GOAL 4: The dog will withstand the stick and drive without anxiety or disturbance of its bite.
In Schutzhund protection, there are two main phases during which the judge gauges a dog’s courage and spirit: the courage test and what we will refer to as the stick and drive. In Schutzhund I the stick and drive takes place in the attack on handler, in Schutzhund II during the reattack after the helper’s attempt to escape and in Schutzhund III during both the reattack and after the courage test.
The stick and drive poses two main difficulties, two stressors for the dog: It is struck with a reed stick and is driven before the decoy. Fighting a person who rushes forward, driving the dog backward, is a far different matter for the animal than fighting one who pulls away, struggling to escape.
In training the Schutzhund, it is always useful to subdivide exercises and isolate the sources of stress or confusion for the animal. We therefore compartmentalize the stick and drive, and teach the dog first to withstand the stick hits alone and then the drive alone. Only then will the helper stick-hit the dog and drive it at the same time.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Accustoming the dog to the stick
2. Introducing the drive
3. Combining the stick hits with the drive
We further divide the threat represented by the stick into two different stressors: the actual contact with the stick (the blows themselves) and the very powerful and menacing gestures that the agitator makes in wielding the stick. (Stick-shy dogs almost invariably seem to have as much fear of the gestures as they do of the stick hits.)
Early in agitation, the decoy takes great pains to accustom the puppy or novice adult dog to his hands, to direct contact with them and also to the sight of them moving past or toward its head and eyes while it is biting. If the dog shows no fear of these gestures or soft blows of the open hand, then the agitator begins to carry a stick.
At first he uses the stick very little, and his gestures are mild. With time, as the animal becomes more powerful, the agitator uses the stick more and more menacingly. He begins to lash out, making the stick hum through the air about the dog as it bites. Although he never strikes the dog, the helper frequently and gently touches the animal with the stick, to show the dog that it will not hurt. The objective is to accustom the dog to progressively more and more intense threats without ever actually awakening fear. If the dog blinks or winces at the stick, seeks to pull away from it while it bites or growls, then the decoy is progressing too quickly. Remember, growling on the sleeve is not a sign of strength but of weakness. Ideally, the dog should seem oblivious of the stick.
If the animal shows no anxiety in response to very strong gestures, the decoy begins striking objects around it with the stick. He hits the ground, the handler, a fence, but never the dog. Eventually, he hits the dog’s leash where it runs taut from the collar to the handler, so that the dog can for the first time see the gesture directed at itself and feel the shock of the blow through its collar.
Only after the dog has enough experience to be fully accustomed to the stick whistling all about it will the agitator actually strike the animal. At first, although the gestures are very strong, the blows themselves are very light. Gradually, the intensity of the blows increases to match that of the gestures, so that the dog both sees and feels the stick used on it. However, the stick is never, under any circumstances, used full force. A good helper never hits a dog harder than he himself would be willing to be struck in the pursuit of a rough game. In addition, the dog is struck only in a very specified manner, on the upper sides of its rib cage and never on the head, neck, legs, pelvis or tail.
All initial stick work should be performed on leash, and the decoy never uses the stick on a runaway bite until he is certain that the animal has no anxiety about the stick hits or the runaway itself.
Once the dog “stays” under the stick without difficulty, we begin introducing it to the drive. First, the agitator drives the dog laterally around the circle formed by the leash, with the handler at its center. In this way, the dog is driven laterally or sideways rather than straight backward, and also the handler can easily reassure the animal by maintaining tension on the leash.
Later, he drives the dog straight backward toward its handler, who maintains leash tension by backing up. Only if the dog accepts being driven on a tight leash without “backing-off” its bite (taking a smaller mouth on the sleeve), growling or changing its grip will the agitator drive it after a runaway bite, when it is far from its handler and there is no tight leash to encourage it.
The decoy never combines both stick hits and the drive until the dog is absolutely comfortable with these two stressors individually. Furthermore, the first few times that he hits the dog while driving it, this will be done with the animal on a tight leash and with the handler close by to reassure the dog.
A very good dog will not require all this careful schooling on the stick and drive. However, in dog training, as in all else, caution almost always pays. If we proceed without caution and suddenly discover that our dog is not completely stick-sure—when it loosens or releases its bite under a rash stick hit—then, unfortunately, much of the damage has already been done.
GOAL 5: The dog will enter its bite at full speed in the courage test.
The courage test is the culmination of the Schutzhund protection routine. It is primarily here that the dog shows its quality or lack of it
The courage test is difficult for two reasons. First, this exercise carries the dog far away from its handler to where it feels itself to be alone. Second, in the courage test the agitator runs directly at the dog rather than away from it.
Our goal in training is to teach the dog to hit just as hard and enter its bite every bit as fast on a charging agitator as it does on a runaway. We prepare the dog to bite a charging agitator by breaking the exercise down into a progression, a carefully designed series of steps in training.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Biting a charging agitator on leash
2. Biting a charging agitator off leash but at short distance
3. Biting a retreating agitator at long distance
4. Biting a charging agitator at long distance
5. Catching the dog correctly
The handler holds the dog at the full length of a six-foot leash attached to the animal’s leather agitation collar. The agitator begins at a distance of about seventy-five feet, and charges straight at the dog. He rushes, at first somewhat cautiously, all the way to within six or eight feet of the dog, stops and runs back out to his starting point. Twice he rushes in and stops short like this, so that the dog undergoes the experience of being charged at without enduring the stress of actually having to bite in these new and challenging circumstances. Then, the third time, the agitator charges all the way in and lets the animal bite the sleeve.
