The term, drive, when used in dog training is a departure from the behavioral scientist’s understanding of the concept. In the early days of research into animal behavior, scientists attempted to place theory into strict, even mechanical, descriptions of behavior, much like a mathematician or chemist. These early experimenters postulated that drive was the energy …
“My Stake Out Test” is designed to test the dog to see what drives he operates in during stressful situations. It’s designed to find my idea of the “perfect dog” for police service. It is designed to break the spirit of every dog that I test. I will apply so much pressure that only the …
Following the popular response to Armin Winkler’s introduction to drives in protection training published in a previous issue he was asked to continue discussing the drives used in protection training in a series of articles. He uses his translation of Dr. Helmut Raiser’s book Der Schutzhund as a reference in his discussion. Let’s begin practical …
Introduction House training your puppy begins long before you bring him/her home. Not soiling his quarters is both an instinctual quality as well as a learned behavior. The dam assumes the bulk of the responsibility of keeping both puppy and the nest clean. Some mothers are more diligent about this than …
This FAQ is designed to help you select a promising pup for working in Schutzhund, and can be adapted to many other levels of dog sports. Selecting a puppy with these thoughts in mind does NOT mean that your pup will be the next World Champion, nor even get to a SchH1 level. Much depends …
In the first installment, defense in its many forms was examined with the conclusion that this very complex behavioral response demands the highest skills from the protection trainer. If a trainer ignores defense, he will pay the price for incomplete training. If he recognizes the important role of defense, but fails to observe the rules …
Continued from Part 2 In clinical practice we have observed cases where phobic behavior (both towards the dog’s immediate surroundings and towards humans with which the dog has little contact) and anxiety develop in pre-puberty. This occasionally leads to an anxiety syndrome which I call “anticipated defense behavior” (Dehasse, 1990a). A Bernese sheep-dog (raised …
Continued from Part 1. The emotional self-regulation (homeostasis) phase Homeostasis is the ability of an organism to maintain an equilibrium in a variable environment. Just as we have thermo-regulation (thermal homeostasis), we can also speak of emotional and relational homeostasis (Vincent, 1986). And we could even stretch the analogy somewhat: the organism has a …
Introduction In our Western culture, the relation between humans and dogs is played out in a historical and socio-economic context that fosters the emergence of behavioral dysfunctions in animals (the discrepancy between the imagined dog and reality). Many behavioral problems in dogs arise from a failure to recognize social and environmental constraints during their growth. …
This is a common use of the training collar, aversion training with a twist. The twist is that you not only want the dog not to eat stray piece of food, but that you also must train that it’s O.K. to eat under certain circumstances. While it’s appropriate to train a bird dog to …