Brains or Drive? - Page 2

Is it trust or is it that they are doing it for the reward.

I think it takes both plus a lot more. If you tell your dog to do something stupid and he hurts himself, he may not do it again when you ask him. The dog’s hardness is the determining factor.

I even believe that some dogs are adrenaline junkies and thrive on the rush and excitement of a difficult or exciting situation.  I have a new Malinois pup that has this. Today he jumped off a 7 foot retaining wall and into some bushes. After crashing through the bushes and nearly giving me a heart attack in the process he went crazy running around the yard and attacking everything in sight. It reminded me of how a football player gets after a great play.

He was back on top of the wall a few minutes later….

I sleep in two, 3 or 4 hour shifts; afternoon and night. I don’t know why I do it, but it works for me.

To each his own I guess. I just know I want more to my dog than some mindless robot that is a nuisance, underfoot. Alot of these dogs have their limitations in other areas like suitability for certain handlers, public outings, safety, ease of care. Who wants an escape artist dog, that isn't good around children, eats it's own tail off because you were sick last week and didn't go work it? He decides to bust out of his kennel and go rampage the neighborhood and kill their cats. I bet your neighbors love that!

There is good responcible handling...and then ther is reality. People screw up, dogs get loose. I like to know if my dog gets out, he will just sit in my yard or come to the door. He doesn't feel the need to chase every object that zips by. If that makes him less of a dog, so be it. He still bites when I point or give word and not when I don't.

I have both GSD's and malinois. One breed seems to have the brains and both breeds have the drives. My gsd's are loopy kooky drivey dogs but they don't seem to stimulate as easy. My gsd's and others I have worked with, don't seem to be able to carry drive as well as the malinois. When stimulated the gsd's seem to "leak" or go flat, they don't seem to take the drive energy and transfer it into work, or at least precision work as well as the malinois. I think that is why the malinois is typically labeled a better OB dog.

From my experience and others, the typical way you train a gsd is, kennel them, build drive, and do patterns a ridiculous amount of times and repeat. And with this type of training our club and other clubs I know are very successful, ( they show at big events and put up respectable scores) training the gsd. It makes sense that one would train a working gsd like this due to the breeding criteria of the gsd was and still is primarily schutzhund. Schutzhund is just a three part OB pattern, the dogs that do patterns the best generally win and then are more likely to be selected for breeding. I think that this is a very good way to select dogs if you are looking to produce a dog that doesn't think very much and needs a lot of repetition to retain information. I did not notice these qualities about the gsd until I got involved in the malinois. I guess I was blind to the fact that my babies had faults.

I was given my first malinois and I trained it like a gsd, big mistake. I kenneled the dog, built drive and did patterns. Pretty soon I had a unsocial crazy drive dog. The dog ended up biting a bunch of people then ended up in a police home. Before I got rid of the dog I made some friends with some malinois people. When they watched me work my dog they laughed at my dog because he was tearing off my pants to get to the toy, then they told me why my dog sucked. They said, "this is a malinois not a gsd". They then went on to explain that malinois don't generally need drive building sessions, ever. All of their dogs were house dogs not kennel dogs. And they taught their dogs exercises not patterns. And all their dogs worked better then any gsd I had seen. The reason they trained like this was due to the breed and how it was selected. The primary breeding criteria for the malinois is ring sports. Ring sports don't have set patterns and the obedience in the bite work is more invasive. The decoys are there to mess up the dogs so you need a dog that can problem solve, in drive. There is no other exercise that can demonstrate problem solving ability like the object guard. The object guard is a chess match between decoy and dog with out the presents of the handler. After I sold my first malinois, because he was dangerous, I got another malinois puppy and trained it like a malinois should be trained. I taught it to be a house dog, I taught it obedience exercises, I socialized him and did little to no drive building. When I did this I started to notice that the dog was retaining everything. The dog turned out to be silly smart, like I can have conversations with him. I have done two other malinois since and both dogs have similar results.

To answer the question of Brains or Drive I choose both and that is why I primarily have malinois today. If you see a malinois that is just crazy, can't think, unsocial, nervous, and has shitty biting behavior then one of two things happened, 1) genetically the dog sucks, or 2) somebody screwed up in the training.
 

Great posts guys. I agree about the pattern training. I don't do it, how fun is that anyway? If I personally can't "enjoy" something, I'm not inclined to stick with it. Von KB, glad you found out what works for you. I think the same goes for the GSD. I no longer buy the kenneling gimmick. If any dog HAS to be locked in a kennel to work properly, it's not correct for the work. I enjoy my dogs and like having them in the house, taking trips and in the car. If they can't adapt to these things and work, not gonna breed em.

What I am seeing is, that Mals are cheap. People buy them and breed them for this reason. The population explosion over the past 5 or so years is what I think is the downfall, perhaps more than the genetics itself. I'm seeing every Tom, Dick and Harry with a litter of Mal pups on the ground and not enough people wanting them. These pups sit in a kennel with not much interaction and are ofter just gifted to the first  friend or dog person who comes along and looks interested. I think an unsocialized Mal is much worse off than a unsocialized GSD pup or young adult, concidering they tend to be more nervy and reactive to strange things. I'm by no means saying an unsocialized dog of anykind is a good thing but I'm seeing it alot in Mals. Just my observations, I have been offered 1 free GSD period. I could have a kennel full of free Mals, if I wanted them. They just seem more "expendable" to people than a German Shepherd.

To each his own I guess. I just know I want more to my dog than some mindless robot that is a nuisance, underfoot. A lot of these dogs have their limitations in other areas like suitability for certain handlers, public outings, safety, ease of care. Who wants an escape artist dog, that isn't good around children, eats its own tail off because you were sick last week and didn't go work it? He decides to bust out of his kennel and go rampage the neighborhood and kill their cats. I bet your neighbors love that!

Well I have owed and lived with dogs that have competed at the high levels of IPO and my experience differs from your conjecture. I have my friend’s dog’s here right now that has been on the podium in national events in two countries, and he is not like the dog you describe. My dog has never done any of the things you describe. He is good with my kid. He does training demos for kids at schools and gets mauled by them. He is good with other animals. Every morning he goes into my aviary and I trust him with several thousand dollars worth of birds.

Once again, it is a false argument when it’s Drive vs. “Brains”. You can have both. Or maybe you can’t. But I do. Maybe you should try to train a dog to the top levels and then make your judgments.

Christopher, I never touched on the level of training on a dog, so not sure your point on the podium? I DO have both. Only thing is, when I describe my dog, the first decriptor I use is stable, not drivey. He definatly has drive, never had a problem teaching him anything or getting him to work. He's definatly a quick learn and into his job.

I don't really see it a a Drive vs Brains because I want both but hate to see so many put the emphasis on drive, taking no concideration of anything else. "If they have the drive, they will work" maybe, but how well? Just sick of hearing the bullshit bravado is all.

I'm on my way, training my dog. He's still young yet and so am I. As far as TOP level, it's a matter of affording it, not if he can do it. I'm not in a position to miss days of work to travel to trials all over or "National events" when they are 1500-2000 miles away. Trophies are the least of my worries anyway. I spend more time with my dogs on daytrips than I ever will or want to on a podium.