protection work!!! SHATTERED! - Page 1

Hey need some advice, my dog, is 1 and a bit yrs old, he will be 2 by the end of the year. to cut a long story short, ive been workin with a one on one trainer who specialises in miliatry protection work, and ive spent the past 5 months doing obediance work, to the point where my dog is now under full control. we had schedulled to start the protection training today, but my traINER pulled the plug and said that my dog is not old enough or mature enough to start that type of training. he said that by the time he is 2 and a half yrs of age, he will be ready mentally to begin the training. he said at such a young age it is so demanding that we could do the training from now, the dog will obviously respond to the training, but he will view everyhting we do at this age as a game, and not grasp the training in real life situations. He also went on to say that it could damage my dog mentally at such a young age with such intense training. im extremely disapointed as ive bacially done all this training to get to this point where we can begin the defence./protection training.
can someone share their opinion on the matter, whether my trainer is being a little conservative in not wanting to push the dog? and whether i can do any work in the mean time maybe build his agression? any response would be greatly apreciated!

I dont know your trainer but if you like him and trust him I would heed his advice. My GSD is only 16 months old and she is definetly not mentally mature enough to handle the stress that is involved in training such a dog. I know for a fact that if I had a trainer that I valued and trusted and he/she gave me their honest opinion on my dogs training I would certainly listen. I dont know much about training for PPD as mine is currently starting schutzhund but what would you do if you started him to soon and got ruined mentally from all the stress ? I know I couldnt deal with it.


JMO  :D
Cath

 Have you ever seen how the military trains ??

Join a Sch club.

 Have your dog evaluated by at least 2 other very experienced protection sports trainers (schutzhund, knvp, ring, etc).

The necessary drives required for any type of protection work should already be present, apparent and being slowly developed. If present they can slowly and carefully be worked on starting “yesterday”.
If not present then maybe that is the reason this person is “backing off”.

Good luck,

K.

www.geraldguay.ca

What is your goal with the protection work. Are you trying to get a Schutzhund title, or do you want a personal protection dog?

I was thinking along the same lines as Koach, get the dog revaluated by another trainer and see what they are thinging
Maybe your trainer is trying to let you down gentle about your dogs potential,
Good luck

Do you agree that your 6 year old son can drive the car, he can reach the pedals. I am reading from this you are not training your dog for sport, but for serious/pp work. I am not trying to insult anyone, but this is like going to ride the bumper cars with your child, vs letting your kid drive on the freeway. I would talk to him and see what prep work you can work on. Each Trainer is different, each dog is different. If this gentelman knows what he is doing, I would ask for truth and take his advise.

Hmm.

m kind of on Heidi's side with this.  If you have used this trainer for this long you obviously must trust them so why not follow the game plan.  I see that you are doing military protection work as opposed to just regular PP work and that may have something to do with it as well.  From what I was told military protection work is a lot harder and requires more work.  If you trust them then stick with it.  Your impatience is just that, yours and you have to think about the dog first.

Now you can always go and seek another trainer but beware of twhat could happen.  The new trainer will wonder why you are leaving your previous trainer and they may talk seperately about you and the dog.  New trainer may agree with your old trainer and suggest you go back to him, turn you down or could say "ok I will do it but I don't advise it."

OR

New trainer may not care and could just want your money and will do it even knowing your dog isn't ready for it.  They may not care if your dog is ruined b/c they are doing what YOU want.

You seem pretty hell bent on doing it right away so I am sure your mind is pretty much made up.  Do as you see best but don't let your impatience ruin a good dog.  Also take this into consideration, you could speak to a few other trainers for their opinion but Im sure it will get back to your current trainer.  That could ruin your relationship with him.  Keep this in mind.  It is one thing if you know the guy is horrible at training but I don't think that is the case.

cheers thanks for all the advice guys, in regards to Nellie, my trainer is a very straight forward and honest bloke, and he has told me like he told me yesteday that my dog is not naturally tough but does have enough potential to still do this type of training. apreciate all the replies, i was just hoping someone could tell me if theyve done protection work, and how old their dogs were when they started, and what type of work does it involve that makes it so stressful for the dog, just so i can understand, becuase he wouldnt go into detail as to why the works so hard!