• In trial, the dog approaches the blind from behind. When it rounds the comer, it sometimes finds itself at a distance of less than two feet from a person that it has never seen before who is wearing a sleeve. The result of this sudden, almost startling encounter is often a dirty bite and the resulting penalty by the judge.
The solution is simple. Consider the blind to be the center of a clock face, with the opening directly at 12:00. On a long line, we send the dog for a series of holds and barks. The first is from 12:00, where the dog can clearly see the decoy. The next is from about 3:00, where the animal’s vision of the decoy is partially obscured. The next is from 4:00, where it cannot see the decoy at all, and so on. However, the assistant never moves farther than 3:00. He always remains where he can see the opening of the blind and what happens there when the dog arrives, so that he is ready to correct with the long line if the animal nips or bites.
In this way we can gradually accustom the dog to staying clean during an increasingly sudden encounter with the decoy when it rounds the blind.
The issue is not completely settled yet, because the dog is by now very conscious of the role the nearby assistant (and the correction collar, and the long line hanging from it) plays in controlling it. We cannot be sure that the dog is absolutely clean rounding the blind until we can send it fifty or seventy-five yards with nothing around its neck but a chain collar, and no one within 100 feet of the blind.
But this procedure could be very risky. If the animal bites, it will obtain a great deal of gratification before we can get to it and stop it. In addition, and far worse, the dog will learn something about the limitations of its trainers: when we can control it and when we cannot.
The first time that the animal runs free to a blind, we must be certain of two things: (1) that the dog is near certain to do just what we want it to, and (2) that, in the event it does not do so, we can surprise it with a totally unanticipated correction unrelated to the collar, long line or the assistant.
The solution is, again, simple, and one of the most elegant techniques that we have discovered in Schutzhund training, because it arises from such a sharp insight into what the dog can and cannot do with its mind.
The handler brings the dog onto the field wearing all the training paraphernalia—leather collar, correction collar and the long line—and then he makes a great show of removing all this equipment and throwing it aside, one piece at a time, as if to say to the dog, “Here, do what you want. Now I am helpless to stop you!”
The handler gives the dog, wearing only a chain collar, to the assistant. Suddenly the decoy appears and, from close range, begins to agitate the animal furiously, working it into a frenzy. Meanwhile, the handler sprints for the distant blind and hides in it. A moment later, the decoy follows him, still agitating, and piles into the blind on top of the handler, standing in front of him and hiding him from sight.
Because the dog is only a dog, and distinctly limited in terms of the kind of mental transformations it can make in space and time, it will always be surprised to find its handler in the blind with the decoy.
If the dog rounds the blind, beside itself with frustration, sees the agitator so temptingly close and bites, its handler will step out and grab it. The handler shouts “No!” while breaking the surprised animal off the sleeve and drags it back extremely brusquely, as though the dog were no more than a bag of cement, and gives it once more to the assistant. Note that there will be no abuse, anger or vengeance taken upon the dog. Then the exercise is immediately repeated.
About the time that we suspect that the dog has our stratagem figured out, we switch. This time the handler releases the dog, which, realizing that it is leaving its handler behind it in the open field, may be tempted to bite, only to find the assistant hiding in the blind and ready to correct it.
The single most frequent complaint that we hear at Schutzhund trials is: “But my dog has never done that before!” And, invariably, it has never committed that particular error before. But it picked the day of competition to experiment for the first time with some utterly unexpected mistake, such as charging straight at the judge when commanded to “Search!” or some other appalling error.
These humbling occurrences are a reflection of the strange chemistry of the trial field. For, on trial day, something is different. Even though the exercises are the same—and the agitator, the blinds and even the field are often the same as in training—one thing is different: the handlers. We are so nervous that we are nauseated, with mouths so dry we can barely swallow. The animals reflect our anxiety in their behavior, and our seemingly stable, polished exercises disintegrate into vaudeville.
The effect is even worse when we “make the big time,” when we travel out of our region or even to another country for a major championship. Here, the helpers are new, the field is totally different, the blinds may be constructed entirely differently and our nerves are raw.
A German friend told us once about the experience of competing in the German National Schutzhund III Championship, the largest working-dog event in the world. “You have no idea what it is like. You walk into the arena with your dog and there are twenty thousand people waiting to see you. Everyone is talking, cheering, so excited. You can cut the air with a knife! Your dog, it feels it, and it becomes so strong, crazy like you have never seen it. It won’t listen. All it does is bite!” (This is the good kind of problem to have in these circumstances. The other kind is when your dog becomes weak like you have never seen it, and refuses to bite at all.)
The process of overtraining the animal so that this does not occur is called proofing. Some trainers approach proofing by relying upon routine. They run the whole series of exercises, in order and according to all the rules, so many times that for both the handler and the dog all commands and responses become automatic, mechanized. The problem is that this requires much useless rehearsing of exercises that are already nearly flawless and will only suffer by repetition. The process is boring, and will soon take the luster of power and energy off the animal.
We proof in a different way, by perfecting the dog’s performance in bizarre situations that are far more demanding than the trial itself. We have no set progression of exercises. Instead, it is a matter of inspiration and improvisation. Here are some scenarios that we have used successfully for proofing the hold and bark:
• performing the exercise inside a building, or on a slick floor, in the near dark, or in the glare of headlights, among crowds of loud, jostling people, inside vans, or in the beds of pickup trucks, even on flights of stairs
• performing the hold and bark on seated agitators, costumed agitators or agitators equipped with bite suits or hidden sleeves instead of Schutzhund sleeves
• setting up foot races to the blind of thirty, forty or even seventy-five yards. The helper is given enough of a head start so that he can reach the blind and freeze just before the dog arrives. If the animal can control the white-hot desire produced by the pursuit—skidding into the blind, bouncing off the agitator without biting him and settling into a hold and bark—then there is little that will disturb its performance on trial day. (This procedure is also excellent for lending power to its bark in the blind, because it will make the dog very “pushy.”)
Our method of teaching the hold and bark produces dogs that are powerful and clean in the blind, not dogs that sit in front of the sleeve and yap politely for a bite, nor animals that bark helplessly from a distance. It produces animals that (for lack of another phrase) push in close to the agitator and “get in his face”—demanding that he move so that they can bite him.