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Personal Protection Dogs

There are five things a dog can do when you ask it to do a task. Avoid, flight, fight, temper tantrum, and comply.

1. It can avoid, which is look on a place on a wall and ignore you; you’re not there anymore.
2. Fight.
3. Flight.
4. Have a temper tantrum which is rolling on the ground screaming
5. Or comply. So we’re going to eliminate all other options for the dog short of compliance.

We accomplish that in schutzhund training because the dog is on a leash, possibly two leashes. OK?

1. So it can’t avoid me because I’ll keep bothering it until it stops avoiding me.
2. It can’t fight me because if it fights me I’ll show it that that’s improper behavior.
3. It can’t flight because I have the leash on it. It can’t run away.
4. And also if it decides to throw a temper tantrum, well, how’s that going for you? if the dogs starts to howl and scream I just wait until he’s finished. So decide what you want.
5. you will want be giddy in your praise for your dog when he’s obedient. toy comes out at that point. So he just learns what he cannot do, which is the other four. All they can do is comply.

He has these five options.

This is truly the difference ‑‑ if I’m reacting to what the dog is doing by not being prepared or not having the equipment on me to do what I need to do, the dog is training me. If I set up the circumstances and I have the equipment I need and the dog in control, I can control what the dog does. And then I’m training the dog. So truly you don’t want to react to what the dog’s doing. You want to be prepared in what you’re going to do so you can control what the dog does.

Divide and conquer.

Very simple. Break it down into pieces. Everything has got quite a few pieces in it. To sit is not just to sit its how fast I sit. It’s sit when I’m told to sit. It’s sit no matter what’s going on. And so many people get into this, and they go, “Well sit. He sits pretty good.” Now I start to fuss, now I start the moving fuss, now ‑‑ nothing is ever really perfect. break each piece down to make each piece as perfect as possible. dogs grasp your meaning much better when you speak to them in their language. And you don’t want to go on until that is excellent.

That’s what I mean by conquer.

And then add it to the rest of the steps. So many people mush all this together and nothing is really finished and right and the dog is sloppy. If he’s sloppy in the sit he’s going to be sloppy when I call him in for a recall for sit. If he’s sloppy on all that other stuff, somebody can make him distracted and he’s not going to sit. So if my sit is not perfect I should not move on. OK. There are also not too many pieces in a sit, but in all of our other exercises there’s quite a few pieces to every exercise. And if all those pieces aren’t right then that’s where the exercise is going to fall apart. So you really need to break it down.

So like I’m saying, sit there’s not much, there’s only a sit. But it’s not just sitting beside me it’s sitting wherever I say sit. When I’m standing in front of you. When I’m on the other side. When other things are going on. It’s sit truly means sit. Then when I go and sit, say later on, for my walking sit. Later in my routine. My dog knows how to sit anywhere, anytime. So I don’t have to spend near as much time teaching it to sit while I’m making motion. Because it truly knows it. It’s not a brand new exercise for the dog. Sit means sit.

Imprinting, teaching, proofing.

The imprinting, teaching, proofing, is very simple. First I wanted to imprint the dog with what I’m going to teach it.

I’m personally not a big imprinter, so I don’t use a lot of food in my puppy training. I use it for tracking. But when I’m teaching or imprinting the dog, I’m going to show the dog what I want. If I was using food, I would be motioning it, bribing him into spots, so it knows how to sit. Myself, I would make the dog sit with the leash in. Say “sit” and push down on his butt. Show it what I want. “I want you to sit.” And I do that a few times. “I want you to sit.” Then I’m going to get to the training stage. The training stage is making the dog sit. I’m not begging you sit anymore. I’m not asking you to sit. I’m going to make you sit.

Make you sit with slight correction ‑ whatever the dog needs to get him into sit. give food rewards when they sit properly. If I had my toy, I would play with the dog. If the dog has no food or play drive, I’d praise the dog lavishly.

Dogs can do quite well with lavish praise if they don’t like playing and eating. imprinting is overused with puppies. They make the puppies too focused on themselves. I truly want my schutzhund training puppies dragging me out on the field with a bad guy, dragging me out to track him. I let my puppies be quite ruder than a lot of people do. My puppies don’t live in the house. There’s a big difference there. So I let them be fairly wild.

Then we get in the proofing stage of this. So now I’ve taught him how to sit. The dog grasps, understands and happily sits. He really will sit. Now I make it extremely difficult for him to sit ‑ whether it would be a dog barking, whether it would be other dogs around, people walking around, people throwing balls on the ground. Anything that you can think of to make the dog not want to work, I throw in.

And this is the proofing stage. Most people never get passed the training stage. But a lot of people never get past the imprinting stage. They stay bribing all their time. OK. the reward stage comes next. OK? Once I’m training the dog, and then come reward. And once I’m proofing the dog, also, the reward comes out. I’m not holding the ball to make him sit, the ball’s put away. You sit, I give you the ball.

You sit anywhere I tell you to sit, not just beside me, not when I’m going to say it. When I’m in front of you, I’m behind you, I’m at the end of a 10‑foot leash, I’m anywhere I can, the dog’s on the back side, he can’t come towards me, and he learns to put his butt down quickly where I tell him.

The training of the dog is to…make the dog do what you want. And then, the proofing of the dog is to make sure that…He’ll do it anytime, anywhere, anyplace, without question.

That’s a good schutzhund training foundation.

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