High drive or high Energy?

[Butch Cappel]

It seems the terms "Drive" and GSD are never far apart in any sentence so I thought this cross post from the K9Pro Sports board might be of interest

As I said in another recent post the dog world lacks a consistent language, or terms that EVERYone understands and this leads to a lot of confusion for those starting out, and it keeps a lot of experienced people from becoming really good at training. Drive or Energy are two of those words people interchange for the same meaning when they are distinctly different.

Lets take each word and see what we mean when we use them. Drive, is "A species preserving inherent, instinctual response, to a specific stimulus, it's what comes naturally to save the pack. Great big Grizzly bear roars at Wolf pup, pup thinks "Oh ****" and takes flight, because even though it has never seen a bear before, Defense drive kicked in (Inherent, instinctual response) when it saw the bear even though it had never seen a bear before

Energy Vitality or intensity of action or expression. So when the Wolf pup saw the PO'd Grizzly, it instinctually realized danger, that is when its Defense Drive kicked in Click! This caused a Vital and intense response, Haul ***, and that was the Energy generated by the Drive

Energy levels can be low, high, higher and OMG!! and can be manipulated or trained to different levels depending on the skill of the trainer.

Defense drive (Or the other two drives)is an On-Off switch that exists instinctually in all mammals and can not be manipulated or trained. It is turned On-Off depending again on the skills of the trainer, and once turned on, the energy level of the response depends on the dogs nature and in part the trainers ability to affect the dogs nature, and intensity.

So you see a dog can be a low or high energy beast, or anything in between. But, their Drive is either on or off, many of the dogs rated "low" drive are just not as energetic or as "inspired", dogs that are just not impressed with the trainer in front of them. But they all have the same Drives nature provided the species with.

Listen Well, Bite Hard