Here we go again - Page 4

"Under IPO rules a dog that does not out fails just as completely as one that does not engage."
Do you even know WHY ?

Stage fright = weak nerves = not breed worthy .

Stage fright can be weak nerves or it can also be not enough practice on that particular stage and with that size crowd. In sports it is called the home field advantage. Many of the comments attributed the dogs actions to fear of the helper which is BS. I can teach any dog to take a hit from a helper or to bite a sleeve if you start them correctly and use IPO rules. The dog quickly learns there is no real hitting and that there is no real threat in IPO trials. It is no trick at all to teach an IPO dog to bite harder when the stick appears. Likewise if the training is faulty in the beginning and the dog loses confidence because of sloppy or incorrect training as a 6 month old the repairs to that dog's confidence may never be complete. The IPO world equates a dog's breed worth with the level of training and the competence of the dog's owner in selecting at what stage and how difficult to make the training for a young dog that is often started in bite work before ready mentally or physically. Some of the dogs in the videos had physical problems that should make them poor choices for breeding but their actions on that field on that day are a product of past training mistakes and success independent of their breed worth. Don't blame the dog for the stupidity of humans unless you know more than what an IPO title can tell you. Some of the so called "success" story BSP and WUSV competitor dogs are absolute nut cases but just on the other end of the spectrum .. difficult to know if those dogs are mentally off because of genetics or obsessive compulsive training and methods applied by their equally obsessive compulsive human trainers. By the way, dogs with weak nerves have been known to bite everything including their trainers when pushed too far so weak nerves is not indicated by unwillingness to bite shall we say a child or a puppy.

" I can teach any dog to take a hit from a helper or to bite a sleeve if you start them correctly and use IPO rules. The dog quickly learns there is no real hitting and that there is no real threat in IPO trials. It is no trick at all to teach an IPO dog to bite harder when the stick appears."

I`m out of this discussion...

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't show a GSD at the BSZS (or any other show or trial for that matter) unless I was very sure that dog was trained and wasn't going to fail.

Bubba, what do you do with your dogs to determine they are breed worthy?

This is a bunch of malarkey; 'Stage fright can be weak nerves or it can also be not enough practice on that particular stage and with that size crowd. In sports it is called the home field advantage. '

I'm not trying to win any argument, I don't need to. But I do want to make sure any one reading here is not misinformed by these excuses for a dog's poor performance. I've been up and down back and forth across this continent with multiple species performing at venues never before visited...with zero practice. I didn't even 'practice ' on any of the unfamiliar fields I trialed my dogs on, which was every field I took them to....NO problems!
I didn't need to practice with any sch dogs I trained, nor any of my horses, Brahman bulls, performing dogs...and we preformed in 'new' places such as big auditoriums with black house and spot lights in front of Thousands of people in the audience...I never had to practice because any animal I took on the road to perform in my acts were sound in temperament = solid nerves. That includes my gsds. A sound dog with strong nerves does not need to rehearse at a new venue in front of the crowd...a sound dog with strong nerves can go to the moon and perform without any hesitation or apprehensions. They don't need to rehearse every where they are taken to be able to perform up to snuff if they are a true to standard gsd.

Joanro .. Your dogs meet your standards which are obviously higher than IPO as all the dogs in the video clips were already IPO titled as I understood the videos. My point is that an IPO title does not give any real picture of the dog's genetic worth as a breeding individual and is primarily a reflection of the nutrition and environment the dog was reared and trained in plus genetics. If every puppy you have sold was correctly reared and trained by the buyer and new owner then you have had a much better experience than I have had with humans rearing dogs. Most humans want to blame genetics for every fault that their puppy or dog has when many and most are created by the owner. Dogs get blamed for being what their ignorant human owners reared and trained them to be .. it's just that most don't know what it is they are training and asking their dog's to be. In my world if my dogs don't do something I know they can do it is not a genetic fault in the dog .. it is my fault for not training them correctly because I know my dog's family behaviors for three or four generations back very well. When I look at a puppy or dog and their actions and personality I see the traits handed down from parents, grand parents, and in some great grand parents. The dogs that place top 3 at the IPO, WUSV, BSP, or the BSZS are not the best dogs for breeding GSD in the world .. they are just the ones with the best trainers, those with the right political backers, best on that day and with those judges. When the scores from the WUSV 2015 are observed there are many dogs (32) that apparently are representative of the holy GSD standard as professed by the SV that failed in one or more event even though they had practiced for years with the exact same three events held as close as possible to exactly the same each time. IPO does not define the GSD as a breed nor does it define breed worth .. it's just a game that people have their dogs play and then they attach importance and worth to this totally human contrived game with which to undervalue those dogs which do not play their game. Picking the right game for the dog is just as important as picking the right dog for the game.

Joan, I agree with you, but you do a lot with your dogs. I will give *some* benefit of the doubt to some dogs who live in crates or kennels and never have the privilege of "life" experience. They are not, regardless of genetics, going to appear as strong as a dog who has the benefit of an owner who allows them to experience life at their sides. I can take my dogs anywhere without a worry as I do it regularly. But a dog who lives kenneled except for training a couple times per week and always at the same field will be at a disadvantage regardless of whether they're weak-nerved or not.

I do agree with that, Jenni. But if that's the affect of being crated and no exposure, or genetic weak nerves, the results are the same. So therefore, as bubba pointed out, IPO is not a good way of determining soundness and breed worthiness. How would one know if its genetic poor nerves or environmentally poor nerves. Its the same to me,as I believe either will have an affect on genetics passed onto offspring.