What causes this working difference? - Page 13

Valk,
I'd be interested in learning how that pup turned out. I believe it could go either way. The growling, showing of teeth and biting are distance increasing signals. They could be signs of confidence, as well as indicators the pup is not completely confident. Not the type of pup I would choose unless I wanted a property protection/guard dog.

Duke,

I was keeping it simple.  Maybe it is a lot of nothing because you don't understand it.  The drive to fight is genetic, fueled in its development by prey, defense, maturity and learning.  Once the dog has learned to think of himself as invincible, a simple command can trigger the fight.

apple
So if the bad guy is passive, the catalyst isn't prey or defense. There is no movement. The dog isn't worried.

dominance, urge to overpower/submit challenger is a stimulus to fight, regardless bad or good guy is in front of dog.
establishing the link "command - action" during the training, purposed to be the trigger for action, regardless person is in motion or lays on the ground motionless.
prey drive has nothing to do in that case. if your dog is lacking urge for fight then you need to find and use another trigger and here come in play prey drive as substitution of dominance.

I disagree that prey is play. Some very good dogs have intense fight drive triggered mainly by prey drive.

Valk and Emoryg-
Your explaination of the vid was interesting.
But, I have a different take.

First, with respect to breeder/owner, I mean no offense. it is only a vid and we don‘t know much more except what we see.

Since the pup is only 5 weeks old....his reactions are intrinsic/genetic and not yet learned. So here is what I see:

We don‘t know if the vet caused pain or not, so that part is speculation.
I see a pup seeing the hands of the vet as a scary thing, for whatever perceived reason. He growls then he bites. Then his bites get harder, then a slight avoidance behavior (stoppping the growls and bites, tongue flicks, moving backwards into owners arms)...sees that the attacking thing will not be deterred, he rallies a second volley of stronger bites and growls....then realizes, hey, not getting anywhere...these hands are not „fleeing“ away from me. Goes back into avoidance, sniffs the camera (avoidance tactic) and a few other very half hearted attempts after that to bite...but no will left in him to rally another attack. He stops and accepts the hands.

What has this pup learned? The scary thing (vets hands) did NOT retreat, and the pup did not win. Quickly a pup of this age will start thinking that an attack is not effective as the offending hands did not ‚flee‘ in fright.

Even though this pup might be a good candidate for LE or protection, and this evaluation might be a good starting point...we don’t know yet how this dog will mature. A lot will depend on what he experiences in the next few weeks and months.

So I will agree with Apple, in that we do not yet know what direction this initial forward aggression will take once the pup gets older.

Another way to think about fight in dogs is to consider gameness, as in pit bulls. There are some distinct differences in the traits of working line GSDs and game bred pit bulls, but the main feature of game bred pit bulls is that they will not succumb. They are not fighting in defense and gameness extends to not giving up in things other than fighting another dog. That is why some dogs like Mals, can fight through prey drive and win. They will not give up their possession. They tend to be angry and frustrated rather than worried as in defense. Dominance can bring power to man work, bite a dog doesn't have to be a rank dog to have strong fighting instincts and rank drive is counter to having control over the dog or training him.
JJ,
The people I know who breed and sell dogs to the police and military would not have anything to do with the pup in the video.

I too saw a pup who was telling the vet to leave him alone; and the vet was not listening. Puppies can't speak, the only way they can show this sort of cheek-pinching, continuous mauling is unwanted from anyone, even the vet (and whether or not he was bothered by the jab) is to snarl and bite. Vet should have known better, in my book. There is a perfectly valid way to retreat from any dog but especially a young pup showing this sort of "Don't touch me" warning, without letting the dog think it has 'won' and deciding immediately it will now bite anyone and everyone. Timing. The Vet clearly did not have that sense, anymore than she had the sense to stop.

I have seen video of a well know working line breeder who has bred some intense dogs, and he is shown pinching a young pup's cheek while it is biting a small tug on a string so the pup growls and also pretends to steal an adult dog's food from his bowl to show food aggression. I believe he was trying to demonstrate fight drive in his dogs and it struck me as him not understanding certain aspects of canine behavior. Or, it could have just being a commercial for potential gullible customers.

because you are babbling Apple, fight is not a drive, fight, as seen by you is a bunch of drives and caractertraits coming together, preydrive, posession, frustration and/or agression

and, yes, if prey is not accompanied by those other traits, prey is nothing more than play

and what I meant by shooting yourself in the food is your next statement;;;

many are of the opinion that the dogs that show the strongest fight drive have very good prey drive along with a confident defensive aggression.

SOOOO your good dogs have CONFIDENT defensive agression, so defense agressivedogs are not desirable, but when prey is added all of sudden they turn into confident defensive agressive dog

BS, any dog, working in prey or civil agression or whatever, needs to be confident, or its not suitable

 

staying in the fight equals not willing to let go of prey mostly

I don‘t underestimate prey drive. It is not only ‚play‘.

Prey drive (including possession and guarding of food) is very serious business to a dog. In its natural form, it is what makes survival of a species possible. Between prey drive and sex drive...that pretty much sums up existence.

It is WE who have turned prey drive into a game; with balls, tugs and sleeves.

But as far as discussing Fight Drive...there is no consensus if it really exists or not. Some very reputable ‚experts‘ say yes it exists...others say no it doesn’t.

 

I think using a term like Fight Drive is useful to describe certain groupings of cumulative aggressive actions..... But I will be the first to confess, I don‘t have a good definition for it.

Does anyone have a good one?

If we use the definition of fight drive as „a culmination of prey/guarding-possession/frustration/dominance aggression that is not prone to stimulus exhaustion“ (like the fight bred pit bull)...maybe that alone is a good definition.