Ring