STICK HITS IN PROTECTION - Page 2

I assume that the sticks are the same everywhere...Padded sticks.I find it hard to believe that it is possible to injure a dog with those sticks to the extent that the dog walks out of the field limping.Has anyone else seen that?

k9only1, That is not a realistic situation. A hurt dog is a hurt dog. To say that your boys would never accept that is ridiculous. The dog in question is an outstanding dog. He has been tested time and time again. In the US and Germany. The issue is not the dog. I have trained with a lot of dogs. Some good, some bad. Any dog can be made to come off the sleeve if hit in the right spot, or wrong one in this case. Sport Dog, Even though the sticks are relatively soft and padded it can still cause damage if a dog is hit in a sensative spot. The elbow, neck, or just right on the the spine even. When a stick hit is placed proplerly and can be applied with a good deal of pressure and it should not affect the dog. This was not the case in this situation. Shawn

first of all as other posts state any dog .. whehter sport or not should ever be hurt intentionally or unintentionally -- no need to reiterate the other posts --BUT -- i would like to express soemthing : VARTGAS -- i know you are well intentioned on your posr BUT -- you people in Schutzhund , or most of you , have never ever seen a really great protection dog -- and this is the dishaertening aspect of the GSD -- you all know Sch is p[rimarily a minimum rerquirement , and a laughable one at that . just to get a dog to be shown or supposedly breed worthy !! what a farce and hwat hypocrisy -- please be honest and call it the way it is -- all the dog needs to do is to decently bite , out and maybe guard -- this does not make a great GSD -- many many titles are paper titles or weak titles at that ... even from other countires -- paper titles -- i once evaluated a GSD with SCH 3 -- wouldn't even do a short or long bite / wouldn't even rtespond to a helper -- sch 3 miond you -- and thism is not the first time -- just to get the show bucks -- this has severely and i mean severely ruined the GSD.-- in belgium sports and the way the belgiums train , especailly the malinois -- you can hit that dog over the head with a chair and it would not even flinch to come off the bite -- it will crash through almost any object and attack -- now that is bite work -- and this thread is about stick hits wih a flexable soft padded stick and there is concearn -- -- even in ring sport my GSD as pups , with love and kindness are taught to accept bamboo stick hits -- .. and of course never to injure .. lord i wich the GSDD was the way it was in the 1800-1900's -- so much better of a canine.now my intention is not to be critical -- but i pray that i can encourage better breeding --- if anyone is truely knowlegable about the gsd you know what i mean

Alpha, you said it - the way the dogs are trained! A SchH dog is not TRAINED the same way a ring dog is or KNPV or whatever, nor is it a Malinois. Nor can the majority of people handle a dog that will not care if a chair is broken over its head. I would not want such a dog, nope, thank you, keep it. Nor any other creature who is so dense that such an occurrance does not matter to them. And what exactly does it say about a dogs hardness if the tolerace to hits is taught, like you do with your pups? I can, and have fixed dogs with stick problems. With patience. But you can also "teach" that a hard hit with a stick is the lesser evil the dog should accept compared to what would come otherwise. Not really something most dog owners care to do just to show off a dogs limits. The first post does not describe a stick problem. Could be that the dog took an unlucky step so that he came up limping, could be all sort of things, including the helper. If a video was taken that would be easy to establish. I personally would rather have a dog that has enough sense to let up when a certain threshold is reached then to be dumb to the task. But that is just my personal preference. Next time you test a SchH3 dogs, ask when the dog was worked last, and if the dog will work with strangers. If a dog did the SchH3 just before the 2nd birthday and has not worked in 2 years, no wonder. Or even one year. Can you still pass every test you had during your last year in school? Probably not. And to base such a broad assumption on "once", please! I once met a University Professor who could not even tie his own shoe laces... does not mean all or most University Profs cannot tie shoe laces. In the 1800's we did not have a GSD yet, in the 1900's we did not have a legal system as we do today and everyone screaming foul and whoppey that guys dog just made me rich because a tooth grazed me when he licked me.

S VARGAS: IM NOT SURE WHAT DOGS YOU HAVE WORKED WITH,AND DON'T CARE, BUT I'LL PUT MONEY ON MY DOGS, IF THAT WOULD HAVE HAPPEN WITH ONE OF MY BOYS, THAT HELPER WOULD HAVE BEEN IN A REAL FIGHT,BOTH DOGS HAVE BEEN WORKED WITH REAL HELPERS, "KNPV" AND "SCH", DON'T NO WHO THIS LADY DOG IS, ,BUT, IF HER DOG WAS HURT IN THE BITE WORK WITH A PADDED STICK, THEN THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO SAY....

<<>> I can test SchH titled dogs and have some of them come off a sleeve with balloons in my hand instead of a stick, I can hit the best Belgium sports dog over the head with the RIGHT chair not a plastic chair and I guarantee you he will come off. But that's not the point. The point is inexperienced helpers and showboating helpers Injuring dogs needlessly with the stick. We all want a good dog to compete with and some of those want a badass dog to make up for shortcomings elsewhere. But again there is no reason dogs need to be injured to test for courage / fight drive.

The point I was trying to make was best summed up by VHDOOSEK9. All I was saying was any dog can be made to come off. Thats it! Most everyone thinks they have a great dog and some do. Any dog can be trained to take a hit from a chair. That does not mean it will not hurt them. I was not debating a what kind of dog anyone has. Schutzhund dogs are trained with a padded stick, as you all said. Given the right training Im sure her dog could take a chair too. What the hell does that prove. I dont see what the big deal is if your dog is that tough. We were not debating how tough our dogs our. It was a question of stick hits. Nobody gives a crap if your dog can be hit with a chair. If you want to brag about your dog start a new thread.

K9only -- i think you understand my thought process -- i am not advocating a dog be abused or hit hard with any object or ovely aggressive and out of control due to extreeme hardness -- nor should helpers be inexperienced /foolish -- the point as you see it is that a padded stcik / unless the dog was abused / should not come off the bite with good training and breeding -- too many Sch dogs are put through the system and they DO NOT have it to do protection work -- and i can attest many a GSD with temperamnet problems got Sch 1 just to be able to be bred /show/ someone to make money -- so two factors the gentics and the training -- but a padded stick - assuming used correctly - a dog have problems ?? --beleive me a KNVP / belgium ring tilte/ french ring tilte PSA title /mondio ring title -- it mcan do protection work and a padded stick -- the dog would laugh at you -- you GSD breeders -- please evaluate your program if one of your dogs failed to get one of those titles -- then you wouldn't worry about a padded pliable stick --- DH you are correct other varaibles in that specific incident could ahve occured -- and for the record my pups are conditioned to a stick and it never a choice of different evils --- they are conditioned in a kind gentle loving manner BTW if i hit myself i wouldn't hurt myself with the hits administered ---- and later when they see and hear the stick -- they can't wait to encounter the helper ---again my post was an intention to slip in the poor breeding practices leading to poor GSDs-- but without being indingnant -- no a dog should not be ballistic -- i have talked to many officers and stated that you do not need a nutzo crazed dog to do police work -- but the stress level and the gentetic base for a GSD should be there AND as a whole it is NOT-- now in my opinion if a person doesn't want a dog with a certain moderate hardness and agression then they should consider another breed --but don't go ruin the gsd --what did Max v. Stephantiz state -- the GSD is to work -- and i am sure he didn't mean look pretty and run around a ring or pick apples

i think more happened than a hard stick hit.if the dog limped off the field, chances are it was caused by either the helper stepping on the dogs leg or the dog stepping on something that injured his leg. if this is a proven dog as stated before, and it engaged the helper during the courage test i would hate to think it came off the sleeve due to a hit from the padded stick, no matter where he got hit. during a training session one night i saw an expierienced police k9 with several street bites and tough as nails come off the sleeve.he engaged the helper on a wooden dock and during the fight he steped on a loose plank that gave way under him. the dog let go of the sleeve in a heart beat because he had never expierienced this before. after a couple of seconds he tried to reengage the helper.

<>>> That IS the point that K9chess made, that the dog was abused, if it was injured twice by stick hits, twice at WDA events. And yet no problems at the USA event...hey they must have much more experienced helpers. So as far as PSA, KNPV, SchH, NVBK, etc, etc,....that's another thread.