[Castlemaid]

There are so many misconceptions out there about "vicious attack dogs", i.e. Schutzhund dogs and working lines in general, even on this board, that I thought it would be nice to share some of the comments from a vet who volunteered his services at this years Canadian SchH nationals.

I don't know if I can quote the article without permission, so I'll just summerize. The article initially appeared in a pet magazine, from a vet who volunteered his services and was not familiar with SchH.

He was very impressed by how much strenght the dogs displayed during the competion phases, and how well trained and obedient they were. He described the actuall vetting as "fun", the dogs well behaved, the handlers professional, and the dogs in complete control at all times. Not once during the time they did hands-on examinations of 40 national level competition dogs, mostly German Shepherds (with a few Malinois, and one Bouvier), did himself or his assistant feel uncomfortable, even though they were well aware or the power and innate natural aggression of the dogs.

He found the demands of the competion on the dogs rigourous, challenging, and demanding, and went away with a new-found respect of what goes into training a "protection" dog.

I thought it was nice to see things through the eyes of a new person witnessing Schutzhund for the first time, and who actually personally interacted with every dog entered, and came away with such a high opinion of the dogs, the dog handlers, and the event itself.

I think a lot of people who are uncomfortable with Schutzhund, or even negative towards it, just go off misconceptions and mis-information - when people's actual experience proves things to be quite the opposite.

 

[Doubleminttwin]

Thats awesome! I can imagine the type of negative comments people involved in schutzhund get from people unfamiliar with the sport. I tried to explain it to my friend once and she was horrified that I would want to make a dog mean, even after trying to explain it for 20 mins of telling her how they were actually more confident and better behaved then the average she still thought it was bad. I'm glad that it got some positive feedback and appreciation!

 

[codmaster]

Part of the misconception is because of poorly trained Sch dogs. I oncw did a little training with a local club in Delaware and was very surprised to find that my then 9-10 month old male GSD was considered the top dog there based on his actions in his first few training sessions there.

Now he was the son of a top german dog and i obtained him thru a famous german judge who lived in the US but still ....

And there are a lot of "Sch trained" dogs that I would not trust around me or esp. around my kid and yet we were entirely comfortable around the personal dog of this judge mentioned above even though he was the hi scoring dog in protection in the German Sieger show! never would have known it if you didn't see him in action. A great dog!

 

[Castlemaid]

Jen, the "making dogs mean" mindset is so frustrating to deal with! Hope that your boyfriend gets a chance to meet some nice SchH trained dogs to help him change his mind.

codmaster, I think more than poorly trained dogs being untrusthworthy, it has more to do with dogs of unreliable temperament. It is not the training that makes them unreliable and untrustworthy, but the kind of dog that they are to start with. If anything, the training will add an element of control and discipline that will make the dogs more reliable than what they would be without the training, but an untrustworthy dog of poor temperament is an untrustworthy dog of poor temperament, Schutzhund training or not.