Many people interested in protection training or protection sports are confused about which drive should be manipulated first to begin protection training for their young prospects or green dogs. Some argue that only prey drive should be worked in green dogs, and to leave defense training for when the dog is much more mature. There is some truth to this idea. Defense training is certainly stressful for the dog, and it is easy to push him into avoidance if the stress is brought too high. Young dogs have a lower threshold for avoidance.
The answer to the question of which drive to train first actually depends on the temperament of the dog in question. Prey training is much easier to do properly and it rarely results in pushing the dog into avoidance. In order to do defense training properly the training helper must have an excellent fundamental understanding of drives. A lack of experienced decoys that can properly read a dog can cause serious problems in the
development of a police dog.
The most critical concept in protection training is the concept of channeling.
Channeling is the process by which we develop the interaction of prey and defense drives, and teaches the dog to comfortably shift from one drive to the other. Defense drive produces stress, and with stress being a cumulative factor, too much stress can result in avoidance. Prey drive is a calming, confidence building drive in which the dog feels strong and in control. Yet defense training is essential. It provides the power and violence necessary for a dog to successfully fight a man. The hardness of the grip, the focus on the decoy, the all-around power in the work comes from defense that is built and channeled properly. Our goal is to develop a threshold for avoidance that is so high, that nothing the dog ever sees on the protection field or on the street will push it into
avoidance.
Defense Profiles
The stimulus that activates a dog’s defense drive is threat. Threat is stressful. If we look at the defense profile of a dog, we would see that certain amounts of stress/threat have no effect (mild threat) on the dog. At some point the dog reacts to the threat. This is called the dog’s defense threshold. The dog, if selected properly, should react
aggressively to the threat. If the stress continues on the dog, pushing the level of threat higher and higher, at some point the dog will abandon aggression as a strategy for dealing with the threat and avoid. This level of threat or stress is the dog’s avoidance threshold.
The manageable levels of stress in between the dog’s defense threshold, and the
avoidance threshold are what I refer to as the dog’s defensive margin. This is the margin for workability in this drive. The dog’s genetic gifts in the area of his nerves, as well as his early experiences as a puppy in solving problems lead to a workable defensive margin. The more confident the dog, the higher his defensive threshold; the avoidance threshold will be higher relative to the defense threshold, and thus his defense margin will be wider.
Consider a couple of different defense profiles for dogs at the extremes of defensiveness. Consider the fear biter. His defense profile would consist of a very low defense threshold, as most normal activities would cause a defensive reaction, e.g. the
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mere proximity of a stranger, and his avoidance threshold would be above the defense threshold, but pretty close to it, leaving a thin defense margin. This means that the dog would tolerate very little escalation of threat before choosing avoidance, however he can and will fight, for a time. These are the dogs that scare people and will bite them within their narrow defensive margin. Prey may even play a role here, if the defensive display causes a human victim to flee, the dog may pursue and bite.
Fear Biter: Defense & Avoidance Thresholds
0 5 10 15 20
start advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat
Time
Stress
Defense Threshold Avoidance Threshold
The shy dog would be the opposite. His avoidance threshold would be low, and below his defense threshold. This dog chooses avoidance before fighting, and left with no other choice chooses to fight (i.e. being backed into a corner). More stress beyond that would likely cause the dog to try to flee again (its preferred strategy) or completely shut down. We could say his profile consists of a low primary avoidance threshold, a defense threshold, and then a secondary avoidance threshold, then complete displacement (shut down).
Shy Dog: Defense & Avoidance Thresholds
0 5 10 15 20
start advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat
Time
Stress
Avoidance Threshold Defense Threshold
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The preferred temperament for police work is a dog with a medium to low defensive threshold, what we normally refer to as a sharp dog. He fires up on perceived threats easily and quickly, however his avoidance threshold is very high, an artifact of his nerves being very strong, giving him a wide defense margin. Through training we will put his defense threshold on command (Alert), so that we can call the drive into use when needed and in situations where there is no readily perceptible threat.15
Good Nerves: Defense & Avoidance Thresholds
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
start advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat advance retreat
Time
Stress
Defense Threshold Avoidance Threshold
Defense Training Goals & Working the Defense Drive
As we did for prey work, it is instructive to define our goals in defense training.
There are three main goals in training in defense.
(1) Alert: Put the defense threshold on command.
(2) Lower the defense threshold.
(3) Raise the threshold for avoidance.
In order to manipulate these thresholds, and increase the defense margin, we must activate, and work within the dog’s margin, pushing up close to the dog’s avoidance threshold, but not crossing it. During the dog’s initial defense evaluation we should have identified where the threat level began pushing the dog close to avoidance. The behaviors exhibited by the dog as we push close to the avoidance threshold are called
pre-avoidance behaviors.
15 Such as a passive suspect the handler perceives as a possible threat, or may become a threat from past experience. The handler may be going forward to a threat situation, and he may want to get the dog thinking about dealing with a possible threat to come.
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Pre-Avoidance Behaviors & Avoidance Remedies
Reading pre-avoidance behaviors is an art. Only experienced decoys should be used when working the dog close to his avoidance threshold. Displacement, or conflict, occurs when the dog is caught between two competing options, and can’t choose between the two. In this situation, the dog is caught between fighting against the threat, and avoiding the threat. Some of the pre-avoidance behaviors you may encounter are the following:
(1) Pre-avoidance and Displacement behaviors under threat in civil work.
Occasionally we may see behaviors such as changes in the pitch of the bark, posture, and physical commitment, leading to ground sniffing, and handler
dependency. Under the increasing pressure of the threat, the dog will stop coming forward tight into the line, barks in fits and starts, moving in and out as the helper advances, and at some point will abandon aggression and choose a behavior that is neither fighting or fleeing, like sniffing the ground or jumping on the handler, ostensibly pretending the threat is not there.
(2) Pre-avoidance and Displacement behaviors when biting under defensive pressure. If the dog is biting under pressure, and the pressure is causing conflict, the pre-avoidance signals can be as follows: excessive growling on the grip, screaming, frantic shifting of the grip, slipping out of the grip (going from fuller to a lesser grip), eyes closing, body moving away from the threat (helpers body, stick, distractions), leading finally to popping off the grip, and coming back into the grip, and coming off again in complete conflict. Worse than complete conflict is avoidance of the grip: the dog may come off of the grip and stay in the vicinity of the helper, barking aggressively, but failing to re-commit to the grip.
The helper must read the pre-avoidance signals before the dog chooses to displace, or worse avoid. However, no matter how skilled the helper, occasionally we will push the dog too far in either the civil work or defense work while biting. If the dog does go into a displacement behavior, or experiences conflict that results in an avoidance behavior of some kind, the helper must choose his response wisely.
In dog trials, normally once an avoidance response is seen, the judge will instruct the trial decoy to give the dog a mercy bite, in prey drive. However, if the dog is locked in a defensive mood where conflict or avoidance is the result, he may not even engage the prey bite. Continuing to try to get the dog on the grip may cause the dog to go further into conflict and thus avoidance, and it is best to get the dog off the field and engaged in some other behavior away from the threat.
If the dog goes into the mercy bite, quickly end the session and get the dog away from the field. If this happens in training, again, the best response is to change the dog’s focus by putting him into a comfortable behavior like some obedience command that is active, like heeling, and change the subject. Get the dog put away, and give him some time to forget about the conflict. Trying to repair the damage of avoidance or displacement on the spot usually makes for a worsening of the problem.
When the dog comes back to work after a layoff, change everything about the work session. Change the decoy, the weapon used, place on the field where it happened, and back the session up to something the dog was doing well before the pressure was turned
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up too high. Since it was defensive pressure that caused the breakdown, we must work the dog in that drive, but well within his defense margin. We must make him successful, and slowly approach the previous levels of threat over the next few sessions.
Defense Training Exercises
Puppies & Young Adolescents
To properly teach the dog to respond to threat aggressively, we must work the dog in defense and show the dog when he is pressed with threat, his proper response should be to meet this threat with aggression. In fact we can do this with a young dog who shows some evidence of responding to defensive stimulation. However, it must be done properly and with care. In my experience, some young dogs display defense at a very early age. If your breeder has carefully done his job, you are starting with a social, confident young dog. If your dog is not social and confident around people in normal circumstances, your young dog or puppy will have an extremely low threshold for avoidance, and any threat made could push him into avoidance. You cannot work a drive that is not available. Lack of confidence gives you no defense margin to work the defense drive without pushing the avoidance threshold, so you cannot work this dog in defense. Your goal should be
primarily confidence building through socialization, and part of that can be simple prey training.
Some dogs will not display defense drive at all until they are older, and again you cannot work a drive that is not in evidence. If you have a skilled helper evaluate your young dog’s defense drive and the threat meets not with any signs of pre-avoidance or stress, and the dog looks at you with confusion or simply attempts to play, again you have nothing to work with.
If your puppy does show signs of defense, barking defensively at people in the dark for example, or reacting to body postures that convey threat, then you do have something to work with. Proceed with caution, however. In a young animal there is not a wide defense margin to work within. This is a very delicate process. Threats that bring a clear defensive reaction cannot be pressed much at all in the beginning, and the dog must be worked properly toward our goal, making the dog comfortable working in defense.
Channeling does this by moving the dog from defense into prey.
Example: Puppy Training in Defense
Consider a young Malinois puppy around five months old. He is very bold and confident, but doesn’t show too much interest in rag play. He does like to bark at the action of other dogs working on the field while he is back-tied. He brings out a nice defensive bark while watching. He barks defensively when people come into the kennel area, too. This puppy’s mother and father both show strong defensive drives, and high levels of confidence. I would work this dog in the following manner:
With the helper at a distance, he gives lateral motion, then freezes and stares at the puppy. The puppy brings an alert stance out at the end of the line, and barks. The helper immediately reacts by running either laterally again or running away. The puppy moves at the end of the line with him, showing the prey drive and experiencing the confidence
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of scaring off the threat. This is the beginning of channeling. We stimulate defense and channel it into prey. It is a win for the puppy. We don’t do too much of this, for work in defense has a cumulative stressful effect on the puppy. You should not encroach on his avoidance threshold, so everything is kept at the maximum distance needed just in order to stimulate the drive. Over time, months, we will slowly press closer, to raise the dog’s threshold for avoidance, but only as he gains experience with winning these little confrontations. We can add in the flirt pole, and after initial stimulation in defense, flip the rag toward him to bite.
The payoff to this initial work is after a couple of these little confrontations, the dog can release his frustration on the flirt pole, biting harder and more intensely than if we began the session with only prey work. Only the most experienced decoys should do this work, as it must be done carefully and thoughtfully. Many new decoys come too close to the dog too soon without being able to read the pre-avoidance behaviors.
If we only were to work the rag play in prey, he would learn from this that he can bite softly, get distracted, and if we condition him to keep working this way, he will learn that bite work is done at low drive intensity. This is poor foundation training.
Stress is cumulative and can lead to avoidance, but experiencing stress is essential. It builds the dog’s ability to handle stress confidently. I must reiterate, with young dogs, this work is done in a very gradual manner and the sessions are extremely short. We should do this work, only once a week or so; in the other training sessions he is brought out to watch the older dogs work, or to do prey work if he is also intense in that drive.
My retired competition dog Arrow of Tigerpaws, SchH 3, BH was trained in this exact fashion. He had little prey drive as a puppy, but was easy to stimulate in defense. Arrow was many times V rated in protection, including two scores of 99 points, and a 97 at the 1996 USA National Championships. He played Schutzhund “for real” before a
debilitating stroke cut his competition career short. The channeling work from defense into prey enhanced his prey drive over time to a very high level. The other side of channeling from defense into prey is to also make the dog comfortable in the prey drive, because the dog learns it is comfortable to work there. He learns to enjoy the relief from the confrontation, and he learns to enjoy the power he feels after neutralizing the threat.
In training a young dog or puppy, we must address that dog’s strength, be it prey or defense. In a highly prey oriented dog with little or no defense, we concentrate on developing this strong prey response. But we must always be aware of trying to elicit the dog in defense as he matures so we can begin the channeling process. When the defense drive becomes apparent we must begin to manipulate it so that the dog learns to work confidently in this drive. Be careful of working too much and too long only in prey. You will get a false sense of security in your dog’s ability to handle stressful confrontations.
When he begins trialing and must work on new decoys in new places, he will be much more delicate and easier to push into avoidance, because he hasn’t been taught to handle stress confidently.
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New decoys and traveling will put your dog in defense. He must be confident to work there, or else you may get a big surprise during the attack on handler, or the courage test. All the bites in Schutzhund are defensive bites except for the escape bite in
Schutzhund 2 & 3. Your Schutzhund 1 routine is all defensive bites. In PSA or Police K-9 work, your dog must be able to handle defensive bites, and pursuit bites that turn into defensive bites. The pressure put on the dogs by the decoys in PSA is relatively extreme, and the environmental stress of PSA or street police work demands a well developed and trained defense drive.
Working Young Adults in Defense
The fact is that not all dogs have the strong nerves necessary to work in
protection. Working a dog only in prey during the foundation training and ignoring the defense training (for fear that he might not be able to handle it) causes you to put in a lot of effort, and in the end, if he is not of strong character he will never make a good police or rotection dog. A dog with weak nerves that may appear to work well in prey will begin to show signs of breakdown as you put the control work into the dog. The bark and hold is always dirty because there is too much conflict and stress in the confrontation, and corrections from the handler (which put the dog in defense) will display as shallow nervous grips, chewy grips, and sometimes avoidance of the helper. Such a dog was never given a chance from the start, because he was never taught to handle stress (read defense) in his foundation training.
A dog trained through channeling from defense into prey will also work better in
A dog trained through channeling from defense into prey will also work better in