Schutzhund Titled Parents and puppy temperment

[Muzio]

Hello,

I am a Ph.D. student of genetics and my thesis has sizable section on dogs, special GSDs. I was wondering if anyone has come across this type of scenario and what was their experience. Your insight will be highly appreciated.

Assuming both the parents of a puppy are Schutzhund Level 3 titled. How the puppy will fare as Service dog or Personal Protection dog? I know training and how puppy is brought up plays important role but defensive drive is genetic and inherited.

What has been your experience?

Cheers

Muzio

[rvadog]

Schutzhund 3 is a terrible test of drives. I'm not really sure what your question is. Are you asking if drive is inherited?

[GSDElsa]

As a scientist myself methinks it's not very scientific to base a thesis on peoples' opinion on the internet related to defense/civil drive and potential behavior.....

[JKlatsky]

First, you can get both a Personal Protection Dog and a Service dog in the same litter. Different drive levels exist within the same litter. My Tag (SchH prospect) has a brother that is doing well training for SD work from a very solid line of SchH dogs. It is important for Service dogs to have drive and they also need to have really solid nerves and temperament- a SD shouldn't be a total lump. But Tag's nerves are closer to the surface. He activates more quickly to a stimulus. His brother is much more slow to activate.

The amount of Defense drive really has little to do with the success of the dog in it's future role. It's really more a question of thresholds. 2 dogs might have the same level of drive- but one activated much more quickly than the other. This article is a nice summation of drives and thresholds and how they are different.
Elements of Temperament

[Muzio]

My work is extension of what Stephen A. Mackenzie, Elizabeth A. B. Oltenacu and Eldin Leighton has done in the field of Behavior Genetics. There is great amount of research on prey drive & it's relation to genetics but there is hardly any for defensive drive(some may call it "working under pressure" or "temperament") and this was one of the scenarios I could think of based on my limited and theoretical knowledge hence I wanted to validate my hypothesis with people who have actual experience with GSDs before going "gung ho" on this topic.

I hope it clarifies my question.


Cheer

Muzio

Muzio

[rvadog]

Nope, not at all.

Read my first post.

[Castlemaid]

There can be a humongous level of variation and balance of drives in any number of SchHIII parents, and no guarantee that any of it will be passed on to the offsprings. A dog can title SchHIII being trained and worked in prey drive only, never taping into the defense drive - so a title alone is in no way an indication of strong defense drive, if any at all. It really comes down to knowing the individual dog, seeing it in training and in different situations, and understanding what one is seeing.

Read JKlatsky's post again - high defense drive does not preclude a GSD from being a service dog, the key is high thresh-hold. How the puppy will fare in either a service or PP role had more to do with the puppy than what titles the parents have achieved. Indeed a litter from the same SchHIII parents may well have pups that are more suitable for service work: very balanced, calm, clear-headed, high thresh-hold, low suspicion, but high defense in that the dog will not hesitate to stay and fight if it feels threatened, as opposed to low-defense, where it chooses to to run away.

This pup may well have a sibling that would be more suited for PP, having the same attributes as the other puppy, but lower-threshold, being quicker to see a threat and react.

How they will fare in either role will depend on the skill and experience of the breeder to evaluate their pups at an early age and place them accordingly into environments best suited to their strengths. This is an ability that comes from being around dogs a lot, and having hands on experience with raising puppies and training them and titling them into adulthood, seeing first-hand how the puppy turns out, more so than the title of the parents, which is not inherited (well, as far as I know ).

[JKlatsky]

Originally Posted by Castlemaid

There can be a humongous level of variation and balance of drives in any number of SchHIII parents, and no guarantee that any of it will be passed on to the offsprings. A dog can title SchHIII being trained and worked in prey drive only, never taping into the defense drive - so a title alone is in no way an indication of strong defense drive, if any at all. It really comes down to knowing the individual dog, seeing it in training and in different situations, and understanding what one is seeing.

Read JKlatsky's post again - high defense drive does not preclude a GSD from being a service dog, the key is high thresh-hold. How the puppy will fare in either a service or PP role had more to do with the puppy than what titles the parents have achieved. Indeed a litter from the same SchHIII parents may well have pups that are more suitable for service work: very balanced, calm, clear-headed, high thresh-hold, low suspicion, but high defense in that the dog will not hesitate to stay and fight if it feels threatened, as opposed to low-defense, where it chooses to to run away.

This pup may well have a sibling that would be more suited for PP, having the same attributes as the other puppy, but lower-threshold, being quicker to see a threat and react.

How they will fare in either role will depend on the skill and experience of the breeder to evaluate their pups at an early age and place them accordingly into environments best suited to their strengths. This is an ability that comes from being around dogs a lot, and having hands on experience with raising puppies and training them and titling them into adulthood, seeing first-hand how the puppy turns out, more so than the title of the parents, which is not inherited (well, as far as I know ).

That's what I was trying to say Thanks.

[Muzio]

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

My apologies for ambiguity as English is not my first language. Let me try one more time.

In the recent years, the sports of Schutzhund has become very structured & though it is excellent test of dog's prey drive, it hardly tests dog's temperament or defensive drive in real life dangerous situations. What I am trying to find out that if the bloodline of a dog has been in sports for 5-6 generations, does dogs lose their defensive temperament i.e. temperament genes?

The only way I see it is by taking the puppy of titled parents & training him in Personal Protection/Police or Military work however I cannot conclusively decide based on single sample so I wanted to get the firsthand opinion from you guys who spent years in this field so if some of you have done this, it will give me some idea though not scientific, it will at least help me understand if I am chasing the ghosts.

Please let me know if this is still not clear. I will have my professor draft it for me in English.

Thanks again all of you for your help.


Cheers

Muzio

[Castlemaid]

What I am trying to find out that if the bloodline of a dog has been in sports for 5-6 generations, does dogs lose their defensive temperament i.e. temperament genes?

The only way I see it is by taking the puppy of titled parents & training him in Personal Protection/Police or Military

Short answer: you are on the right track. If all you had to go by is a pedigree of unknown dogs all with SchHIII to their name several generations back - you are right. It does not neccessarily mean that the puppy you see will have high defense drive, and training it in PP or civil defense work will give you that answer.

However it is not the stylized Schutzhund training and trials in and of itself that will have caused the loss of defense drive, but rather the choices of the breeders and their breeding goals. Some breeders only title their dogs in SchH so that they can say that they have SchH titled dogs as breeding dogs - whether the dogs have or have not defense drive is of little import to them.

Some breeders focus on breeding high-scoring performance dogs, and indeed, a preference of high prey drive for flashier performance in obedience and high prey in the protection phase will be selected for at the expense of defense drive. These are dogs that end up "all prey, no defense" in a few generations.

Then there are breeders who focus on maintaining the balance of drives to breed dogs that can actually perform the role of a police, military or personal protection, and use Schutzhund as it was intended to be used, to test the dogs under duress and threat, and select the strongest dogs to carry forward the attributes that are part of the GSD temperament and standard.

So it would be more correct to say that defense drive CAN be lost when 5-6 generations are bred with a preference of prey drive over defense, and one way to find out if it is still in a line is to test the puppies through training. However, not all pups will inherit equally the same balance of drives, and one puppy low in defense does not necessarily means that defense drive is lost, nor would one puppy high in defense indicate that defense drive is still found reliably in that line - pup could be just a fluke.

However, I don't know how many puppies from how many litters from how many lines over how many years would need to be tested and which percentage would need to show defense drive in order to come to any type of scientific conclusion.

And your question in your last post is a very different question from your first post, so I'm still confused somewhat as to what you are looking for.