PREY DRIVE: ACTUALLY A FAULT? - Page 2

I dont think in terms of drive when Im training a dog. Perhaps thats what Im using.... perhaps not. The term is simply not productive to what Im trying to accomplish. Many things that Freemont says are in fact partly true. Prey drive as most people know it isnt required for most tasks.

Pray drive might be not required for every training goal but a good dog is about good balanced drives, dog that has just one type of drive is not a good dog in my book.

When I said that pray drive might not be required this was not with regards to protection training.

how can you make this ridiculous statement. Prey drive is very very essential for stress relieve of the dog when woking in Protection work. Prey drive is not a fault. When protection training is done properly and very right then the dog starts shifting gears between Active defense and prey so that he can go back and forth at will. That is the ultimate goals of protection training

regards

You are ABSOLUTELY correct! What was I thinking? Prey drive is essential. Without it a dog would die.....but why arent there a bunch of dead dogs who lack prey drive? Or are they dieing but just havent keeled over yet?  

Wait......how does a dog know to chase something (for relief) when it gets stressed if a person isnt around to throw a ball for it? Man there has to be some stressed out dogs in the world.

How do dogs bite if they dont have prey drive? Fear? So if a dog didnt have prey drive and it was scared of everything then that dog would die because it would be too scared of the bunny to bite it for lunch. Right? Ok......I got it now.....I think.

"...Prey drive is essential. Without it a dog would die.....but why arent there a bunch of dead dogs who lack prey drive? Or are they dieing but just havent keeled over yet? ."

You feed them that's why, in a wild pray drive would be essantial for the dog to hunt.


"How do dogs bite if they dont have prey drive? Fear?..."  yeah most of the time fear... thats where the defense drive kicks in. You saying that you will get a dog to bite without fear, if the dog has no pray drive? lol good luck with that.

 its the imbalance of the drives which we need to be careful about out but then in some slow maturing lines defense drive comes much later in life.

regards

This stuff is confusing.....

Thanks for all your help. Im starting to get the idea.

Whew!

The only time I ever saw prey drive as a fault was when my dogs killed my (now ex) girlfriend's cat.

Fellows,

I know the title of the thread was over-reaching, but you have to get folks through the door before you can make your pitch.  Ultimately, what I am putting forth is the question of "prey drive" being over-accentuated as being a virtue in a "working" gsd.

On this board and elsewhere, it is repeatedly brought up as a selling point of a dog.  Perhaps this is a fallacy as pointed out it is not what makes a proper protection dog- although it may be employed in the beginning stages of protection training.  Perhaps what is more virtuous in the make-up of the dog is that inherited trait of what I referred to as "protective instinct" but is also called "defensive drive".

Malis are operatives of the crazy prey drive, yet the GSD should possess the protective instinct.  It makes for a substantial difference in the character of the dog.

The prey drive does make a gsd run after things that move and make noise.  The prey drive is visual and auditory.  The hunt drive is distinctly different as it relies on olefactory.  The hunt drive and not prey drive is used in scent detection. 

So there we have it.  Possibly it is Mal-speak (if you will) that is entering our lexicon in the gsd world- all this excitedness of the prey drive...

If a dog fails to have enough prey drive to train it in prey, you have to tap into it's defense and most dogs don't work the same in that drive. You will see too much stress at some point, not to mention most trainers can't train a dog in this way, without royaly screwing it up. Most people start their dogs in prey, using that drive to show the dog what is wanted, the defense and other stuff comes in later with maturity, when the dog can handle it.