DDR, Czech and West Germany working bloodline - Page 17

Daryl,
Your question was answered on this thread on pages 6 and 7 by Hans, me and others.  IMO, defense is not the primary drive for a solid, well rounded dog.  A dog with weak nerves, low thresholds or poor foundation training, poor socialization, little or no imprinting or a combination of all of those may have defense as it's primary drive.  Any dog can have it's prey drive increased, any dog can learn to work and enjoy it.  It takes patience, perseverance and persistence to bring out the drive if it has been repressed or squashed and give the dog a new outlook on life.   I truly believe any dog can learn to enjoy to do things giving the right reward and praise.  That is especially important for high defense lower drive dogs.     

So, for the question "how do you go about training a dog that is lacking in prey and having higher defense?", your answer seems to be "build on what prey drive you can, and use that."   Disappointing, because it seemed obvious you were alluding that there was an approach to training that didn't rely on prey drive as the primary motivating force.  I was curious in what contexts you or Prager find yourselves content to work only through defense to teach a dog anything, and what manner of approach you would take in doing so.

You would have to define what you are trying to train? For most activities I prefer to use other motivators such as food, a toy, praise or a combination of those. Defense is a good motivator for certain tasks but is very limited in it's use. Your question is vague. I have taught dogs to track and trail utilizing defense.

I'm not sure I can imagine defense in tracking.  I suppose the reward is the bite then, but is that really defense?

I'm not trying to accomplish anything, specifically, and have no dogs it could apply toward.  Because of having "that dog" in the past, I now happen to abhor a dog without prey drive, and so all of mine have that and food drive in abundance.  I have a few that work in pack drive, but wish all of them would.  I'm just basically curious if there's any useful (or especially effective) approach to working with a dog that sorely lacks prey drive, by utilizing it's defense nature.  Any training that requires urgent results can pretty much be a lost cause, it would seem.

ddr dogs don't have less prey drive than other lines, what is true is that they are more possesive of their prey and because of that they are more difficult to handle/train  for a lot of dog handlers than softer more easy goiing west german lines who in general are a lot more sensitive towards their handler than true ddr bred dogs old eastern european breeders wanted hard, strong dogs and if a dog didn't have the disired hardness/agression or drives it wasn't uncommen to kill that dog and certainly they woulnd't have used that kind of dog in a breeding program.
problem last 10-15 years is that not the strongest are used in breeding but the ones that 1 win competitions or2 the ones that eastern european breeders sell (these are not the dogs you want for breeding!!! if those breeders thought those dogs were good for breeding they wounld't sell them!!!
in the past when trainning methods were "less annimal friendly" this softer type of dogs never won big competitions so a lot less of those dogs were used in breeding, if your dog really lacks drive maybe you can train him maybe not but the problem you are facing now is one a lot of handlers face today, it's a problem of breeding not of trainning and it keeps on getting bigger and bigger
as handlers/trainners/helpers we can only hope that breeders start using an other type of dogs and leave the "made dogs" out of breeding programs
sorry for my englisch writing im from belgium but have a lot of friends in slovakia so i really know how in eastern europe they think about breeding these day's and in the past

"we can only hope that breeders start using an other type of dogs and leave the "made dogs" out of breeding programs"

I can agree with that, at least.

What's a "made dog"

A dog who by way of talented training has achieved ordinary standards of documented accomplishment, and thus deemed breedworthy, despite an overlooked inability to produce worthy potential in it's offspring.  Often, this is due to such characteristics involved in working abilities having taken a back seat in the selection process, in favor of traits like blocky head type and dark coat coloring, which are more widely marketable.  A breeder for family pets (the larger marketshare for the breed) is more easily forgiving of a soft dog (as one example), when it is beautifully constructed.  The breeder is further forgiven by his (or more likely her) peers, for having met the "mimimum standards" in certifications.  The same path that created the showline dog, I believe.

Thanks, that was a new term for me...

we can only hope that breeders start using an other type of dogs and leave the "made dogs" out of breeding programs"

Hopefully, they don't start using untested, untitled dogs as their breeding stock...... Wait that is being done already!