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Read this article as a FREE eBOOK Dog training I have studied the art of protection training dogs since 1974. I have bred over 350 litters of protection dogs and produced over 120 dog training videos, many of them on protection dog training.
Preparing Your Dog for the Helper Protection training (when it is done properly) is one of the most demanding and difficult dog training tasks that there is. Most dogs can learn obedience, scent work or agility, but few dogs can be trained in handler protection. I often hear people say, "My dog has not been trained in protection but I know that if someone came after me he would protect me." In actual fact, most dogs, when threatened, will show avoidance and run away, leaving their handler to fend for themselves. The reason for this is based in the temperament of the dogs. In its simplest sense, bite training is founded on the ability of a dog to deal with stress. A good protection dog is taught from a young age to act in an appropriate way when threatened. He is taught that to show avoidance and run away does not solve his problem. To be successful in this training, handlers need to have a thorough understanding of the drives that govern a dog's temperament in protection work. They are 1 Prey drive 2 Defensive Drive 3 Fight Drive 4 Avoidance If your goal is to learn how to train a dog in protection work, your job begins by understanding these drives and how they relate to each other. If a trainer does not fully understand drive development he may as well not even start this work because he is never going to accomplish anything in protection training.
The First Steps of Bite Work - Video 101-B) or go to an experienced trainer and learn from them. Every time you watch a dog doing bite work you should be thinking "What drive is this dog in and why?" If you can watch an experienced helper work a dog you need to be thinking "What drive does the helper have the dog in?" When he switches drives you need to try and recognize when that happens and why. In my tape I will define and demonstrate drives by showing you dogs that have good drives and dogs that lack drive. I want the viewer to recognize when a dog has the potential for protection work. Probably just as important, I want them to understand when a dog has not inherited the necessary drive and therefore cannot be trained in protection work. Right from the beginning, everyone needs to understand that dogs inherit the drives for protection work. It is a genetic factor and neither a factor of training nor a factor of breed. In other words, if a dog does not have the genes for protection work you are not going to train the drives into the dog. Just because a dog is a German Shepherd does not mean that it can be trained in bite work. That would be like saying just because I have a horse I think it can run in the Kentucky Derby. The first part of the tape deals with defining the drives a dog uses in protection work. We then go into the training steps for the dog, the handler and the helper. To be effective in protection training the handler and helper must work as a team.
Building Drive & Focus DVD Prey Drive: The prey drive is the easiest drive to see and understand in our dogs. It can be recognized in a puppy as early as 6 week of age. Prey drive is the desire to chase a moving object, and to grab it and shake it once it's caught. Puppies exhibit prey drive when they chase a ball or play tug of war with your pant leg or sleeve. Hunting dogs that retrieve a dummy are also demonstrating prey drive. When you see a dog chasing a rabbit, a cat or a Frisbee you are watching that dog's prey drive in action. In Schutzhund or protection training, when a dog grabs a sack as the helper runs by, it is working in prey drive. When an older dog chases a helper off leash in an escape bite or a run away bite down field, that dog is also working in prey drive. When a dog is worked in prey it does not feel threatened. Dogs look at prey work as a game, for them it's a game of tug of war. Think of a lab chasing a ball - it doesn't feel threatened as it chases after its ball. When a dog is biting 100% in prey it too doesn't feel threatened. The dog's body posture during prey drive is alert, with its tail it up or wagging, (this is probably the easiest thing for new trainers to spot), there is no hair up on the dog's back while biting in prey and it is not growling or showing its teeth. A dog when barking in prey does not sound or look nervous or stressed. In other words, we use the early prey work to teach it to identify the sack, tube and sleeve as a prey item. The dog is taught that when it sees his owner or a helper with a sack or sleeve he is about to play tug of war and the item to bite is the sack. During this work we teach the dog to begin to bark for his bite, we teach it that it must have a firm grip or it will lose his prey item, and we teach it that when the sleeve is slipped or dropped by the helper the dog must carry and hold the prey item. We will go into the reasons for all this in the training steps of this tape. We are going to discuss defense later in this video and will go into more detail on it at that time. In our training the prey bite becomes a comfort zone for the dog. It's a place in the work where the dog can calm down without actually stopping the work. By teaching the dog to move into its prey drive when we want it to, it learns to relax after a particularly stressful training session. One thing to remember about prey drive is that it is extinguished or is diminished as the dog gets tired. In other words, an exhausted dog does not have much interest in playing tug. The difficult thing for new trainers to grasp is the fact that as training progresses and a dog gains experience, the picture of a dog working in prey drive will change. When an uneducated person sees a dog being trained in prey he would think that this dog is out there actually trying to kill the helper, when in fact the dog is just playing a rough game of tug with the helper or handler. Before we move on, lets take one more look at several stages of prey drive. Each dog we see will be doing something different, but all are working in prey. If you are new to bite training this may seem complicated but hopefully we will help clear up the confusion as the video progresses. In the police DPO trials the helper does an escape and the dog chases him down and apprehends him in prey drive. Schutzhund is currently going through a series of rule changes concerning the courage test - but the old courage tests started with the helper running away from the dog - when the dog was sent after the helper the dog was functioning in prey drive. While all of the dogs we just watched were working in prey, their level of prey, the intensity of the prey work and the way their prey drive was interacting with the other drives produced different pictures.
The First Steps of Bite Training DVD Defensive Drive: For a dog to do police service work, serious personal protection work, or good Schutzhund work, it must have a solid defensive drive. A dog's defensive drive is the drive to protect itself from a perceived threat. When a young dog is working in its defensive drive it is not in a comfortable situation. The dog thinks that it's in a position where it is being threatened or attacked and as a result it is stressed. For our training we want a dog, that even though it is unsure of its position, it will initially react to a limited amount of threat with an aggressive challenge. This willingness to defend himself is an inherited characteristic. It cannot be trained into the dog no matter how hard you try. If a dog has not inherited the defensive gene there is no way we are going to make this dog a protection dog. A few good examples of this are most labs, golden retrievers, huskies or other such breeds. These dogs just don't carry the gene for protection work. The most that can be expected from these dogs is that it will bark at strangers. But when threatened, they will go into avoidance and run. Even though a dog may inherit the defensive gene, a dog's defensive drive does not start to appear until it reaches pub...
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