Protection Dog Training
This is a video we recently shot of my Dutch Shepherd Pharaoh working some casual protection work. Pharaoh is a greener dog, and this particular scenario was the first time I have done any environmental work with him. There are a few valuable things I want to note about this video.
Firstly, much of what we do with our training system involves breaking down traditional barriers in terms of dog training. Many of you may see the video and notice a few obvious things that may disagree with your understanding of protection dog training. Most notably, I catch and work my own dogs in protection all the time. Some would think this is a bad practice and your dog will become unstable and handler edgy. Some will say this is bad because it will only ever be a game of prey for the dog. The list of arguments is endless, and though many raise valid points they are for the most part myths or misconceptions.
Second to me decoying my own dogs for a large part of their training, I also use our communication system to teach the dog how to bite properly as well as how to bite through distractions. We emphasize attention to command. The use of a remote collar in protection training is typically seen as corrective-control utilized only with advanced dogs that need work cleaning up an out or control on the line. This is a gross waste of a very powerful tool.
With young and older dogs, we use the remote to push the dog into a bite, we also use it to call the dog off a bite. We use the remote to teach the dog to dig into a bite or to push harder into it. With the same dog we use the remote to teach the dog to retrieve objects with a soft mouth. The dog training video below shows my dog working in a variety of situations, and again this was the first time I’ve ever had this dog bite in water, first time I’ve done bitework with obstacles for distractions and of course there’s other dogs on the scene too –running loose.
Another aspect of what we do with our dog training in general, not just for protection dogs is to teach them straight lines over and through obstacles. Teaching the dog to launch over a dogs house into a bite and also teaching him to bite on new and strange surfaces is only going to teach the dog a greater level of confidence and understanding.
This same appraoch goes for teach the dog filter out the distraction of getting too amped up from agitation. I demonstrate with Pharaoh that even though I am yelling and screaming he is ONLY to bite when given the command to do so. You notice all my verbal commands are soft and without emotion. This is to show just how clear things are to the dog. This is also evident in the static bites that we teach. I work my dogs on static bites A LOT. The reasoning behind this is most dogs are going to bite with a decoy yelling and cracking a whip or firing a gun. But when a dog is taught to move in hard and fast into a static decoy they are only going to get stronger when you bring this into the mix as it will fire the dog up more. Obviously basic desensitization is important for all dogs to prevent fear issues from sticks and guns, but this too can be worked through using the remote. These distractions are the same as having a dog biting in and through water.
This video will illustrate much of what I mentioned, and give a good visual picture to improve the understanding of things.
