Forcing the send

In a Schutzhund II and III trial, the agitator is always found in the sixth and last blind. Consequently, after we show our dog in just a few competitions all our meticulous work on the shell game will be absolutely undone. The dog will quickly learn that in trial (a context that it easily learns to recognize) its chances of finding the decoy in all of the blinds are far from equal. It will see no point in visiting blinds 1 through 5, when it knows perfectly well that the agitator is hiding in blind 6. Now the dog has good reason to disobey its handler. There is only one remedy–force.

We go back to using just blinds 1 and 2. We make no attempt to fool the dog about which blind the decoy hides in. We let it see exactly where the decoy goes.

Then the handler forces the dog to go to the other blind anyway. This is much easier to do if the handler walks the animal up very close to the empty blind before sending it. Anyway, it is easy enough to accomplish because with the shell game we have already taught the dog the skill of going out to an indicated blind and searching it. Now it is just a matter of making it do it. The instant the dog rounds the empty blind, the handler praises it enthusiastically and sends it across to the other blind where the agitator is hiding.

The concept that, in order to get its bite, the dog must first run away from the helper is a difficult one for the dog. It must come to realize that the empty blind is an intermediate goal, that it represents the bite, and the faster the animal gets to it, the faster it will get back to the decoy in the “hot” blind.

Carefully, one step at a time, the handler forces the dog to search one empty blind, then two, then three, and so on, always rewarding it with a bite as soon as it completes the search. Eventually the animal will run all six blinds on command, even though the agitator stands in full view outside the sixth one.