Defense drive or Prey drive - Page 2

And how you describe it Preston...  is it like you're building a bond (between dog and master) so that the dog will put defense on himself and you as the master... then that definitely means I am not suppose to act decoy when the pup is in defence or else im imprinting it incorrectly...DesertRangers ...  is correct about the ear position...I noticed defence is similar to fear aggression so I have to be careful... Prey is like ZEROOING on the target and ears all alert... and Preston is correct about the prey drive being HYPNOTIC and hard to get the dog under control ... Any ideas for control while on PREY mode...???

Watson,

Now is the time to heed Agar's advice and try to weed through the bullshit......

A defensive appearing reaction out of a GSD being afraid is not correct.  In a normally temperamented GSD defensive reaction comes from strength of temperament, stability and confidence.  Under a real world attack a fear biter breaks off to save himself while the normal GSD fights 100% and does not break off.  All the GSDs I had were smart enough to know if I or a helper was "playing with them" or if the aggression was serious and required a total defense.  I do not have enough training experience with puppies to have an opinion on whether it is okay to act as decoy on your own puppy or not. Perhaps someone else can comment on this.

Alright since no one else is offering video's I figured I would

It was actually alot harder than I thought it would be to find a defense clip.  The only one I did find was during some very brief close civil, which isn't really done much with him cause he's not the type that needs to be "loaded"  (especially since we are working on fixing some control issues).  I'm no expert here so Preston and some of the others actually helped me understand a bit better.  Good thread Watsongsd.

Prey:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tjZ3F1jVJ8

My best attempt at showing defense (correct me if I'm wrong):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKmIFlXEcJM

Regards,

Melanie

Desert Rangers, I'm gonna have to disagree with you here:

[[[Defense shows up when the deameanor of the dog shows emotions of ears laid back, hackles raised, baring canines, then they have more of a unstable look in their eyes.]]]

IMO That sounds like the "defense" of a weak nerved dog or what happens if you do defense too soon on a young/novice dog.

I agree with Preston's explaination 100%

No!  I am exactly correct. You all need to remember dogs are not human.

Why does anyone or any animal go on defense?  It feels threatened to a degree strong enough to want to defend itself or someone else. This defense drive  arising from a threat because anyone or animal feels the threat which creates a degree of fear and the need to protect oneself.

ALL dogs have a fear level. some dogs have so little that they do not respond to a threat when they should. Some dogs have too much that they are fear biters.  then some are nut cases. A good protection dog has just enough to make him defend when needed.

Many GSD don't  understand this and think it is a weakness for their gsd to have any fear or at least admit they do. Dogs are not robots and they all have some level of fear in them just like humans do. dogs cannot reason even close to a human level but their drives from prey (eating) and defense (fear) are normal to all dogs.

I would add that this is one reason you start training bite work in a progression of steps which builds the dogs confidence and also for most dogs gets them past the taboo of biting a human. This has been discussed many times here on the database and alot of books discuss that not many dogs are natural protectors and will bite a human without building their confidence. All dogs have a nerve threshold level in how they respond to stimili, neither high or low are preferred but a middle level is.  When under stress a good civil dogs reconizes a threat and feels a bit of fear which provokes the courgage to defend, as he cannot reason why else would he feel threatened other than feeling some level of fear?

WOW 15, this is good. However, a board is the last place to learn much when it comes to training dogs.

 Quote: A defensive appearing reaction out of a GSD being afraid is not correct.

Defense comes from fear. The video was incorrect, as the dog has seen too much and is not taking it seriously. One of the problems with a lot of helpers is they teach the dog to show a reaction, but the dog is not in that drive.

This is way too much to type this early, but you need to work dogs to really understand this.

Great thread, thanks everyone!! I've always had a problem reading my GSD's.