Breeding without titles... open discussion, not an argument - Page 18

Quote: I know many have an issue with Schutzhund because it only test for prey drive.  I train with a guy who trains police dogs.  He says looks for dogs with high prey drive because he sees them as being the best at criminal apprehension.  I guess that makes sense to me.  I see high prey driven dogs as those wanting to go bite a fleeing criminal or wanting to find a criminal.  Versus a dog with more defense that is waiting for the fight to come to him.  Another person with experience training police dogs care to share?

IF you look at how prey and defense are interpreted, I have always found that I want a "prey" dog. Considering that we are talking about a mental state, a "prey" bite is used to reward a dog that has done something, usually for going into defense and staying there. LOL

If you look at it a bit different, a "prey" dog does not look at the decoy with any fear. 

Defense is a fear based reaction that we see from the dog. We choose dogs that have a "fear forward" response to frightening stimulus. So why would you ever want to choose a dog whose reaction is based on fear, rather than prey ?

In my experience, the dogs that are more "prey" dogs are the dogs that want to fight more, that want to get in the mix.

THe problem with "defense" is that you might bump a dog that otherwise would not go into avoidance, into just that. 

I will take the dog that is not afraid "locked in prey" if you will over the rest.

Steve,

Some of the strongest dogs I have ever seen come from the NVBK. Consistantly, they show us stronger dogs than any other place. I do not see how the SV is the end all be all. 

I do not see them titling females very often either. G'Vtou du pottois is a good example of a dog that never titled. If you cannot see the quality of the dog in front of you, titles are very little help. Too many people just want to see the dogs titled. 

The United States is a much bigger place, and we have very very few dog sport people in comparison to how many people own dogs in general. Most people just want a pet. THey are dedicated to making a living, not dog sports. This will always be our problem. Even if all the dog sport people got together and met, and worked hard, and all got on the same page, and did everything right, we are such a tiny group of people that it would make very little difference here. We are too far apart, have too few training clubs, and too little time. The few that are doing sport, usually get titles. 

I do Mondio. Even with a dedicated club, it takes an awful lot of time. I do not have a dedicated club, but a couple of friends that help me out when they can. They are quite busy making a living, so you can watch my dog trial and see how logistics is not your friend here. I know several people with very very nice dogs that I have worked that will never title, as the money and time is just not there.

SPORT vs. WORKING SERVICE
To understand the differences between sport and working services training, one should first look up the word sport in the dictionary. Sport is described as: diversion, amusement, fun, jest, pleasantry, game, past-time, to play, to divert oneself, to trifle, to jest, to make merry. The word working is described as: engaged in work, especially manual labour, taking an active part in a business, the act of labouring, operation, mode of operation. We can see, even by the terminology by the dictionary, one is serious, one is not.

The problem in sport today, is that the competitive spirit of some human participants, has made this play, this sport, appear to be something it is not and that is where the danger comes in. Schutzhund has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Money has played a big part in this. Titled dogs from Europe, especially from Germany, have lined the coffers of many dog brokers.

This in itself is not a bad thing, but when sporting dogs are being bought and sold for law enforcement, military, or tactical work, this borders on criminal. To explain myself clearly, I will go over a few basics of how a sporting dog functions. Being taken from the kennel or crate, to the training field, and back to the kennel or crate, is how the vast majority of trainers advise to build a Schutzhund dog and many other sporting dogs. Working service dogs are socialized around other dogs, people and their handlers and kept out of kennels at all times.

They must live in the environment they must work in to be effective. Sporting dogs are trained on the field, as they are trialed in the field, one dog at a time. This is good for the sport, but not for the working world, where distractions of other dogs and handlers are imminent. Sporting dogs are taught to bite a bite sleeve and hold it, while a weapon, stick or blank gun, is in the free hand of the suspect or helper, visible to the dog. Working Service dogs are taught to take out the weapon hand yet can safely perform bites on a Schutzarm, where no weapon is exhibited.

The logistics of this are simple, if someone comes at you with a knife, are you going to grab and hold his empty hand, permitting him to attack with his weapon hand, or are you going to let go, and defend yourself. This exercise is excellent on the sporting field, where the bad guy isn't really the bad guy, and we're after points not survival. But this dog in the real world, is a liability. The sporting dog is taught to search the blinds in sequence, following the same routine every time. When he finds the bad guy, he goes up to him and start to bark.

This is called the Bark & Hold. In Working Service work, we call this the Bark & Die. If you're after points on a groomed, this exercise looks good. If you're dog is really finding a bad guy, you want him to go in on air scent and wipe him out. All too many, cross-trained, sporting police dogs have died doing this routine in real life, yet because of a large lobby group, sporting dogs are still being used by some departments. Sporting dogs are trained to track nose down, having been baited with wieners or some tasty little tidbit. They have been permitted from the beginning to eat along the way or at the end of a track. Working dogs are permitted to track naturally, which means air scenting.

German Shepherd dogs are masters at air scent

Realbitee, you are talking about taking a sport trained dog onto the street and expecting it work like a civil trained dog and using this scenario to support an opinion that sport trained dogs are lacking, but what does that have to do with the dog's genectics when it has been trained to do a different job which in my opinion is a rediculous comparison to rate a dog's compliance with the GSD breed standards to determine the correct traits that make up a good example of the breed.

In Australia there is a trend of producing defence driven dogs which adapt to security work with minimal training, so to see a 6 month old pup hackle up at strangers and bark furiously in a fear response is a desired trait interpreted as "fighting drive" with the potential to be a great dog. Great for security work with minimal training where the dog will light up fast and take a random bite in a passive environent I agree if the greatness amounts to supporting the laziness to train a dog properly that looks the part bouncing around aggressively on the end of a leash, but dog's like this are not good examples of a well bred working dog, or traits that need to reproduced.

No wonder the majority of working GSD breeders don't like Schutzhund or titling dogs when their greatest production can't be lead from the truck to the field without wanting kill everyone it see's. Some of these supposed highly rated untitled breeding stock in Australia are absolute garbage as far as compliance with the traits that a good GSD should exhibit, and are nothing more than fear biters for the most part with an over rated assessment of excellence from the people owning them.

To amplify the stupidity in many Australian breedings, many a sporting dog are condemned and considered weak on the basis of exhibiting no fear reaction of strangers and no dog to dog aggression and can be handled without a muzzle without the handler fearing attack from dog coming back up the leash. What the hell I ask is the good of a handler aggressive working dog that so many Australian working GSD breeders admire and breed over the labelled "prey monkey" that can be trained to work reliably well if they knew how to train a working dog properly. To me, the admiration and breeding of defence driven fear biters that need a permanent muzzle to avoid injury from handler aggression being determined as great dogs is a massively warped scenario.

I have one of each, a defence driven dog and a prey monkey and there is no comparison between the two. The defence driven dog will bite anyone at any time and works as a great patrol dog, but he is difficult dog to train, foggy headed and lacks prey drive and is a hard dog to handle stopping him from trying to bite people that present no threat. The prey monkey is not reactive in the slightest, he's calm, clear headed and trainable in distraction and bites to capture the prey for pleasure, so the point is, if these idiots producing these defense driven supposed superdogs had to title them, they would get a rude awakening of the traits a proper GSD should exhibit when they are booted off the Schutzhund field and told to put their fear biter back in the truck as I was instructed to do with mine. So in conclusion if the question of mandatory titling GSD's in Australia for breeding would improve the quality and standards of the breed, the answer to that is BIG TIME and would weed out in big hurry the crap that is being reproduced at present.   


 


 

This is not directed to anyone specifically, so no one should take offense. "You can always tell the people who are talking from participating in something, and the people who are regurgitating something they heard, read, or saw." Just my observation.

8 month old pup, never seen the suit and from untitled dogs but well bred and proven dogs. these dogs are police dogs and this one is currently working in canada. just shows a good dog will bite anything if called on to do so. he is also being handled by a complete stranger. i am shooting the video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhGinpY1BI 

Quote: SPORT vs. WORKING SERVICE 

To understand the differences between sport and working services training, one should first look up the word sport in the dictionary. Sport is described as: diversion, amusement, fun, jest, pleasantry, game, past-time, to play, to divert oneself, to trifle, to jest, to make merry. The word working is described as: engaged in work, especially manual labour, taking an active part in a business, the act of labouring, operation, mode of operation. We can see, even by the terminology by the dictionary, one is serious, one is not.

The problem in sport today, is that the competitive spirit of some human participants, has made this play, this sport, appear to be something it is not and that is where the danger comes in. Schutzhund has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Money has played a big part in this. Titled dogs from Europe, especially from Germany, have lined the coffers of many dog brokers.

This in itself is not a bad thing, but when sporting dogs are being bought and sold for law enforcement, military, or tactical work, this borders on criminal. To explain myself clearly, I will go over a few basics of how a sporting dog functions. Being taken from the kennel or crate, to the training field, and back to the kennel or crate, is how the vast majority of trainers advise to build a Schutzhund dog and many other sporting dogs. Working service dogs are socialized around other dogs, people and their handlers and kept out of kennels at all times.

They must live in the environment they must work in to be effective. Sporting dogs are trained on the field, as they are trialed in the field, one dog at a time. This is good for the sport, but not for the working world, where distractions of other dogs and handlers are imminent. Sporting dogs are taught to bite a bite sleeve and hold it, while a weapon, stick or blank gun, is in the free hand of the suspect or helper, visible to the dog. Working Service dogs are taught to take out the weapon hand yet can safely perform bites on a Schutzarm, where no weapon is exhibited.

The logistics of this are simple, if someone comes at you with a knife, are you going to grab and hold his empty hand, permitting him to attack with his weapon hand, or are you going to let go, and defend yourself. This exercise is excellent on the sporting field, where the bad guy isn't really the bad guy, and we're after points not survival. But this dog in the real world, is a liability. The sporting dog is taught to search the blinds in sequence, following the same routine every time. When he finds the bad guy, he goes up to him and start to bark.

This is called the Bark & Hold. In Working Service work, we call this the Bark & Die. If you're after points on a groomed, this exercise looks good. If you're dog is really finding a bad guy, you want him to go in on air scent and wipe him out. All too many, cross-trained, sporting police dogs have died doing this routine in real life, yet because of a large lobby group, sporting dogs are still being used by some departments. Sporting dogs are trained to track nose down,

Ok, can you tell us who wrote this ?? That would be the first thing. Second, no where does it say in the history of Sch that it is a police service test, so that takes away from a lot of the credibility of the author right there. 

I don't care for what Sch has become, but fuck this guy. Most of what he has written is crap.

Several people have commented about how much more effective prey monsters are for police work and more desireable than even dogs with balanced drives. dogs that will bite all day etc. I've seen alot of k9s work around the country and see this trend to be correct as stated by a few. The only observation I see is time and trends repeating itself, and if we really care about these dogs as we say we do we need to think about this. GSDs up untill the early 60s were primarily the most widely used for police and LE work. They were sought after for courage, intellegence, good temperment. I can give you first hand info about the riots in Watts, ca. as I was there. Every nite on the news we wittnessed attack dogs turned on demonstrators, college kids, colored people all over the country. At that time only bite crazy, prey driven freaks were being bred in the south, Big german sheperds, fiercness was the flavor of the month. After a decade of people seeing this on tv nite after nite, you hardly ever saw a GSD laying in someones front yard, peoples trust in the GSD as a family dog, loyal companion, all but deminished. It changed peoples perception as to what a true GSD is supposed to be, Then the only dogs being bred were bred for mild layed back temperment, dogs more sedate, Beauty and calm was the trend to win back popularity of the GSD in America. Then because of the crime rate and drug wars the whole face of America changing and peoples attitude of becoming fed up  began to except any means of stopping it. Malinois, dutch shepherds were brought in because they were like a new weapon that could bite all run like a greyhound , jump buildings the whole works, while the GSD was so imasculated he was not much more than a door stop in a few homes. Then people and pds began to say GSD can't do the job as they just don't have it anymore. This is leading people to try breeding for extreems in reverse to catch these other breeds that have been excepted as the ultimate temperment for PSDs. But if you read Police K9 magazine there are more articles written by lawyers on how to prepare your defences for law suits than there is about training. It is not about the dogs anymore "never has been" it's about people and people are willing to except any trend in breeding, standards,etc. that make people feel good. Wait and see people are already starting to really see balance in breeding is where it has always been. Even the US military has fallen into this theory, but look at how now they are putting dogs in hospitals for PTSD. Nerves failing from stress. It is always extremes in dogs and people that destroy them. Just something to think about.
Hank

Seriously RealBitee you didn't really just post a quote from that BadenK9 goofball did you?