Comment to 'Protection Sports'
  • SCH was created for the GSD. It was originally a simple breed survey nothing more. The exercises were supposed to be easy for a GSD to perform without too much training. Today of course this is different, SCH has become a goal in itself with many breeds participating. It's a long stretch from a few simple tests designed to distinguish GSD worth breeding to. Too many factors now present, politics, money; desire to promote a line of dogs no matter how unsuitable they are for real work, trainers egos; wanting to prove a point that a particular dog or a breed can do it. With the level of inadequacy present in SCH today how can the statement "other breeds can be successful in SCH" have any meaning? SCH competition has lost focus of what's important, who cares about some judges opinion who has never been in a street situation with a real biting dog trained the real SCH way. Molossers is probably too wide a term. I'm talking about the dogs I know. To me molosser is a word describing the look and temperament of the dog. The look I think we all understand. The temperament to me is one of not high trainability, a degree of handler softness, if aggression is present it is defensive aggression. Molossers are dogs that have a natural inclination to do [u]everything[/u] that they do that is not easily modified through training. All this does not describe a SCH prospect. As always there may be exceptions but they are not representative of the breed. It is true that rott [u]are[/u] suitable for SCH. Rott is my breed of choice for many years and I know them well. Their trainability is high, handler softness exists here and there but there are many individuals without this undesirable trait, and they combine prey and defense like no other breed that I've seen. I don't think of rott as molossers. They may be big boned and big headed but the temperament is different. I'm trying to put into words a tangible temperament quality. This is difficult to understand for someone who doesn't understand the core of the work. I have a vid of a neo I trained doing a little bitework on a sleeve. To someone who doesn't know it may look pretty good, but I know it was just pretend. I have another video of a rott doing the same thing, again someone may not recognize just how serious the dog is.[quote=Wolf]I have a Caucasian that switches from defense to prey with ease and he certainly isn't the only one of his breed capable of that.[/quote]BTW the ultimate goal is not to have the dog switching between prey and defense, but to bring it to a point where they are meshed together. When the dog is showing aggression in this mode you can't distinguish the prey element from the defense element. Some people call this fight drive, I call it forward aggression. To differentiate it from other dogs who appear to be operating in a similar mode, the dog that is displaying fight drive is highly trainable and controllable. He can bark and lunge aggressively, be sent out on a bite, stopped short, then go back into drive without losing intensity. You just can't do these things with a molosser.