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Prey monkeys?

71K views 241 replies 31 participants last post by  cliffson1 
#1 ·
So there has been a lot of discussion on here about dogs with an abundance of prey drive or "prey monkeys".
This brings to mind a question? If the prey drive is coupled with a strong nerve base is this really such a bad thing?

What brings this to mind is discussion elsewhere in which Mike Suttle showed some video of dogs he was testing. In most cases the dogs showed no defence/civil aggression despite taking enormous amounts of pressure while on the bite. Infact they clearly remain in an elevated state of drive.

He also mentioned that he noticed the dogs that tended to be higher on the defensive/civil end of the spectrum tended to ultimately fall apart when truly pressured.
He characterized these dogs as social, possessive, high object drive and strong nerves.

If you watch the vids the dogs are what many would call prey monkeys, high pitched barking/screaming, lightning fast entries followed by intense biting behaviors. No growling, shifting on the bite, just a dog biting in prey and fighting well on the bite.

I have 3 such dogs at my local club all males. 2 are littermates very strong nerves great biting behavior the 3rd is a 4 yr old male sch3 also strong nerves and biting behavior.

I have seen all these dogs take pressure that most would cringe at and nothing fazes them or removes their desire to bite. The challenge faced by their IPO handlers is that nothing fazes the dogs at all, thus creating the strong deep barking and the "serious" appearance in protection is difficult.
Yet the dogs will bite you no doubt about that.

The 4 yr old male loses points for his high pitched barking keeping him in the 280s. There have been offers made for the younger males by local PDs so they may be headed towards a real work situation if the handlers decide to sell.

So perhaps the perception on here that "preymonkeys" or whatever you want to call them are useless for work needs to be revisited.
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Prey drive dogs are really where it's at IMO. I prefer them to bite with a "no way I'm coming off this edge." I don't think dogs should be worked in defense unless they're lacking that edge and need it to send them over the top towards becoming truly great. Otherwise you're somewhat running a risk of creating a potential time bomb dog that decides to snap to relieve perceived pressure. Being able to easily push a dog into defense is IMO a fault on the part of the dog. Should qualify I'm talking about sport dogs btw.
 
#3 ·
For sport dogs, a prey monster will exhibit the awesome behaviors for sport. You can train them to show more aggression through prey behavior even. But in terms of what I personally want, I would rather have the dog bark at the man than at the sleeve. When the helper throws the sleeve to the ground and steps away from it, I want my dog to follow the man and not just stare at the dead sleeve on the ground and bark. Especially in IPO, I would much rather have my dog show active aggression in the blind while barking than a squeaky high pitched prey bark. It's just my own personal preference. Maybe because my female is small and a prey monster herself, but is pretty balanced with some good aggression too. And I'd rather see her be able to work confidently in her aggression where she should than revert to prey.

I think a lot of people would be surprised at what their dog would do when the helper teases them in prey, then tosses the sleeve across the field. Watch how many of those dogs will turn their back to the helper and continue to bark at that sleeve. Yes, there are some dogs that will stay barking at the helper and bite whatever is presented, but I think more often than not, the handler will be surprised by the dogs reaction.
 
#5 ·
Nailed it! I'm seeing very little active aggression in the IPO dogs. You're example with throwing the sleeve is a good one. We did this recently to a dog. The dog kept barking at the sleeve while the helper walked clear around and started tapping the handler on the shoulder. Where was the dog? Fixated on the sleeve.

The high pitched prey bark, can also be a training issue. Puppies get started at 8 weeks with rag work/ flirt pole then worked all the way through. They never get a chance to mature and develop any other drives. People tend to not wait until dogs are older anymore before bringing puppies out. So all they learn is this prey bark. The trend also seems to be only working puppies/young dogs in prey. I prefer a balanced approach. A good dog can be brought up developing more than just prey drive.
 
#4 ·
Sleeve chasing has more to do with training than what drive the dog bites in. You can have dogs give live bites out of prey easily. You can have them manhunt out of prey easily. Some wont necessarily have the drive edge or experience to stick it out in a real brawl but the good ones do.
 
#6 ·
mycobraracr~ you seem to have a good head on your shoulder when it comes to working dogs..

Just wanted to say this.. The fixated on the sleeve can also be a training issue.. especially when the dogs are taught that at a young age!
 
#65 ·
mycobraracr~ you seem to have a good head on your shoulder when it comes to working dogs.
Thanks!


I love video heres Mike testing a female 13 month old Mal with no prior bitework experience. All prey here, yet we know the majority of dogs would bail on this test. These are x mals but he has a few of GSDs too if anyone cares too look.

miki logan haus kennels - YouTube

And another

Ivo bitework inside.MOV - YouTube



For those asking questions about defense heres what a quick video search yeilded. There are better examples so if anyone has better please post.

Defense, shallower bites and you can see that if enough pressure is applied the dogs will likely fall apart.

Caucasian Ovcharka - Black and white Li?ti?ka - YouTube

Central Asian Ovtcharka SHANGOO - YouTube

Less obvious but a little more pressure and this dog will likely run. Some prey here too.

GHANDI von Arlett o filme de 2004 - YouTube

I'm not sure what the last videos where showing. You can't really say that all "defensive" bites are frontal/shallow bites. Nerve would have a lot to do with it IMO. That being said, we talk about prey and defense but what about active aggression? Is it prey or defense? Is it a grey area? The terminology isn't really important. I would rather see a dog not overly prey driven but not overly defensive either. I know this is confusing but like many of you have said, when you see it, you know.

Your first couple videos are nice. I have seen these before. One thing I noticed though is that all the pressure is coming once the dog is already on the bite. The bite is a "safe place" for a lot of dogs. Also picking the dog up and throwing it around is how I bring up my personal puppies in my play. Falling on them picking them up by their skin, swinging them around and into objects. My last two puppies didn't come off either. Now I wasn't as aggressive as this decoy but mine were also only 8-16 weeks old when I started it. For me it was conditioning while here it was a test.
 
#7 ·
It's very often a training issue and it's not that I care a whole lot. The standard has ranges, physical and mental. A strong prey dog with good thresholds and nerves can be every bit as important to the breed as one that isn't. But as they say, "prey bites don't hurt" :) you hear the bad guys say that all the time. LOL

People can talk about "the old days" when dogs weren't worked young and there was more pressure and the picture on trial day was a lot different in terms of how the dog looked, as it should have been.

Today?? there is a lot more precision, and people can say what they want about the dogs back then, i they looked so strong and "hard" and on "edge" because that's the way people trained and you could get away with it. I don't however think the best back then were much different than the best today other than the way they were trained.

My dog needs to be active in the blind. I'd prefer good aggressive barking. Now give me a helper within 5 hours drive I can work with to maintain that over 4-6 years of trialing :) I find out about dogs in training. When it's learned to have control and aggression in a blind and I can walk it around and into a corner and then come down on it hard, how does it respond? Now I know about my dog.

How does my dog look after its 5th SchH III trial and years of training and a few thousand hold and barks in a blind?? well if he's any good, he probably knows what's going on by now and his bark wont' be as serious at 7 as it was at 3. Is he less of a dog? or did I just run out of ways to keep his "edge" after 4 years of trialing?

and you can get focus on a man and good barking thru prey with really good dogs. To keep and maintain aggression is a fine line and takes a good dog along with a good helper. For some if they know what their dog is already and they don't have the helper to maintain it, they just use what works. IS the dog less because of it and how it looks on trial day?

Trials are what they are, you can prove your training thru them. I believe I've said it before, you learn about the dogs in training.
 
#8 · (Edited)
ask "If the prey drive is coupled with a strong nerve base is this really such a bad thing?"

answer -- no problem , a dog with a strong nerve base can switch into the other drives without loosing his confidence and may increase in power .
the dog without the strong nerve base who is able to over ride , temporarily , through prey excitement will loose that confidence , back down , run off , or go into that zone out of panic where he appears strong (but isn't) and can not be directed or controlled. In essence the prey monkey goes ape .

further --- the difficulty is to discover whether the high prey is due to high drives , found naturally , and balanced by equally high drive resources in active aggression / fight , and controllability, OR whether the prey drive that you see is a learned behaviour.

question/point " high pitched barking/screaming, lightning fast entries followed by intense biting behaviors"

answer --- that describes the Thuringian , although in extreme --- bet you anything that if you took the pedigree and looked at it this portion of the ancestry of the breed would be abundant -- too much
That screaming can be before there is "action" and noise along the entire exercise -- this is stress , the dog can't cap , is over the top , on the edge of control

question/point "great biting behavior" and "The 4 yr old male loses points for his high pitched barking keeping him in the 280s"

answer ---- there is so much more to a dog than the biting behaviour . I would like judges to access social behaviour more --
and the 4 year old did not just loose 20 points more or less for high pitch barking , the judge (s) saw other behaviour that was concomitant , nerve , loss of focus , something not desirable.

don't know any PDs looking for dogs at the local sports field --- they don't want sleeve training, most prefer no bite work which they will have to undo. Interesting .
 
#9 · (Edited)
I want nothing to do with an all prey dog. That being said, I want very high prey drive, balanced with very high aggression. The nerve strength is needed to keep the aggression under self-control and only used appropriately.

The problem with a dog that works in all prey in real life, is that prey is a blinding, lustful, indulgent state of mind for the dog. They can appear courageous or hard simply because the state of prey blinds them to what is going on. When something negative happens in the real world that is able to pierce that wall of prey drive, the dog suddenly comes out of prey and is forced to work in defensive drives. If the prey monster is never trained in anything but prey, you cannot say much about what its defensive side will look like.

For example, I can train a prey monster to bite someone for real, and get them to do it when its "for real", but if the aggressor were to say... stab the dog in the side with a knife, the immense pain stimuli will knock that prey drive down... if the dog had little defensive/aggression that will likely be a disengagement. The dog with strong aggression will work through the pain stimuli. A dog with ideal aggression will fight *even harder*. You can see the same sort of thing in training when a dog gets jammed, a paw stepped on, a really hard tongue/lip bite and they disengage and are hesitant to re-engage. An ideal PP dog in that scenario will keep engaging

Just my two cents :)
 
#10 ·
Blitzkrieg,
Since I was part of that discussion on the WDF, I'll add my two cents worth. Regarding the dogs seeing the sleeve instead of the man as prey, part of the original discussion was that this type of dogs was described as having non-classical prey drive, in which, genetically, they tend to see the man as prey and not the equipment. This trait is not related to training or civil aggression. Also, the concept of gameness was discussed, with these dogs showing behavior toward man, similar to what a game bred dog might show toward a dog or another animal. The quality of anger or defensive aggression is not there and the man is the object of the prey drive. Also, the dogs discussed are KNPV Mals and DS's, which could have some bull and terrier blood in them somewhere along the line. The discussion mentioned this type of dog is rare, and IMO, rarer in the GSD. Re: the Thuringian lines, that is an interesting question, as the breeds of Mal, DS, and GSD might have had closer roots 100 years ago.
 
#11 ·
Chip, you have a link to that discussion? I'm a member of that forum, can't find the thread.

Blitz, so glad you've started this thread. I've really wanted to talk about these "high prey" dogs. Anyone around here that mentions they have a dog with high prey, seems to be met with talk equating it to a dog with no civil drive.

I've seen one dog with extreme high prey, and high defense, and high nerve threshold. Most helpers could not push him into defense. His bark was "deep," even in prey. His grip was killer, control was awesome, just an awesome dog (he's a top stud dog right now for his breed).

So what about dogs with high prey, but high nerve and pain thresholds, that just don't seem to take most decoys seriously? Sounds like a fine dog to work to me. :)

I also wonder about what baillif said about working a dog in defense all the time. Defense is stressful, right? Wouldn't it be better if the preferred drive is prey (by the dog), but it can switch nicely to defense? I also don't think all prey barks are "screaming" but I see lots of rotties worked, they don't really have a "screaming" bark.

I saw a dutchie worked on a table that switched beautifully between the two drives. That seems ideal to me, balanced and able to switch. So many seem to really love that their dogs are so defensive/civil. I'm not picking on that, I'm just curious as to why? Why would we want civil/defense to be the dog's default? Honestly just curious and trying to learn. I would think that a dog that HAS defense is good, but his nerves are high so that he doesn't have to switch into defense very often.

Another question, what about dogs that people say "love the fight." I do believe this exists, I just would like to hear more about this. Is it really the "fight" or is it the "game of the fight?" That they love? Does the dog truly LIKE being in defense, or does it like this game of "fight" with the decoy. How can a dog like being defensive (and in turn stressed or feeling it needs to defend itself?

I know I asked a lot of questions, but I really hope someone will take the time to talk it out with me. I've been thinking about this for awhile.

PS: I also agree that a lot of sleeve guarding can be due to training. If the helper/decoy makes a point to NOT let that happen, I think it can be curtailed. I've seen it both created and made extinct, although I think it is created a LOT...going back to Onyxgirl pointing out people trying to train helpers better in that other thread. Helpers need to not create that to begin with, or when they see it starting, start training against it (obviously some dogs will just default to it).
 
#12 ·
DaniFani,

A dog that has very strong nerves does not mean it does not "need" defense or would chose to work in prey. A dog with extremely strong nerves can (and in my opinion it is desirable) choose to work in aggression (as in, not a fear induced defensive drive, but an active forward defensive desire to fight/beat the helper). I don't lump all forms of defense into "defense". There are atleast two clear types... actual defensive drive and the percieved need to defend itself, and forward/active defense, or what I call aggression, which is the *desire* to be offensive... its not "in self defense", its what an MMA fighter experiences when he fights. A desire and love to be dominate and overpower/control ones opponent. This is something deeply rooted in the male of pretty much all species.
 
#13 ·
Huh. Interesting, thanks. I didn't mean that a dog with strong nerves wouldn't "need" defense. Defense is one of the core necessities to all life in all species (reproduction, food, defense/survival). I was asking more about a dog that goes into defense faster than a dog that will prefer prey for a while.

So, how do you tell the difference between a dog in "self defense" and a dog fighting out of a "desire" to be offensive? Couldn't choosing to be offensive be considered a "game" to the dog? If he was truly "serious" it would be out of self defense/fear of harm, right? Not that the bite will feel much different, just curious how you tell.
 
#14 ·
It is under the police/military forum on WDF and the thread is "buying/selling." One point the breeder was making was that the lines he now breeds for police dogs, including dual purpose dogs, have individuals that are extreme in prey, very strong nerves, social, and really lack civil aggression and have an extremely high threshold for defensive aggression. He mentioned these dogs are not good for perimeter/property protection because they are so social. Based on the video I saw, it didn't look these dogs could be pushed into defensive aggression. Some would call it fight drive. Others referred to non-classical prey drive and gameness in an effort to capture the trait or traits motivating these dogs to stay in the fight, despite taking what most dogs would consider serious pressure. I think these dogs would also tolerate pain without going into defense as well. That is why the breeder compared them to game bred pit bulls in terms of their tenacity. But they didn't appear to be angry or stressed at all.
 
#16 · (Edited)
Just a couple of points while I sit under winter storm "Titan".....
First, prey drive is very important to protection training. No "real" dog lacks prey drive. What I have mostly objected to over the years is the way the dogs are played with in protection and I think people have wrongly demonized prey drive by interchanging the two terms. I very well could have done that as well while objecting to how people train. I think the one aspect that has suffered the most over the years is the nerve strength and we see more dogs with lower thresholds. Many are easier to reach or disturb now, versus the dogs who were harder to ignite. I think if I had to sit and think about it, I would say the dogs years ago were tougher and harder dogs and they would really bring the fight when threatened. However, that fighting behavior we all like to see is in part, prey drive.

Some of those dogs years ago had more social aggression and were protective in a more maternal way...whether male or female, they were looking out for their handler and home. I think some people have made the mistake of labeling dogs like that as defensive...meaning they are protecting themselves, but there was a very distinct difference that is not really easy to put in writing. I guess maternal is the best I can do. I have seen a shift toward more balanced dogs the last few years and have worked some very good ones. I also see more protective dogs and that is not a bad trend if it is what I just talked about.

When the idea of using the prey instinct was first introduced, there was quite an uproar about it in Germany. There were calls for protecting the "protective instinct" in the breed and not turning the dogs into something they should not be. In reality, even those protective dogs back then had strong prey instincts but as I already said, it wasn't play. Bernhard Mannel was the first to talk about the prey instinct and then Helmut took the ball and ran with it. Helmut was not talking about all prey work however. He was talking about channeling the aggression into the prey....the prey could be the sleeve or it could be the man. What many people started doing is just prey work and "rewarding" the dog by slipping the sleeve and allowing the dog to carry it all over the place. In so doing, I think the dogs who would engage for a reward, or to take possession of the sleeve, were rewarded with points, while the dogs with the courage to take on the man, were somewhat pushed aside. It was easy for people to grasp the idea of the method without truly understanding what they were doing, or why. That lack of understanding persists. We have more dogs now who will go for the sleeve but if it came down to a fight with the man....then, not so much.

Many helpers didn't seem to have the ability to get the dog in drive and I still see this as the biggest weakness in helpers now. They don't read the dogs well and they reinforce dogs who are working at less than optimal drive levels. That leads to all kinds of problems down the road. When a good dog is working at the right level of drive,( all of the protection drives), everything works. The grip is hard and full, they bark and guard well, are confident and they are more compliant. I think many helpers now are a bit on the lazy side. While just running around with no purpose is a mistake, running/movement and making prey attractions, is absolutely necessary. You can also trigger aggression that way as well. There is more than one road to aggression and prey work, done correctly, can take you there with some dogs because there is aggression in the prey instinct.

Most still do not seem to understand the purpose of the carry, ( some dogs should not carry), or just how bored dogs can get when they are "rewarded" by a helper who simply hands them that sleeve. Words are powerful and when the term "reward" was used, it had a way of changing the behavior in the helpers. Same for the term " helper". They started doing a bit too much helping.

I do think if you want your SchH dog to do really well in protection, you should spend much less time having them bite prey objects as puppies and youngsters, and more time allowing them to bark at the helper without a bite. Age matters and we were right years ago. Waiting to start your young dog is the best way to go. They will have all the drives for the helper to work with when they are older and that includes prey drive. I have seen plenty of very "serious" dogs who also have a ton of prey drive. Like I said, that is a very important part of any kind of protection training but the helper needs to tap into the rest of the dog as well and then channel it.

Mostly, it's a matter of the helper being able to raise and bring out all the drives we use in protection. How accessible it is for the helper is always the problem and always has been. The helper must have the skill and this seems to be why people are selecting the more easily stimulated dogs.
People who have trained with me talk about my so called "presence". The dogs are really effected by me but what most miss entirely, is the amount of prey work I am doing. You can't put pressure without releasing it somehow. They are "just dogs" after all. Like us, there is only so much crap they can take and while nature can be brutal, many helpers do not seem to grasp working the dog in a more natural way that the dog can understand.

As I have said before, years ago the pendulum was all the way to the defense work side of the coin, then it swung all the way over to prey work and now, I am hoping it will swing more toward the middle. The GSD was intended to be a medium threshold dog and I hope we start seeing more of those again.
 
#17 ·
Pretty sure my brain just exploded...

Can someone dumb down the differences between these drives for me please?
Prey is different than defense which is different than aggression...

Prey I think of running something down to eat it.
Defense...defending?
Aggression...attacking?

Isnt the goal of a defensive dog to attack? It might be the terminology that is tripping me up. Sorry! :help:
 
#19 ·
The most important is food drive. It directly serves the role to encourage behaviors that sustain life
Prey drive is a drive who's ultimate drive goal is to catch the prey... which in turn satisfies the drive goal of food drive.
Defensive drive directly serves the role of encouraging behaviors that preserve life.

The goal of a defensive dog is to make the threat go into avoidance. This is why a defensive bite is generally quick, with the front teeth, and let go of immediately... its a "see what I'll do to you if you don't get away from me". They *want* to create space between the threat and themselves. Aggression does *not* want to create space, it wants to control and force the other party into submission. Never is a dog 100% purely in one drive or another... when someone says "that dog is working in prey", they mean, that is the drive most prominent. These are terms we use to pigeon whole the state of mind of the dog into one box or another but real life isn't that simple.
 
#18 ·
OH YES how many times have I said this "I do think if you want your SchH dog to do really well in protection, you should spend much less time having them bite prey objects as puppies and youngsters, and more time allowing them to bark at the helper without a bite. Age matters and we were right years ago. Waiting to start your young dog is the best way to go"
and this "Age matters and we were right years ago. Waiting to start your young dog is the best way to go. They will have all the drives for the helper to work with when they are older and that includes prey drive."
exactly what I told Journeys people to do -- go live a normal life first .

There is too much training the behaviour and not training the dog.

A pet peeve is young dogs worked in prey, not that part, this part , then the decoy throws the tug at the dog , when the dog should pull forward into the prey object , and have some resistance .

Yes "The GSD was intended to be a medium threshold dog and I hope we start seeing more of those again. " said it the other day -- the intermediate irritability dog . You can't be so dull and you can't be to sitmulated.
Used to be a word "sharpness" which people misinterpret as an aggressive response to stress. It means an awareness , doesn't miss a trick , and then act accordingly.

nice to see you again Vandal --
 
#20 ·
Anne,
That was an informative post, as I know you have seen the changes over the years. It reminded me of a night, probably about 15 years ago, when I had the chance to listen to Dean Caulderon while he was training with another top level schH trainer/handler. There were just a few of us there and he emphasized the importance or getting your pup out early and starting all phases as young as possible. At the time, I didn't know any better. And I think his frame of reference was strictly from a competition point of view. I came to realize, there is also incentive for many of the top sport people in terms of financial gain in the way of seminars, etc, to get people out early with their pups. Of course, the top competitors rarely even mess with pups.
Also, the discussion on the other forum involved KNPV lines of Mals and DS's and they definitely take a different approach than the Germans in laying the foundation for a dog's bitework.
Meldy,
It can be confusing. I suggest going to Schutzhund Village and looking under Armin's articles to get at least one set of terms that I think make sense.
 
#21 ·
So the goal of an IPO dog is to get the threat into avoidance and that's usually where their training stops whereas a PPD dog will pursue it after that? And that part is a defense/aggression drive.
Does prey come in with the actual running down of the 'bad guy' or is the whole process something of a prey in that the dog is performing a routine for a reward?
 
#23 ·
IPO is a sport where the goal is to achieve maximum points.

A dog exhibiting defensive behavior is trying to make the aggressor go into avoidance
 
#22 ·
Meldy,
Just to confuse you further, Hunter says a defensive bite is usually quick and with the front of the dog's mouth. I understand his point, but in the stronger dogs, there is strong active defensive aggression and strong prey drive with the dog biting in defense and still having a very confident, full mouthed grip, and not letting go. A dog is not just in one drive or another. They can and do overlap.
 
#24 ·
Correct, but as you said, that is active defensive aggression (which I call "aggression") and the influence of prey that are making the bite full and calm. It is the defensive-influence that brings the power into the grip.

lol I also just said, a dog is never 100% anything.
 
#26 ·
As an example Meldy, if I take an otherwise strong IPO dog with a full calm grip and *really* put some pressure on him bringing him closer to his threshold for handling stress, you will see the dog's grip begin to deteriorate and be more like the shallow primarily defensive grip. At this point, the dog no longer thinks he can win against this opponent and is reverting to more of a defensive mode. This is not a state of mind we wish to train in
 
#33 ·
Man I hate nit-picking... but prey isn't *always* triggered by motion (just very easily triggered by motion). Strictly speaking, its triggered by acting like prey, and often prey freezes and hopes it is not seen. When prey does move, its generally rapid stop and go motion... like how squirrels, rabbits, deer, etc move. When my dog sees a perfectly still deer that thinks its not spotted, it is infact deeply prey drive that my dog is skyrocketing into... the deer, is completely unmoving, not even blinking. A helper can do the same thing with a dogs.
 
#29 ·
Going back to the OP, the dogs being discussed could not be pressured enough to push them into defense, but that type of dog is not common. This type of dog's traits are largely genetic and not the influence of training. Other types of dogs will be more the product of training and genetics.
 
#30 ·
I wouldn't worry so much about the terminology and worry more about seeing behaviors in dogs that YOU want to live with. Just the term "defense" means so many things to ever have a meaningful converstation about it. Myself, I don't want a defensive anything to show in my dog ever. To me, it shows great worry and a fight for it's life. If I get that reaction from doing schutzhund, it's time to get a different dog.

I'd I can live with terms like "real" or "false" aggression. One I like, one I don't. I like confidence, a dog that is in prey and gets his ass kicked and stays in the fight to me is confident and has the nerve to stay in the fight. Defense? I think defense is fight or flight. Could it come into play in some situations? Sure. Should it be something you're working in or near in IPO or anything really on a regular basis? If you are, why is your dog so worried about a situation its been in more than a few times????

I think prey drive is pretty well defined, but then you still have people that want to break it down into ball drive and tug drive and play drive and any other names they can think of. I prefer to think of drive and thresholds. Does a tug excite the prey drive? still prey drive. Does a dog hate balls and tugs, but likes to chase rabbits? it's not play and prey to me, it's all prey, it's just the rabbit hits a threshold a ball doesn't.

Fight drive? active aggression, false aggression, active defense aggression, active aggression, You'll go crazy trying to figure out what they all mean :) I'd spend more time looking at dogs and their behaviors than what some words mean to some people because these debates about definitions have been going on since the dawn of dog training and still haven't been agreed upon :)
 
#37 ·
The arguement always seems to bring in whether or not a dog will fight through a stabbing or not and its silly. Only way to know for sure is stab the dog.

I do know for the purposes of higher ringsport competition it takes a special bitey SOB to make it to the higher levels. The kind that can take a max blast from a e collar to whistle recall off a decoy and still have the dog left in him to keep going for the decoy despite past possible consequences. To push through barrages and obsticles and heavy acessories to get the bites and stay on despite pressure. Takes a dog that has an edge and a strong spirit and it isnt common. That dog isnt going to care if hes pressured or if you break a stick over his head.
 
#40 ·
YOu don't have to stab a dog, but if you see a dog become unsettled or disengage because of a stomped on paw, a jam from the helper, a broken tooth or hole through their tongue or cheek, thats a dog that can't take the stress.

As far as the ecollar on full for a call-off, I'd call that a training issue.
 
#44 ·
All dogs have a limit to what they can take. Given enough stimulation over and extended time, all dogs, and all people, will break.

If you mean Ivan B., I used to regularly train with a very nice mali from him. Same thing. That dog had a bald neck from the prong, and was a stubborn SOB... still, I believe it was an issue that could be fixed through training as correction was not sufficient.
 
#42 ·
well had this happen " arguement always seems to bring in whether or not a dog will fight through a stabbing or not and its silly. Only way to know for sure is stab the dog. "

the dogs I have do go out for PD service .

mentioned before in the schutzhund vs protection training thread.
One dog with the RCMP stabbed during an aggressive take down of a guy - and in spite of his injuries the dog continued the fight , later to die on the operating table . This after years of service .
Ironically his sisters son , Keno , awarded Purina Hall of Fame , for meritorious service , hit by a car while in pursuit , bleeding and head injuries he completed the apprehension and held the man .

Those dogs basically uncle/nephew ---- had the old fight drive --- lines to Bernd Lierberg and Marko Cellerland big time .

prey is excited by movement , chase and catch . When the prey stands still the prey drive begins to disarm and the dog releases.

In PD service the dog holds whether the man stands still or not . A lot can happen in those moments --- hold till released with an out .

the stick hits were meant to reveal the dogs who couldn't make the fight
 
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