Common Misconceptions About Schutzhund
"You're Teaching Dogs to Bite?!?!"
This sort of thing is the most common, and certainly strongest, objection to schutzhund. This misconception is very widespread, even amongst those with years of experience in various other dog training activities. And perhaps this type of attitude is understandable when the only thing people know about schutzhund is seeing pictures of schutzhund dogs doing protection and hearing schutzhund people throwing around terms like 'aggression' and 'full, hard bite'.
When I encounter this sort of view of schutzhund, one thing I can safely assume is that this person has had little, if any, actual exposure to schutzhund dogs and schutzhund training, and they most certainly don't have an understanding of what this training entails. In every case I've ever encountered, and there have been many, this negative attitude toward schutzhund is quickly changed if the person is willing to spend some time getting to know the dogs and the trainers and seeing what schutzhund training is all about.
The truth is, schutzhund dogs are some of the safest and most reliable dogs around. How could that be?? Well, let's examine some facts...
ALL dogs CAN bite
Schutzhund doesn't teach dogs to bite. Dogs are born knowing how to bite, just as people are born knowing how to hit and kick. It doesn't take training, it's instinct. Nature endowed every animal with a basic fight or fight response. Place a dog, or a human, or any creature for that matter, into a threatening situation and that animal is going to fight to defend itself. For a dog, that means biting.
ALL dogs WILL bite under certain circumstances
The vast majority of dog bites are the result of fear. The dog's inborn fight/flight response has been triggered by a perceived threat and the dog must make a choice of how to react. If placed in such a situation, even the most laid back, mild mannered couch potato family dog will bite if he feels he must.
For many dogs, their first course of action is to try to run away. They will only fight if they feel trapped, without an avenue for escape. When flight is no longer an option, they will turn and fight. What constitutes being trapped varies from dog to dog. For some dogs, they would have to be backed into a corner. For others a room, a house, a fenced yard, a kennel, a leash or any barrier, real or perceived, may cause the dog to feel trapped and thus can make a dog who would prefer to run feel that he must fight.
Conversely, there are many dogs who are likely to choose fight as their first response. This is especially true of dogs who descend from the working breeds, where this 'fight first' attitude was integral to the dog performing it's job, and thus intentionally maintained through generations of selective breeding. These dogs' first instinct is to fight, and they will only run away if their initial attempts to scare away or defeat the threat prove unsuccessful.
Additionally, different dogs have different thresholds for feeling threatened. Dogs that are considered to be of sound temperament are ones that have reasonably high thresholds. It takes a lot for them to feel threatened or that they need to defend themselves. They would have to be faced with a very obvious, strong threat before their fight/flight response would be triggered.
Other dogs have lower thresholds for fear. Some unfortunately are so low that regular, everyday occurrences scare them. They frighten easily, and thus their fight/flight response can be triggered by innocent, unthreatening people, animals and objects. Some can be so hair trigger in this regard that they will respond with aggression to something that startles them or makes them just a bit uneasy, taking a "best defense is a good offense" sort of approach in an attempt to scare the potential threat away before it can become an actual threat.
One of the huge benefits of schutzhund training is that it builds confidence in a dog. The dogs are challenged and mildly stressed, and by overcoming each challenge and working through each stressor, they gain more and more self confidence. Obviously, since most dog bites occur out of fear, the more confident the dog, and thus the less likely he is to feel threatened, the better!
Schutzhund training also helps give a dog more clarity and better judgment. By exposing the dog to different threats under carefully controlled circumstances, the dog learns not only how to respond to a threat but also how to recognize one. Thus he is better able to discern a true threat and becomes less likely to make a mistake and perceive a threat where none exists.
Training doesn't change temperament
Since dogs in the later category are quickly washed out of schutzhund training and one of the prerequisites for schutzhund training is that a dog DOES have sound nerve and temperament, from the genetics standpoint in terms of inherent personality, schutzhund dogs have a leg up over the general dog population.
Schutzhund Protection: Obedience under pressure
Everyone who's ever trained a dog knows that as distraction level goes up, reliability goes down. The dog who will always sit for the cookie in the quiet family kitchen may act as if he's never heard the word 'sit' before in the middle of the pet store, or playground, or dog park, or in the vet's office when the tech comes in to draw blood. The dog who always walks nicely on leash may start hauling his owner down the street like something out of a Marmaduke comic strip if a squirrel runs past or the kids next door are throwing around a tennis all. The same holds true when the dog is exposed to pressure or stress. Just as we find it hard to concentrate and focus during times of anxiety, so do dogs.
When dogs are exposed to a high degree of interesting, exciting or stressful stimuli, their ability to focus on their handler and concentrate on following direction is compromised, and thus their response to obedience commands decreases. A huge part of schutzhund training is exposing the dog to those distractions and stressors, and teaching the dog to work through it. No where is this seen more than during the protection phase.
Schutzhund training involves extreme distraction training. The dogs must track despite a half dozen people tromping along next to them. They must focus on their handler and perform a wide range of exercises as part of a long and complicated obedience routine despite the huge crowd of people a few yards away. And then lie down and stay there while their handler walks away, maybe even out of sight, despite that same crowd and another handler/dog team running around doing their obedience exercises just a few feet away.
And that's nothing compared to the schutzhund protection phase where the dog must search out the bad guy and hold him in place with barking alone, while his handler catches up. No biting allowed at this point because the bad guy is being neutral, and not making any threatening moves. Then when it's appropriate to do so, the dog must engage the bad guy in a fight, stay in that fight when the bad guy starts fighting back, then immediately let go and disengage from the fight when commanded to do so by his handler. Throughout all this, the dog must also perform a variety of obedience exercises with the threatening bad guy just a few feet away. The dog does all this because his handler says so, and it's all done off leash, by voice command alone.
Above all else, schutzhund is about CONTROL. A dog who is successful in schutzhund is impeccably trained, and he has had that training tested under extreme situations. He has learned to be able to think and function despite distraction, stress or drive level, and to always be aware of his handler and respond to his handler, no matter what else is going on. Even when the dog wants to bite or feels he has to bite, if the handler says not to, the dog obeys. This skillset and attitude developed in the dog through the training carries over into real life, off the schutzhund field, giving the dog's owner an extreme level of control over their dog in virtually any situation that could arise.
Schutzhund training is also HANDLER training
Most dog owners simply don't know what it would take to make their dog bite, because they've never been in a situation to find out. If one day they do find out and something triggers an aggressive response in their dog, they and their dog are both going to be totally taken by surprise and completely unprepared to deal with it. This lack of preparedness can quickly turn a bad situation worse.
Schutzhund is a team sport; the team of dog and handler. And thus, it is as much handler training as it is dog training. Through this training, a handler gains an intimate knowledge of his dog's personality. He learns how his dog thinks and how his dog will respond to different people, places and things. He learns his dog's moods, likes and dislikes, what sort of situations might make the dog feel stressed or frightened or otherwise trigger unwanted behavior.
A schutzhund handler already knows, or can make a very accurate educated guess, how his dog will react to different situations. Thus, the handler can be proactive, avoiding potentially risky situations and stopping trouble before it starts. And if trouble does arise, both dog and handler have the tools to deal with it. Not only has the dog been taught to listen and respond to commands despite what's going on around, but the handler has learned how to keep a clear head, communicate effectively with his dog and manage his dog under all sorts of anxiety laden situations.
A dog of genetically sound nerve and temperament + confidence building + good judgment based upon experience + exceptional training + an educated and conscientious owner = a very safe dog.
It also equals a schutzhund dog.
Schutzhund Dog = Protection Dog?
The term schutzhund means "protection dog" in German, and the fact that schutzhund training involves bite work leads to the common misconception that a schutzhund dog is a protection dog. In truth, schutzhund is first and foremost a sport and breedworthiness test for working dogs. It is not meant to be personal protection dog training. Schutzhund can lay excellent groundwork for dogs to be later utilized as security, military, police and protection dogs, but additional training is needed to turn a schutzhund dog into a real protection dog. Unfortunately, the general public is uneducated about working dog sport.
Many people actually fear schutzhund dogs because they believe that they are aggressive and have been taught to enjoy biting people and many schutzhund enthusiasts have been asked why we want to make our dogs "mean and dangerous". Schutzhund and other sport dogs are trained with a decoy wearing a padded protection sleeve, or occasionally a bite suit. To the dog, the decoy is a sparing partner. Many sport dogs have no desire whatsoever to truly harm the decoy. Many do, but in their case it is because they have been taught to view the decoy as a challenging opponent that must be defeated, not because they are vicious.
While the skills taught in schutzhund are similar to those used for personal protection, security and police K9 work, and many schutzhund dogs are later converted to such uses, additional training is required. True protection training involves situational training, simulating real life scenarios in strange areas with strange decoys unknown to the dog, and the decoy must be wearing a bite suit or hidden sleeve for protection, to prevent the dog from cuing on recognizable and familiar equipment.
To use a commonly referenced analogy, schutzhund training is like boxing or martial arts for dogs. A person taking karate classes learns self-discipline and control, in addition to learning all the moves and how to fight. But this training all takes place in a safe, familiar environment where true threat or risk of injury is minimal. It is in this same manner that a sport dog learns protection work. On the schutzhund field, as in the karate classroom, there are rules of conduct, the scenarios are pre-planned. No one is in fear of their life, or truly trying to kill or severely harm one another.
To expand on that analogy as it applies to schutzhund dogs versus protection dogs, just because someone has an advanced degree in martial arts and has maybe won a tournament or two, does not mean that he would be able to successfully defend himself in a street fight. He may not have the personal strength of character or ability to adapt his competition skills to a situation where there are no rules and the threat of both inflicting and incurring physical damage is very real. He might, but additional training in more "real life" scenarios would significantly improve his chances of success. The same holds true with protection dogs.