If I were to want to test my 16 month old GSD to see his reaction in defense, what would be a good way to go about this? He has a pretty good foundation in prey work and I've been working with a helper to do a little bit of agitation on him, i.e. have him come around from behind my truck acting suspicious then when my dog alerts on him he runs away acting scared. So far I've seen only positive results from this, he barks and lunges for the helper (leashed on the prong) and doesn't back up at all. We did a test earlier this evening to see how he'd react if I was assaulted and he really didn't seem to care too much, he was more confused about what was expected of him than anything else - he let out a few barks at the very end once the helper ran away but up until that point he just paced around looking confused. Is this just a normal reaction for a young dog? Are we going too far too fast? Does he not have what it takes to do this type of work?

Mike, yes, ya'll are going too fast.
He doesn't need to have any type of physical contact at this stage of the game for defense testing.
Back-tie the dog in a harness so that he's comfortable and make sure everyone knows the fixed distance that the dog has, then just have a good decoy stalk him in a menacing fashion ( wearing no equipment and starting from say 20 to 25 yards away, *no* prey motion at all )- the dog should go off and bark to repeal the attacker.
If the dog fails to bark by the time to decoy is with 10 yards ( or goes into avoidance ) have the decoy go neutral and retreat in a passive manner. This would mean that the dog isn't ready for that level of pressure yet.

Another thing to think about. Defense isn't a gear. It is sometimes present when you are just playing. Sometimes when the decoy is too frontal, they can go into defence.

Every dog is a bit different. Their thresholds for drives is different. When they are young, you want to stay away from overtly bringing them into defence. But to say that they are working in all prey....not likely, I don't know any decoy that good. If it was all prey, why would they shake the object? why would they pull back? it's not always about possesion. Some things to think about. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

In my opinion, one of the best videos Ed has made is titled "The First Steps of Defense".

I really like this video.

There are a number of good steps outlined in the video for introducing defense in your training.

Mike if you think there is any chance that he may alert up or be lunging in defense, and you are wanting him to experience this, I don't know if I'd have him on a prong collar. I wouldn't want my dog to associate any discomfort with alerting up on someone, it will eventually lessen his intensity. It will also add more stress on him while he is displaying that defense. If you know he may possibly get into a situation where he may alert up and you know you are going to allow it, because he is alerting up in a proper situation then I'd make sure and have a flat collar on, or a pull tab hanging from the pinch, so my leash is on the flat collar and a pull tab on the pinch in case I need to make some sort of correction for something else, and of course this is all "JMO" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Thankyou all for your excellent suggestions <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Will: The first time we tried to get him worked up we had him tied off and the helper trying to work him up a lil, but he didn't approach from a distance and my dog really didn't care about this weird guy doing weird things lol, but he alerts like crazy if the helper comes from behind something - next time I hook up with the helper I'll have him try your method and see where that gets us. My dog either goes nuts, or he just doesn't feel threatened, it all depends on the situation.

Jeff: Excellent point, I do need to continue working him in prey and really get him going for that sleeve as per my other post - I have been using your suggestion about not letting him get at it and really building his frustration - when he's at home with me he is going crazy for that sleeve, but at the helpers house with the helper trying to get him to bite the sleeve my boy shows little interest, he'll bite it, then let go and look around to see if he can sniff at the tree where the helpers dog pees. If it wasn't for the fact that I've seen how he can perform when he's just with me, I'd think he had little prey drive, so I need to back up a step here and keep working his prey. Perhaps its the helpers technique - my dog responds very well to the bernard flinks (sp?) drive building technique of pulling the sleeve away from him quickly and really get that thing moving - but if the helper presents it or just moves it around n such he doesn't really care about it.

VC: I was watching "first steps to bite training" again yesterday to see if there's anything i'd missed - at the end of the dvd it shows a few exerts of the intro to defense dvd so I had a mental note to check that out - thanks for the reccomendation, I'll order that later today.

Chris: You are right - I will work him on the flat collar next time, I guess we figured that if I did need to correct him, he'd already be on the prong collar so I could control the situation more easily, but it had occured to me that maybe that wasnt the brightest idea <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

If anyone has any additional suggestions feel free to post them. I think he has potential, I don't think he'll be the most intense hard hitting dog out there, but so far he's surprised me every step of the way. Not reacting to me getting assaulted even when I was giving him his watch command was a little discouraging (I wasn't expecting him to though, he seems to think that i'm capable of defending myself LOL), but that's why I posted this thread and that's what learning's all about <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

PRONG???PRONG??? Oh man I should let you have it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Get your helper to go back to the beginning with a tug on line and let him frustrate the bejessus out of him. No need for a bite. Don't let him be lazy if you insist on using the sleeve. Get some really good misses, ie you can hear his teeth clicking. Then you know he really believed he was getting a bite.

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PRONG???PRONG??? Oh man I should let you have it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Please dont hurt me! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> hehe. Well my boy didn't seem to care that he was on a prong so I didn't think anything of it, but I see the error in my ways.