Defense - Page 2

I agree with Blackmalinois. Also my take on where to start is this. First determine what you want your dog to be. If your focus is on personal protection (PP) then any time is a good time if you know what you are doing. The question is , what  type of dog you have. For that I have developed nomenclature of type 1 or type 2 dog.

Type 1 is inherently actively defensive and will protect and bite without any training.

Type 2 is not that way to lesser or greater degree and in order for him to protect and bite it needs to be trained to do so. 
 Most dogs  these are type 2. In past most dogs( GSDs) were type 1. 

I assume that you have type 2 dog. In that case if you have determined that you want serious PP work you can start as soon as the dog shows any aggression and you encourage it. I called that in jest Porch training which drives some people of the ledge, but it  is basically opportunistic training by life and during the life of the pup.   You observe the dog and go along with the dog's  actions he takes if they  are in line with what you want.   It is not training in the club  which  may come later.  What you want when you train a PP dog is to build appropriate Defaults.

I call Default  what the dog learns first in the time he approaches specific situation. That is different from foundation which  which may start at any time.  

 What the dog learns first he likes the most, does the best and reverts to under stress. Also thanks to Porch training  during the life of the pup with you  gets the dog attuned with your every day attitude and   your needs for protection and what you want the dog to do for you. In another words the dog is working for you and not only for toy, treat or e collar on his neck   or what have you. For example if you sit with 6 weeks old pup on the porch for the first time in his life and he alerts ( shows natural protectiveness and territoriality )  on approaching stranger you give him command to alert praise  and encourage and reward  the dog with voice and petting. Voice and petting  are underrated and considered boring and  ineffective  by some evolved trainers,  but in this type of training voice an petting are indispensable  and make the dog to work for you(!!!) and not for the toy or treat and thus for themselves.   That single act of you going along with your dog, will establish in the dog a default    for such  aggression to act aggressively and  if you consistently do this  and   then the dog will act aggressively when commanded     or when in such situation. 

 To balance this you  at the same time need to balance such aggression with  building a default to defuse your dog when you determine that the stranger "does not need killing" :) . Defusing must be done  on command and it is another exercise omitted by just about all trainers of today. Defusing aggression command is  altering the dog mind  from  being aggressive to being friendly . This is different from controlling the dog where the dog when commanded ot to attack is still in aggressive mindset but does not attack simply because you told him to "sit - stay!" or No!.  That is an dangerous situation. 

 But I am getting too far from the OP question. What I am saying is that there is formal training in a club which can be started when the dog is ready which is determined by training director. That type of training is inferior and secondary to "Porch training" which can be started as soon as  dog displays  desirable behavior. 

 I personally believe that even though most do not have opportunity to start with young pup you can start such training with your even older dog . "Porch training"  way is the best way because it molds the dog naturally to what you want in every day life by building permanent defaults  and club training or other formal training then should only develop such defaults and is done later. 

I would like to say that this is the old way of training and we do not hear of it much any more since there is no money in it and most so call modern trainers want to do most training in club setting where we are however opening a can of worms of undesirable associations which plagues most ( if not all) club trained dogs for rest of their life.  Such undesirable associations are not present in dog whose training was correctly done via use of every day life training (aka Porch training).

 So if you ask when to start  defense training the answer is, as always,  it depends.:)  

 Prager Hans 

P.S. 

If you do not know what you are doing,  then all the training needs to be done under supervision and  advisement of trainer experienced in these matter. Such trainers are hard to find. Most trainer  build the dog from  equipment to a man where this training builds the dog from man to equipment.  Thus dog then by the default targets a man and not the equipment . And that is what PP/LE dog should do. 

Now I am just curious how long it is going to take before I will get ridiculed for my term "Porch training". :) 

 Prager Hans 

About a half an hour.

"Porch training" has much in common with "Pet training," except with fifty percent less words, commonly known as BS.

IMHO

Bee,  

Bee, impressive.

Its also known as the million dollar training technique. Its different then traditional training because you are naming a behaviour, action etc that the dog is already performing. Zero conflict Zero distraction almost immediate association. They do it, you name it repeat. I start very early with leave it. Once they have that, when they show an alert or move into defensive, name it at any age. Since they have leave it prior it is not hard to teach appropriate application of defense by experience. Pups and young adults with natural aggression & defensive headset I will move away from setting the experience up once they learned the associated command and redirect from flourishing it till later. Pups and young adults that have to be brought up too, I set up the experience and flourish it more often. Hans's point in his ps is spot on for me a dog that has been trained to focus first on the man is harder to get to equipment oriented, a much better proposition.
 

LOL. Where to begin? I consider myself an expert Pet owner and Pet trainer. And I know what can happen just sitting out there with my dog on the porch. First, the cyclist, then the jogger.

Million dollar... because it is a money maker from novice pet owners with this "revelation"?

Tell me —what is the difference between bonding and rewarding an innate behaviour after the fact?

Gigante thank you. As I say most do train the dog but do not live the training and thus are missing the boat. Living the training live is of most value if we want the dog to be "real".
To train the dog protection in a club setting is not realistic. if that is we do then that is what the dog is going to end up to be-.. pet with wrong defaults who will "protect" well on a clubs football field. Such dog may give to the handler ego based on false sense of security but is useless as a reliable for development of defaults of a pp dog. Such training develops undesirable associations with equipment , location, helper, time of a day, ...... and so on which will stop the dog from performing correctly in real life situations. Porch training however does just that. Trains the dog in real life situations and builds defaults for such scenarios. No other training besides training done in real life scenarios can do that better.
Thus it is important to start this as soon as possible in the life of the dog or as soon as we decide that we want to train older dog such ability ( personal protection) . Some may have difficulty to grasp such concept but it is important to train as you work and work as you train. And do it as soon as the dog /pup shows desire to do so.
Prager Hans

Oh, the grasping of what is going on with the doublespeaking verbiage is easy enough.

I just hope folks who really want a highly trained, proofed PP dog, won't be doing it from their porch.
 

Yes Hans hard to grasp for anyone that has not achieved a significant skillset, easy to grasp for anyone who has, its no different for the dogs. In martial arts slapping the air with kata's is no match for actually engaging an opponent in simulated combat. Sorry bee no tree to pee on I didnt name it and If I remember right the person who did gave it for free in the 70's. I was taught the concept for free also from my miniature pincher who in my world was/is world renowned for a sic 50*60 word vocabulary and insane tricks up the sleeve he taught me to name. Zues was the man. I learned later someone had named it that, i really dont care what you call it BS works fine for me but it has been seriously beneficial to speeding up the process for me. ​

Porch training - Pretending Online Real Canine Handler...