EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR PROTECTION

Six‑Foot Leather Leash

The leash is perhaps the single weakest link in the system of safeguards that preserves the agitator’s skin. In most training situations, the helper takes care of himself by staying alert and reacting quickly and effectively to emergencies that arise. Because he carries a rag or a sleeve much of the time, he is normally in little danger from a dog that breaks loose on the field. However, when he is working close to an animal, especially over a grounded rag or sleeve, only the reliability of the leash and snap protect him from a nasty bite wound.

A heavy‑duty, one‑inch‑wide leash with stitching and riveting at both snap end and wrist loop is strongly recommended. The snap should be of a size, strength and quality corresponding to the leash. Brass snaps, although not as strong as steel, will not corrode and are often better made. Well‑sewn nylon leashes are stronger than leather, but they tend to be very hard on the hands.

Long Line

Normally, the line used in tracking training is not strong enough to provide perfect safety in bite work, especially because we often use the long lines not just as corrective devices but also as tie‑out lines to secure the dogs to posts or trees for agitation. The best lines are thirty feet in length, and made of one‑inch tubular nylon webbing. The flat, nontubular webbing long lines sold by most vendors are more than strong enough, but they are extremely punishing to the hands. We often find it necessary to make our own lines, and we buy the nylon at a mountaineering shop.

Leather Collar

The first function of the agitation collar is to restrain the animal without any possibility of failure. The second function, just as important, is to allow the dog, even encourage it, to use itself physically as hard as it can against the collar.

The agitation collar should therefore be double layered, at least one inch wide so that it will not choke the dog, and fashioned of leather that is soft enough so that the edges of the collar will not bite into the animal’s neck when it throws its weight into the collar. Hardware and rivets should be extremely strong.

Safety Collar

In the initial stages of training, the dog is taught spirit, not control. This means that, if it breaks loose suddenly during agitation, the handler may not be able to control it by voice, even if there is time to give commands before the dog reaches the decoy.

Agitation collars are seldom broken. However, among groups of novice trainers they are frequently slipped, meaning that the dogs spin and, in so doing, back their heads out of their heavy leather collars. This is especially a problem with smaller‑headed breeds like Doberman Pinschers and Belgian Malinois. This cannot be prevented by tightening the agitation collar without defeating its purpose: With the collar cinched down tight upon its throat the dog cannot strain with all of its power against the leash without choking itself. Therefore, in normal practice the agitation collar should be left relatively loose so that it rides down around the massive muscles of the animal’s neck. Insurance against the dog slipping the collar is provided by the trainer’s skill in handling and also by a safety collar.

The best type of collar for this purpose is a thin nylon choker collar (really just a cord connecting two steel rings) sized much too large for the dog so that it encircles its neck leaving six or eight inches to spare. The safety collar is placed lower on the dog’s neck than the agitation collar, and the live ring is snapped into the leash along with the D ring of the agitation collar. Very often, even if the animal manages to slip its leather collar, the safety collar will stay on and draw tight as it backs out of the leather one.

Correction Collar

In order to control the dog, to teach it when it should and should not bite and to pay attention to commands even when it is extremely aroused, a correction collar is needed. With many dogs, especially top‑quality working‑breed animals that are both physically and psychologically “hard,” a normal chain choke collar will not be sufficient. Therefore, we use a pinch or prong collar.

Because fitting the prong collar to the dog is complicated, the reader should have an experienced trainer demonstrate how this is done. The most important consideration is that the collar be snug, so that the yoke does not hang loose. When fitted in this way the pinch collar is intentionally rather severe, and requires in its use not crude strength but sensitivity and good timing. This sensitive touch should also be demonstrated by an experienced handler.

Six Blinds

The blinds must be portable, yet very durable because they are subjected to tremendous amounts of abuse. They should be large enough to conceal a person, and there must also be a means of staking them to the ground so that the wind will not fell them (a constant nuisance otherwise). Several vendors in the United States sell ready‑made, light and compact versions.

Bite Pants

In the case of well‑trained dogs, there is little danger that they will bite the helper anyplace other than the arm. (It is the agitator’s job to ensure that it is the sleeve arm!) The animals soon become attuned to the sleeve, and come to regard it as their prey, their goal. However, accidents do happen, especially in the blind, after the outs and when making the acquaintance of new dogs.

Accordingly, the agitator should make a habit of wearing bite pants, which are really a sort of overall. These pants will stop teeth, but they will not save one from the considerable pain of a bite and an appalling bruise. It is normally after his first bite in the legs that a brash young decoy learns respect for the dogs.

Even when the agitator estimates the chances of a leg bite at nil, he will still find the pants necessary because of the surprising amount of damage the dogs will do both to his clothes and his body with their claws.

Sacks or Rags

Burlap feed sacks work very well as a biting surface for puppies and novice dogs. They can be rolled and stitched to preserve their shape.

Tugs

A very good dog that is well prepared and bites the sack eagerly will also bite the sleeve without hesitation. However, for the majority of dogs of less than outstanding quality, it is often useful to have a puppy tug in order to prepare the animals to move to a harder, more unyielding and bulky biting surface.

Puppy Sleeves

The same goes for puppy sleeves (soft, pliable and easily bitten sleeves designed for young and novice dogs). Very good or well‑trained dogs do not need puppy sleeves and can move directly from the rag to the hard sleeve. However, in training the typical dog a puppy sleeve is normally necessary, if only for a few transitional bites before the animal advances to the hard sleeve.

In addition, puppy sleeves have the advantage that, because they are relatively soft, they are easily bitten and present little hazard to the teeth, jaws or spine of a hot‑blooded young dog that is perhaps on the sleeve early and working itself hard. The puppy may be quite willing and eager to bite the hard sleeve, but it is best to protect the novice dog from impacts and accidents until it is older and physically more rugged. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible, no matter what mistake is made, to break a dog’s canine tooth with the soft sleeve. Accordingly, we restrict novice agitators almost exclusively to the use of soft sleeves until they have become competent.

Hard Sleeve

In competition, Schutzhund dogs are judged specifically on the quality–the fullness and the power–of their bite, and awarded point totals and courage ratings accordingly. In trial, the animals bite what is called a bite‑bar sleeve. This sleeve is made of plastic or leather, has a blade or bar that provides a V‑shaped biting surface, and, when uncovered, is nearly as hard as a piece of wood. To give the animal’s teeth purchase and to protect the sleeve an expendable jute sleeve cover is used with it. This bite‑bar sleeve allows the dog, if it has the desire, to bite with its entire jaw, all the way back to the molars. Thus, it allows the judge to evaluate the animal’s quality of bite.

There are schools of training that employ a great number of techniques and devices in the effort to teach the dogs to bite full. Accordingly, these trainers use several different types of progressively harder sleeves, often concluding with an enormous hard barrel sleeve which theoretically gets the dog in the habit of using a huge, mauling mouth to bite.

This approach views the bite as a fundamentally mechanical event, a skill or habit that must be meticulously taught. We disagree. To us the bite is an emotional event. The basis of a crushing, full‑mouth bite is in spirit, not in mechanics, and a correct bite is not a function of how the dog is “taught” to bite and what sort of sleeve is used in order to involve the maximum number of its teeth. The bite is a function of the dog’s basic motivation for biting, whether defense or prey, and of how badly it wants to bite in the first place.

If the animal only half wants to bite, then we can expect it to bite with a half mouth. If, on the other hand, it is consumed by its desire, so that neither hesitation nor prudence exist for it, then it will engulf the sleeve (no matter what its form, shape or hardness) and no one will have cause to doubt its courage.

We urge the prospective Schutzhund enthusiast to see to the dog and its spirit, not some arsenal of sleeves, devices and techniques.

^{The ideal bite: full‑mouthed and hard. (Brandon Mathias’ “Nico,” Schutzhund I, on Kirk Maze.)}

Sticks

The stick is a section of reed. It is light, flexible and approximately thirty inches in length. In training we also use other sorts of sticks in order to harden the dogs. Rattly split‑bamboo batons, riding crops, whiffle‑ball bats filled with handfuls of noisy gravel and other devices can all be used to inure the animals to challenges and intimidation of any sort.

Protection: Drive Work

In some ways bite work is the least artificial and most interesting of the three phases of Schutzhund training, because it is here that we see raw dog behavior at its purest. In protection we observe the dog doing what comes naturally to it. Obedience, by contrast, is primarily inhibitory in nature. Obedience is mainly concerned with teaching the animal to restrain impulses to roam, explore, hunt animals and try its strength against other dogs. Tracking is certainly founded on the animal’s natural behavior, but Schutzhund tracking is so stylized by the necessity to determine a winner that it little resembles a hunter searching out prey.

To our mind, nothing distills the essence of what a dog is, nothing smacks so much of the predator, as the sight of a dog coursing in full stride downfield after a person, heading for a collision that it wants with every fiber of its being. The animal is momentarily unfettered, free and impelled solely by its own desire.

In bite work we see the character of the individual dog most clearly. Good trainers can and do “fake” dogs of deficient character through obedience and tracking. It is much more difficult to counterfeit a dog in bite work. On the protection field, as the dog copes simultaneously with the challenge posed by the agitator (whose job it is to test its nerve) and pressure from its handler (who demands that it obey), we can steal a quick look into the dog’s heart and see what is there.

We look for courage, because without courage the animal is empty, hollow. We also look for a dog that is “in hand,” that obeys the handler utterly, in spite of an urge to bite and forget all else.

But what we look for first in the dog is raw power. Power arises from desire, and we look for a dog with a desire that drives it to use its body to the utmost–an animal that hurls itself with a crash into the agitator. This kind of desire arises first from genetics (the dog must be born with a full complement of vigorous drives) and second from the first few months of its training. We call this initial stage of schooling drive work.

Drive work has three basic objectives:

1. To establish in the animal boldness, commitment and power by creating an intense desire for combat with the agitator

2. To strike in the dog the best possible balance between defense‑ and prey‑motivated aggression

3. To teach the dog to bite with a full, hard mouth

During the second phase of training, field work, we teach the dog control, harnessing its power to the exercises of the Schutzhund I, II and III protection routine. We cannot proceed to field work until we have fully accomplished the three basic objectives.

In drive work we lay the dog’s foundation. If the dog is not solid, steady of nerve and passionate in desire, then it will not weather the inevitable discouragements of field work. Each correction that the dog receives will diminish its quality and, in the end, we will all wonder why such a good‑looking young dog did not turn out as well as we thought it would.

A fundamental difference between the two phases of protection training is that in drive work we physically restrain the animal, while in field work we begin to teach it to restrain itself.

In drive work all control of the dog is physical. We don’t command it–we hold it back. There is no obedience in drive work, because obedience kills drive. There is no punishment, no correction. The dog is manhandled from one place to another, free to strain and fight the collar to its heart’s content. Not only do we allow the animal to struggle against its handler in order to get at the helper, we encourage it. Being physically held back creates the frustration that builds drive.

It is extremely important to understand that protection training is utterly different from obedience. This applies especially to those who, although novices in Schutzhund, are experienced in obedience training and already have their own way of doing things. We do not compel or command the dog to bite, we allow it to. The dog does it on its own and there is little that we can do to help if its nerve fails, especially when it is defending us from someone we are afraid of. It is entirely the dog’s endeavor, and it needs both spirit and a sense of independence to accomplish it. The animal must develop an initiative and a will apart from ours, and obedience training (especially heavy‑handed obedience) has just the opposite effect. Slaves make poor bodyguards.

To put it another way: We don’t need brakes until we have some horsepower.

GOAL 1: The puppy will bite the sack.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Playing with the sack

2. Working on the agitator

3. Making prey over the sack

4. Beginning runaway bites