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abndogos;326 wrote:so it isnt defensive when the dog is fighting yet is not 100% confident/comfortable with what it is doing? Either way, I am not happy with a dogo being worked like this, and I am even less happy that there are quite a few “trainers” that I have presented this video to, seem to think it is ok to train a dogo like this(like a shep or Mal, which IMHO is fine) and that training a dogo is not different than training a shep or mal…..truly worries me since the dogo is becoming more popular in the US and is going AKC Misc in Jan…..I now see what I have to be on the lookout for and what I need to attempt to educate against…..<>I think the confusion is in the definition of defense – which will vary somewhat by person. I don’t beleive a dog fights in pure defense, only does least amount to drive away (like a dog guarding its bowl or puppies), and certainly no grab and holding. When they are fighting it is fight drive which has a different function than both defense and prey. Sometimes prey can look like a fight as in a lot of dog sports, but it obviously isn’t (and not much pure prey in the video above if any). You can refer to the chart I linked to in above post. They all overlap and have grey areas but are all different and interconnected in a linear way. I only saw defense at the end of the agitation (referring to first video with leg sleeve, etc..) and the agitator recognized it and brought the dog back to a more confident fight drive instead of ending in defense. But, nothing is 100% confident unless the dog is in prey – it is impossible to be in fight without the dog feeling the target is a threat as well. To get really technical we could talk about taboos – where a dog may show inhibition for other reasons. Sometimes hard to tell unless we have a history on the dog and talk to the trainer as to the minute things we see.
I stay technical so that the forum stays different from some of the other training forums where a lot of people are arguing over which way of doing things is better. I’m hoping this will remain a support forum for “foundation style” so everyone is describing on the same terms and helping people understand this particular way – because of the lack of standards.
I do think the agitator is doing a good job and would let him agitate any day for us if he knew what the plan was for the dog.
But as I said before and I’ll stress it so I’m clear too. Training good for PP, breed choice bad. Dogo’s have enough going against them as it with BSL. I wouldn’t train like this with pitbulls, bandogges, Canary dogs or almost any of the molossar breeds.
German Shepherds won’t be banned in a country when a trainer makes bad training choices that get the dog in trouble. It is proven that dogos already will be banned, and it may not be the dogo in the video that gets in trouble ,but it will certainly be the novice that thinks it is also a good idea to do what he thinks is acceptable training with his/her dogo. With this breed we do need more advocates for the proper direction of the breed – especially like you said they are going to get more popular with AKC recognition which is scary in itself ( example – AKC American German Shepherds).
