Building up drives.... - Page 1

Thought I might give this a try..... to get this forum back to what it was originally created to be.. What are your methods for building up Fight, defense, Prey, search,hunting,etc drives?

prey: tease the dog with the prey object; take it away when high in drive defense: put the dog in defense... only when you know the dog can go in defense; you can mess him up also this way; have someone threaten the dog in a situation where he can back out (if he backs out, get another dog, or do prey schutzhund) hunting: the dog has it or not; throw his ball on tall weeds; hunting is innate; dog has it or not search: to me search is prey... stimulate prey like above fight: innate in the dog... build it playing tug with him if he has it n.

forgot... play with your dog... 1 play, 2 prey, 3 defense... in that order dog needs the three to be complete stimulate through play and a prey object; leerburg.com offers good info; finographics/schutzhund also... n.

Its probably best to look for a puppy with good drive in the first place, but having said that, the methods in the Leerburg video about building focus and drive really do help to maximize prey drive in puppies and older dogs. Someone on this board recommended this video to me a few years ago, to help improve the bite and grip of one of our adult dog, it has been very helpful and I have seen a few puppies that apparently did not have much drive at all build up their drive to acceptable levels using these methods. Most dogs seem to love the ball on a string that this video recommends, but you do have to be careful as it can make them ¿chewy¿.

I show sexy pics of myself wearing thongs.

I will bet you are eating your celery to keep your girlish figure.

I strap celery to me bum. Thats really brings out the play drive.

I have since realized that you can't really build up prey drive. It's there or it's not. It's of course beneficial to sort of 'focus' it into something useable for obedience or protection...but you can't build or make it.

no mention of food drive, very useful in tracking. feed smaller meals twice a day, starve them a meal before tracking,, do good and get the rest of your food and no funks, my dogs do not like celerys. john