One year old working line male - Page 3

Will send OP a pm.

Perhaps if you get him out in more 'busy' environments and get him
working in some form, you may see he could actually turn into a service
dog for you, he may just need a different type of handling than you can 
provide him with. I've seen some Bandit progeny from a few different bitches,
and they are all dogs that bring joy and drive to their work. All seem to be 
very biddable dogs, but do require some clarity in their handling. If the dog
starts screaming and you get upset, well, guess what? He will get worse.
Plenty of good info out there on dealing with dogs that have difficulty in 
capping their drives, and he may very mature out of this issue given some
time and the right type of handling. All the best in whatever course you take
with him, please keep the dogs well being and mental happiness in mind
at all times. Everything else is just fluff 

workingdogz, he definitely DOES bring a lot of joy and pep to his formal ob work.  I greatly enjoy his focus and handler sensitivity in that regard.  The blog post states why he's not good for a service dog, but it also states that it doesn't make him a bad dog.

For sport, he is absolutely GREAT, and we do have the ability and time to give him the outlets he needs here :)  That is not an issue.  He definitely DOES require clarity in his handling!  Always has.  I find him to be a very literal dog (which is an issue when I need a dog to "think on his feet", not an issue when I just need to tell him to do something).  I'm not talking about me getting upset with the dog that's causing the screaming either.  It's a general anxiety disorder.  The stress I feel is not controllable.  So yes, it does ramp up the dog....which is a problem in a public setting.

If I start feeling anxious in public and begin to have an attack, I can't have my dog react my screaming.  That obviously makes my stress worse, ramps up the dog further, and we have a vicious cycle.

The overall relationship with Mahler has changed since being washed as a candidate.  Our home relationship has always been fine, but the working relationship was not because of all the stress, which of course caused behavioral issues.

Now, being so young, Mahler still has a long way to go, but he now loose leash walks on a chain (not for corrections) and that was actually a very hard thing for him to learn, and we haven't made it to a flat collar quite yet.  He is starting to pick up various objects for me around the house (socks, bones, starting on towels) and is pleased as punch about it.  We have tackled his fear of heights for the most part.

He is a really SWEET puppy, funny and quirky, stable, a bit easily stressed, but again, he is young.  He is definitely not unhappy and is kept busy here, and he's actually best friends with one of my bitches (he seems to think everybody is his buddy).  Heck, he's the youngest dog in my house ever to receive night time bedroom privileges ;)

I have a GSL/ASL  (Ursus/Dallas) female who serves as my hearing ear service dog. She is fairly high drive, and I thought when she was younger that she would never make it as a SD.

Well, when she was 3, she alerted me to a low battery in the smoke alarm at 4 am, without  having been trained for it. She just picked it up from watching my other GSD during training sessions, so I decided to give her a try with public access.

She screams when she sees me pick up my car keys and her vest, and dances around the front hallway like an exuberant pup, but once we're inside a store, she's all business, and follows alongside my grocery buggy with nary a peep.

It all depends on the dog, I guess. If you watched this dog chase a ball with a pack of other dogs, you'd never dream she'd be able to cap her drives enough to do SD work. She's always the first one to get to the ball, an doesn't give it up willingly, either!