Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods

We Leave the two most difficult obedience exercises, the retrieves and the send away, for last.

GOAL 1: The dog will retrieve the dumbbell quickly and reliably and without tossing or chewing it.

It seems ironic that the retrieves are difficult, because we have insisted throughout this book that, for Schutzhund competition, one must have a dog that is a strong natural retriever. A dog like this will happily retrieve a heavy balk of timber, and certainly a light wooden dumbbell. It seems a simple thing to interest this dog in the dumbbell, and throw it and then send the animal after it while it is still rolling. A good retriever will certainly go and bring it back. The problem is the way the dog brings it back. Because the animal is motivated by prey drive and play, and because it is terribly happy and pleased with itself, the dog chews the dumbbell, rolls or tosses it in its mouth and maybe even drops it on the ground, the way it habitually does with its ball.

If, in trial, the dog plays like this with the dumbbell on each retrieve, it will lose twelve points in all. Assuming that the animal performed perfectly in all the other obedience exercises and did not lose another point (an unlikely prospect), it would still be down to an obedience score of eighty-eight—far below the ninety-six points required for an Excellent rating, and low enough to cost its handler a lot of trophies.

Therefore, most Schutzhund trainers teach their dogs a forced retrieve because, by making the retrieve an obligation instead of a game, it cures the dog of playing with the dumbbell.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Taking the dumbbell from the hand

2. Taking the dumbbell from the ground

3. Retrieving the dumbbell on the back tie

4. Retrieving the dumbbell free

The first prerequisite for teaching the forced retrieve with our method is to establish a mechanical advantage over the dog so that it cannot physically resist us. We must be able to control the dog, and control it very easily, so that we can be precise in everything that we do with it.

Just as we do for training the out in bite work, we use a back tie to secure a mechanical advantage. The dog is tied to a post or tree on about eight feet of line leading to a leather collar buckled snugly around its neck. The animal also wears a correction collar that is reversed so that the live ring hangs in front, underneath the jaw. The handler stands in front of the dog with a leash that is attached to the correction collar. Most often we use a pinch collar rather than a simple choker.

The purpose of this exercise will be, quite simply, to compel the animal to take the dumbbell in its mouth and hold it. With the leash in his left hand and the dumbbell in his right, the handler begins to pull on the leash strongly enough to cause the dog some discomfort. At the same time he says, “Take it! Take it!” At one point or another the dog will open its mouth, either in the process of resisting the collar or in order to give a yip of distress—or, in the case of a tough customer, to try to bite. At that instant the handler inserts the dumbbell in the dog’s mouth and, just as soon as he has it between the dog’s jaws, he relaxes the tension on the leash and praises the animal softly and quietly.

The dog will immediately spit the dumbbell out. The handler begins to pull on the correction collar again the instant he sees the dumbbell come loose, and catches it as it drops from the dog’s mouth. Very quickly he presents the dumbbell to the dog again, urging it to “Take it! Take it!” He keeps after the dog until, in response to the discomfort, the dog opens its mouth again and then the handler quickly reinserts the dumbbell. As always, as soon as the dumbbell is actually in the dog’s mouth, he relaxes tension on the leash.

The proposition for the animal is a simple one. Taking the dumbbell in its mouth after hearing the command “Take it!” will turn off the discomfort caused by the correction collar. Dropping it or refusing it will turn the discomfort on again.

The dog will quickly see where the advantage lies, and someone who is really good at teaching the forced retrieve with this method can have a dog taking the dumbbell and holding it after about fifteen minutes of careful work.

Once he has compelled the animal to take the dumbbell, the handler praises it quietly and calmly while the dog holds the dumbbell, petting it gently if he can do so without disturbing the dog’s grip on the dumbbell.

After a few seconds of holding the dumbbell, the handler commands “Give!” and tries to get the dumbbell back. At this point many dogs have their jaws set stubbornly and somewhat resentfully on the dumbbell, and will require a mild correction in order to get them to give it up. The correction is not given with the leash, because we have just finished teaching the dog that tension on the leash and the discomfort that it causes mean to take and hold the dumbbell, not drop it. Therefore, we correct it another way. A very light bump on the chin or the end of the dog’s nose should “unclinch” the animal from the dumbbell.

The handler works with his dog once or twice a day on the back tie until the animal will quickly take the dumbbell on the command “Take it!” and hold it calmly, and then give it up readily on the “Give!” command—without the necessity for any corrections.

Once the dog takes the dumbbell from its master’s hand, it is time to teach it to pick the dumbbell up off the ground.

With the dog kept on the back tie, the handler gradually presents the dumbbell to the dog from farther and farther away, so that at first the animal must reach six inches for it, then eight, then ten and so on. If the dog refuses at any point to take the dumbbell, the handler causes it discomfort with the collar, and keeps on causing discomfort until the animal reaches out and takes the dumbbell in its mouth. Once the dog has learned to reach and even take one step forward in order to take the dumbbell, the handler begins to hold it lower and lower until finally he holds it against the ground.

So far, the dog has remained stationary. Now the handler must teach his dog not just to reach for the dumbbell, but to run to it. The dog must also learn to carry it back without chewing or dropping it. This does not follow naturally once the dog has learned to take the dumbbell. The typical dog must be carefully taught to carry, because it tends to remain clamped like a vise onto the dumbbell until we ask it to take a step, and then the dog spits it out on the ground.

The handler works the retrieve along the arc of the back tie. He thereby retains the ability to perfectly control the animal, but at the same time he can create the room to move the dog as much as a dozen feet to the dumbbell and a dozen feet back.

He stands close to the limit of the back tie tether with his dog at heel. He gives the command “Take it!” and, rather than simply placing the dumbbell on the ground, he steps forward quickly and throws it four or five feet along the arc of the back tie. In the same motion the dog goes with him and takes the dumbbell. As soon as the dog has it, the handler steps back a pace toward his starting spot, calling the animal so that it turns around and brings the dumbbell back. The handler helps it with voice and gestures to do a perfect come-fore, and then commands the dog to “Give!” and takes the dumbbell from it.

If at any point the dog drops the dumbbell, the handler instantly begins to correct it and keeps correcting it until he can find some way of finagling it back into the dog’s mouth. After a certain point, it will do no good to simply pick the dumbbell up for the dog and place it back between its jaws. The animal must instead be made to understand that before the discomfort will cease it must actively seek the dumbbell, go to it and take it in its mouth.

The first few times that the handler takes his dog off the back tie for retrieving practice, he proceeds very cautiously. Using just a leash and correction collar, he has the dog take the dumbbell first from his hand and then from the ground. Only if everything goes without difficulty does he pitch the dumbbell out a few feet in front of him and let the dog go after it.

Initially he walks the animal through each retrieve, stepping out toward the dumbbell with the dog and then walking backward a few feet so that the dog can come-fore and deliver the dumbbell. He stays alert and remains close to the dog, ready to correct at any moment if the dog refuses.

If the dog proves absolutely reliable on these walk-throughs, the handler then throws the dumbbell and sends the animal out alone to retrieve it for the first time. Initially he makes the throw no longer than the length of the leash. As training progresses he throws farther so that, eventually, he must drop the leash and let the dog run out by itself.

GOAL 2: The dog will retrieve over both the hurdle and the climbing wall cleanly and with confidence.

The obstacles in Schutzhund are not particularly demanding. Any reasonably athletic dog can easily negotiate them. However, in order to do so the animal must be a little “in spirit.” If it feels inhibited or nervous, the dog will jump badly. If it jumps badly it will continually hurt itself. As a result the dog will hate and fear the obstacles and possibly the retrieve as well.

Therefore, the obstacles are taught in fun and play, and absolutely separately from the forced retrieve. Only when the dog is easily and joyfully negotiating the full height on both obstacles and retrieving reliably do we bring the forced retrieve and the obstacles together.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Jumping the hurdle

2. Scaling the climbing wall

3. Retrieving over the hurdle

4. Retrieving over the climbing wall

The training hurdle must be a board jump made with planks, so that it is possible to raise the height gradually from a point very close to the ground.

The handler begins by setting the hurdle up with just one slat of perhaps twenty centimeters (7.8 inches) in height. He starts the dog on leash from one side of the jump with the command “Hup!” and excitedly runs the dog over it and back, jumping with it each way, and then praises the animal and plays with it with the ball.

The animal will think that this is a wonderful game, and we will stay at the lowest height of the hurdle for a while until the habit begins to sink in that the dog will always go between the standards of the jump (that is, over the hurdle) and never around them, and that when it jumps out it always jumps back. Then the handler begins to gradually raise the height of the jump in five centimeter increments until it reaches the full height of one meter (39 inches). When it becomes too high for him to jump with the dog, the handler runs alongside instead.

Technically, the wall is not a jump, because it is not desirable that the dog jump it. If the animal bounds to the top and then sails off the other side its shoulders will take a completely unnecessary pounding.

Instead, we teach the animal to scale the wall, to climb up one side and then climb down the other. We do this by opening the wall up so that it is only about four feet high. Because the sides of the wall then ramp very gently, the dog begins by simply trotting up one side and then down the other.

Just as he did with the hurdle, and with the same “Hup!” command, the handler runs the dog on leash over the wall and back, lavishing it with praise and playing with it with the ball after the return. Of course, he cannot run over the wall with the dog, so he just runs alongside. As training progresses, we gradually creep the feet of the wall together, so that it grows higher and the sides grow steeper.

As the wall nears full height, the handler takes particular care to slow the dog down as it tops the wall, so that the animal will keep the habit of climbing down the far side of the wall instead of simply jumping off.

Once the animal easily negotiates the hurdle at full height, we can combine the retrieve with the hurdle. However, rather than just setting the jump up at full height, flinging the dumbbell over it and waiting to see what happens, we instead repeat our careful progression.

We return to the lowest possible height and practice the retrieve for a while with the dog just hopping over the twenty-centimeter board. If there are absolutely no problems, then we gradually begin to raise the height of the jump to the maximum, just as we did before.

Because of the size and dimensions of the climbing wall, it is a little more difficult to ensure that all goes well on the first few retrieves. This is one reason that we come to the retrieve over the wall last.

We prefer not to put the wall down at a low height and then walk the dog through the exercise with the leash the first few times (as is the most common practice). In our experience the handler causes more problems doing this than he prevents, simply because he gets in his dog’s way.

Instead, the handler puts the wall at a medium height, throws the dumbbell out over it and then sends his dog free. But while the animal is running the retrieve the handler scuttles forward and jumps to the top of the wall. When the dog picks up the dumbbell and turns, the first thing it sees is its handler at the top of the wall. The handler calls to it and slaps the wall with his hand. When he sees the animal start for the obstacle, the handler jumps off and runs backward. The dog follows him up and over the wall, and then comes-fore and delivers the dumbbell to him.

GOAL 3: The dog will run away from its handler as fast as it can and in a straight line until it is commanded to lie down.

In our opinion, the send away is the most difficult of the Schutzhund obedience exercises to teach. In all the other exercises, the dog orients toward its master, looking to him, listening to him, moving with him or moving at him. In the send away the animal must do something entirely different. It must orient completely away from its handler and run out fast and straight until it hears the “Down!” command. Experienced trainers know how hard this is to teach to the average dog.

Of course, here we are not talking about what we call “home-field” send aways. Like all other Schutzhund competitors, we have shown our dogs often on their home field where we trained them. When time was short before a home-field trial we have, like everyone else, faked the send away. This is easily done by simply teaching the dog to go to a place, usually at one end of the field by the fence, where it will always find food or the ball. The only day on which it does not find the reward is on trial day.

A fake send away is extremely easy to teach. But, of course, the dog will only do it on its home field, and only toward the spot by the fence where it is accustomed to finding the reward. Both of the authors have experienced the consternation of putting together a fake send away during the week before our dog’s first Schutzhund I appearance, using a spot at the east end of the field, and then having the judge decide that the send aways would instead be run west on trial day!

A true send away is another matter entirely. The trainer can take his dog to any field, point it in a direction, send it, and the dog will go out fast and straight. The animal is not going to anything. Rather, it is going away from its handler.

After a lifetime of being taught to look to the handler and move toward him always, this concept can be very difficult for the dog to learn.

Our method of teaching the send away depends upon the animal’s desire to retrieve, and it is based upon the techniques that field-trial and bird-dog trainers use to train their hunting dogs. In retriever training, the send away is the fundamental skill upon which a great deal of the other work is based, and field-trial trainers routinely teach fast and straight send aways of up to 300 yards over broken ground.

In Schutzhund, we are doing wonderfully if our dog goes out sixty-five or seventy paces on a flat, level field. (The rules for Schutzhund III require only forty paces, but if our dog has a good send away we will let it go much farther before giving the “Down!” command. Always give the judge a good look at anything that the dog does well!)

Success in the send away depends upon patience, good methods and plenty of time. We allow at least several months of work to teach this exercise.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Placed retrieves

2. Multiple placed retrieves

3. Generalizing the placed retrieve to other locations

4. Teaching the dog to lie down instantly at the end of the send away

The first task in training the send away is to teach the dog to run out at a target on command. If the animal is “ball-crazy,” it is quite easy to get the dog to do this by placing a ball on the ground where the dog can see it and then sending it to retrieve. This is called a placed retrieve.

The handler begins by leaving his dog on a sit stay and walking out just a few feet in front of it. He shows the ball to the animal, tossing it up in the air and catching it a time or two, and then places it on the ground.

The place on the field where the handler puts the ball is the target spot and, for the time being, we will not move it. The dog will always be sent to exactly this spot.

The handler returns to his dog, steps to heel position and gives the dog the “line”—meaning that he points with his left hand at the ball. Then, with the command “Go out!” and a sweeping arm gesture toward the target, he sends the animal.

The dog bounds across the fifteen or so feet that separate it from the ball and grabs it. Meanwhile, the handler takes several steps backward, so that he is now perhaps twenty-five feet from the target spot. When the dog happily retrieves the ball to him, the handler pats and praises it lavishly and then takes the ball and puts the dog on another sit stay. He takes the ball back over to the target spot, leaves it there, and again sends the dog to retrieve it.

Over several training sessions, the handler repeats the placed retrieve again and again, each time retreating a little father from the target spot while the dog is making the retrieve. Soon, he is sending the animal from 100 feet or more. This is far enough so that, with any ground cover at all, the dog is not able to actually see the ball during much of its run. The animal will go perhaps fifty feet “blind” before it can even see the target. But, because it has learned where the target spot is, and knows that it will always find the ball at that exact spot, the dog goes there straight and goes as fast as it can.

What we are doing, of course, is setting the dog up to believe that, if it takes the line its handler gives it and goes, it will find the ball. In order to accomplish this, we need the dog to:

• go out hard and fast and “true to the line”—meaning that it does not weave or curve or wander, but runs a beeline between its handler and the target spot

• go out a long distance, during much of which it cannot actually see the ball

The traditional way of increasing the distance so that the dog would practice running blind was by changing the location of the target. The handler sent the animal always from the same place on the field, making him travel farther each time by gradually moving the ball away.

This meant that each time the handler moved the target spot, the dog did not know exactly where it would find the ball. Hopefully the animal found it the way we wanted it to, by running as fast as it could in a straight line until it saw the ball. However, unless the handler was extremely careful and meticulous, a lot of other things could happen. The dog could begin weaving as it ran, searching for the ball. The animal could even miss the line or run a curve and go right past the ball, and then wind up finding it by quartering randomly about the field. However, more commonly the dog would run out to the certain distance from the handler at which it was accustomed to find the ball, and then it would slow down to a canter or a trot and put its head to the ground and continue slowly up the field, searching for the ball with its eyes and nose.

The dog’s stable strategy for finding the ball in the send away could thus easily become a tentative, head-down gallop in which it weaved as it went out, turning back and quartering the instant it thought it might have gone too far.

In our method, the dog always finds the ball in the same spot, the target spot, and the handler gradually increases the length of the send away by moving back away from the target spot. The animal knows exactly where it is going. The animal travels blind farther and farther, but it never weaves, drops its head, runs past the ball or finds it by casting about. The dog goes right to it and it goes at a dead run.

We are making progress with the dog, but we are still a long way from having a formal send away. The dog goes out only because it knows there is a ball waiting and it knows there is a ball waiting because, before each send, it sees its handler go out to the target spot and put the ball there. Obviously, if the dog does not first see its handler go out into the field, it will not go either.

There is a simple, elegant way to “fog” the relationship between the handler’s doings and the presence or the absence of a ball at the target spot. When the handler goes out to the spot that first time, he does not leave just one ball, but three or four.

The first send away is a “hot” one. The dog has just watched its handler walk out to the target spot a few seconds before, and it therefore has every reason to believe that a ball awaits it there. But the second send is a little “colder.” The memory trace of seeing its handler out there is fading, and the third and fourth sends are strictly on faith. The animal goes to the spot out of habit and each time finds a ball. Soon it begins to have the blind conviction that, even if it can’t see a ball out in the field, and even if it hasn’t seen its handler put a ball on the target spot, if it goes out it will still find one.

The handler can strengthen this conviction in two ways:

1. By concealing the cluster of balls a little bit more all the time so that, eventually, the dog cannot see them until coming within twenty or twenty-five feet of the target spot. As a result, the dog makes by far the greater part of its run blind.

2. By placing the balls on the target spot without letting the dog see him do it. (He leaves the animal in the car.) In this way the first send is also a “cold” one.

Of course, if we took the dog to another training field and tried to run a cold-placed retrieve, it wouldn’t go out. The dog’s understanding of the send away (and its conviction that it will find a ball out in the field) is specific to a certain location. The dog is still running to something—a spot on a particular field with which it is acquainted. In order to get the dog to take a line and run away from its handler (and go even though it has never found a ball out where we are sending it), we must generalize the exercise to other fields.

The handler begins almost at square one in another location. He establishes a target spot there by doing quite a few short placed retrieves until he is absolutely sure that the dog knows exactly where it is going. Then he works his way back until the animal is running multiple placed retrieves at long distance in this new location.

Then the handler takes his dog to a third field and starts again. This time, however, he can work through the progression a little more quickly because the dog is becoming more sure of its work and more bound by habit.

By the time the handler has taught his dog four or five target spots in four or five different locations (parks and empty lots will do just fine, there is no need for five dog training fields), it will take him just one session to show the animal another target spot in a new location and get it running full-length multiple placed retrieves to it.

At this point, the handler tries something new. He goes back to a location where the dog has already learned the send away, to a target spot that the animal knows but has not visited in a while. He places several balls, but without letting the dog see him do it, and then sends it (completely “cold,” right out of the car) a rather long distance to the target spot. If the animal runs hard and true on the first retrieve (the first one is the hard one), then we are ready for the most difficult step yet.

The handler now takes his dog to a field where the animal has never worked before. He places several balls in a spot, but does not let the dog see him do it. He brings the animal out, gives it the line to the target spot with his hand, and sends it.

The handler can take two precautions in order to make sure that the dog will run straight and true to the line, and come down right on top of the target spot:

1. He runs a heeling pattern up and down the field on the same axis as the send away. Later this practice will stand him in good stead, because in a trial the send aways always run along the same axis as the heeling patterns. The dog will soon make this association and, in competition, the direction of the heeling pattern will help to give it the line.

2. He selects a perfectly flat, level and relatively narrow field, with parallel, fenced sides that will help to establish the line and guide the dog straight down to the target spot.

Now the dog goes any place that we send it, but we still do not have a complete send away exercise.

On trial day, there will be no balls lying on the field for the dog to find. We will send it out and then down it at sixty or seventy yards. At this distance, as excited as the animal is, and as accustomed as it is to running until it finds a ball, downing it is not simply a matter of giving it the command.

If our control of the dog is tremendous, we can undoubtedly get it to lie down by screaming the command repeatedly, but probably not before it has searched about the field enough to be convinced that there is no ball to be found. This is, of course, not acceptable. We need it to drop instantly on the run as though shot. If we try to use sheer force and muscle to do the trick, running up the field at the dog in order to give it “what for” when it downs slowly, we will soon create some major training problems. Instead, in another beautifully elegant solution (taught to the authors by Janet Birk), we manipulate the dog’s expectations in order to make it eager to down for us.

The handler takes the dog to an old target spot that the animal knows well, and runs a series of multiple placed retrieves at very short distance—say forty feet or so. The target spot should have sufficient ground cover that the dog can only see the balls—or, conversely, can only tell that there are no balls on the target spot—when it is very close to it.

The handler runs a number of retrieves so that, every once in a while, he sends the dog to the target spot when it is empty. (All the balls have already been retrieved and are in the handler’s pockets.) When the dog gets to the spot, the handler shouts “Down!” If his control of his animal is good, at such a short distance the command will drive the dog quickly to the ground. The instant that the dog downs, his handler throws the ball to it, slinging it over the dog’s head and past it up the field.

As time passes, and this sequence occurs more frequently, the animal will make a discrimination:

• If the handler does not give the “Down!” command, then there is a ball out in the field waiting for the dog to run down on top of it. All that it must do in order to have the prey object is to keep going in a straight line.

• If, on the other hand, the handler says “Down!” then there is no ball out in the field for the dog. The ball will come instead from the handler and in order to have it the animal must turn toward him and drop to the ground.

Great care must be taken to balance the dog’s anticipation of finding the ball out in the field against its anticipation of having it thrown by its handler. If the ball comes too many times from the handler, the dog’s preoccupation with thinking about and looking for the throw will interfere with the send away. The animal will tend to look back over its shoulder, curve or even stop and turn and lie down prematurely. If, on the other hand, the dog finds the ball on the target spot too often, it will be slow to lie down when commanded, because it is certain that the ball awaits it out in the field, and it wants to keep on going until the ball is found.

The balance is a delicate one, and difficult to maintain. Sooner or later with most dogs we must use some compulsion to polish the send away and make it absolutely reliable.