Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods

The three most important skills that the dog must master for Schutzhund protection are the hold and bark, the out and the blind search. However, there is in addition a somewhat bewildering array of minor skills that the animal must also master in order to turn in a polished performance:

• Schutzhund I attack on handler

• front transport and Schutzhund II and III attack on handler

• side transport (or side escort)

• down and search

• recall to heel from the blind

This list does not include a last aspect of the protection routine which is not one of the formal exercises but which plays a vital role in all of them. We speak, of course, of heeling—the not so simple business of moving a very excited and aggressive animal around the field with nothing but voice to control it.

Many trainers consume a great deal of their time and their dog’s energy hammering in each of these minor skills as separate and distinct exercises. Yet, interestingly enough, the minor skills are often the weakest points in otherwise excellent trial performances. It is quite common to see dogs in competition that are faultless in the hold and bark and the out, and yet are still very difficult to manage on the protection field.

As a result of many years of work with biting dogs, we have developed a system that overcomes this problem by uniting all the minor skills. Once the dog has mastered a single concept, which we call obedience for bites, the attacks on handler, the escort, the transport, the down and search, the recall and heeling all fall naturally and even effortlessly into place.

Of course, at this stage in the dog’s career, there is no need to teach it obedience. It already understands most or all the skills required. But understanding something is different than actually doing it. We must take into account the emotional and physiological context of training.

Certainly when the dog is in the mildly stimulated mood that prevails on the obedience field, it “knows” obedience and responds easily to commands. However, in the supercharged atmosphere of the protection field, obedience is another question entirely. During agitation, the dog is intensely aroused. This excitement is not only a function of its mood, but also it is a physiological phenomenon—a chemical event taking place within the animal’s body. Because its bloodstream is flooded with endorphins and other hormones that considerably alter its behavior and basic characteristics, it may seem a different dog when on the protection field.

Trainers who come to Schutzhund from competitive obedience are often taken unaware by the changes that come with arousal. Because they are unaccustomed to training animals in this excited frame of mind, they do not understand that bite work is a totally different realm of behavior than obedience and that consequently different rules apply.

For example, sometimes dogs that are otherwise as sensitive and gentle as lambs become so stimulated during agitation that they turn as hard as stone, and they will endure without a blink a correction that would normally devastate them. This transformation is a normal part of bite work, and takes place to some extent in every dog. It is also very much to our advantage, because in agitation we deliberately exploit arousal in order to develop power in the dog, the kind of power that will enable it to withstand all opposition from the decoy. Unfortunately, the same power can give the dog the ability to withstand its handler’s attempts to control it as well.

Arousal not only can make a dog harder than normal, it can also profoundly change its basic reactions to stimuli. For instance, sometimes physical punishment escalates an already intensely stimulated dog instead of settling it down. All the handler’s efforts to control the animal only arouse it further.

What all these remarks mean to say is that obedience on the protection field is a special case. Just because the dog knows what “Heel!” means does not ensure that it will actually do it when anywhere near an agitator.

The traditional remedy for disobedience is simply to punish the animal until it does as it is told, decoy or no decoy. In the process the handler finds himself continually battling with his dog, going head-to-head against all the power that breeding and training have given the animal. For the handler this is a no win scenario. If the dog wins the battle, the handler loses because he cannot control his animal. If the dog is vanquished and forced to obey, the handler loses anyway—because in hammering the dog into submission he has wasted a great deal of time and energy, and probably killed some of his dog’s character as well.

There is another way. By teaching the dog the obedience for bites concept, we can save its strength for fighting the decoy, instead of the handler.

Just like our methods for training the hold and bark and the out, obedience for bites is based upon the concept of channeling—diverting the animal’s energy smoothly from one behavior to another while inhibiting it as little as possible. Quite simply, we teach the dog to “buy” bites with obedience skills. We make no attempt to force the exercises. Instead, we present the animal with a clear proposition: Do it, or you don’t get a bite.

GOAL 1: The dog will remain focused on the handler and responsive to commands on the protection field.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. “Coiling” the dog

2. Teaching attention with heeling

3. Teaching the minor skills of protection

Up until now, we have never asked the dog to obey any obedience commands during bite work. Except during the very brief periods when we dropped the animal into the control phase for a hold and bark or an out, the dog has spent all its time on the protection field in the drive phase. The dog burned energy at a stupendous rate, barking furiously at the agitator and straining into the leather collar that restrained it. For the dog, agitation has come to mean not just biting, but also the opportunity to strive, to spend itself, to vent the drive that fills it to bursting.

During training for the hold and bark and the out, we stopped the dog from striving into the collar for a few seconds at a time, taught it to channel its energy and express it by barking. Now, in obedience for bites, we will teach it to suppress its energy instead and hold it in check for gradually longer periods of time, coiling it up inside as though it were a great spring.

We cannot accomplish this by force, because the sort of harsh physical punishment that would be necessary to control the animal does not store its drive, but rather kills it. Instead, we do it by frustrating the dog, winding it tighter and tighter, and only letting it unwind when it does precisely as we ask.

The handler stands on the field with his dog at his left side, using his left hand to hold the animal back with the leather agitation collar. The dog also wears a correction collar, and the handler grips the correction leash in his right hand. We are in the drive phase.

The decoy begins agitating the dog, and the handler encourages the animal to “Get him! Get him!” The dog lunges and barks, striving against the collar. Then, suddenly, the agitator freezes, and the handler releases his dog’s leather collar and at the same time tells the dog to “Sit!” Now we are in the control phase. But the animal is, of course, far too excited to sit, and the handler will be obliged to correct it sharply into position.

Because a sit that we have to correct the dog into is no sit at all for our purposes, we repeat the exercise. The handler seizes the dog’s leather collar with his left hand and commands “Get him!” The decoy stimulates the dog for five or ten seconds, freezes, and then the handler commands his dog to “Sit!”

When, after a number of repetitions of the procedure, the dog drops into a tight, coiled sit instantly upon command and without a correction the handler rewards it. With a quick, excited “Get him!” he drops the correction leash and sends the animal to bite the agitator.

The emphasis here is not upon brutally overcoming the dog’s excitement. The leash corrections are only strong enough to sit the animal, not punish it severely. The emphasis is upon persistently denying the dog gratification until it solves the puzzle and realizes what it is that we want. Rather than controlling the animal with severe force, we rely instead upon anticipation. After several repetitions, the dog knows that another is coming and its anticipation of both the “Sit!” and the correction makes it ever more likely to obey the command. When, finally, it sits automatically and is then instantly rewarded, it begins to learn to fulfill its desire by carrying its energy into another behavior, and restraining it briefly so that the handler will allow it to bite.

After a few sessions on this kind of drill, the animal will learn to readily channel its energy into sits and downs and other obedience exercises in order to win its bite.

We now have the animal a little in hand. It understands that the way to win bites is by responding to commands—even when it is terribly excited.

But we still lack something very important. In order to control the dog and maneuver it about the field, we need its attention. And this is precisely the problem because, as a result of months of agitation, the decoy has become incredibly “magnetic” to the dog. All the time that the animal is on the field its eyes remain locked on the man.

How can the handler possibly compete with the agitator for the dog’s attention? Again, the classic method is to inhibit the dog—physically shock it until its level of excitement drops. As a result its orientation response to the decoy will become weaker, and it can be made to look at its handler instead. Earlier in this chapter we described this procedure as a no-win scenario because it pits the handler against the dog’s desire to bite.

We have another way. Just as we taught the dog to pay for bites with sits and downs, we can also teach it to pay for bites with attention. Quite simply, if the dog looks in its handler’s eyes, it gets to bite. If it looks at the agitator, it does not.

The trick is to get the animal to turn its head and look at its handler when everything in it, all the force of its instinct and its training, point it at the decoy like a compass needle pointing north. We do it by making use of heeling, an exercise in which it has already learned habitual attention.

Just as before, the helper stimulates the dog and the handler sits it. Then the handler commands it to “Heel!” then pivots smartly 180 degrees and begins walking briskly away from the decoy. As he does so he corrects his dog sharply in order to break the animal’s hypnotic stare at the decoy and bring it around the turn.

The direction the handler takes is extremely important. He heels away from the decoy because it will be much easier to draw the dog’s eye when the man is behind him instead of directly in front.

The dog, if it is any good at all, will strenuously resist being taken away and persistently try to look back over its shoulder at the agitator. The handler just strides briskly along, correcting with the leash each of the animal’s attempts to turn back toward the agitator. After a few paces, the animal’s eyes will, from confusion and force of habit, settle on its handler’s. At that moment the handler gives the “Get him!” command.

After a few repetitions of the procedure, when the dog hears the “Heel!” command it will snap its eyes off the decoy, come smartly around to heel and lock its eyes on its handler’s.

The animal has made a very important transformation. Before, it regarded the path to the bite as lying directly along its line of sight at the decoy. Now, it realizes that when it hears the command to “Heel!” its path to the bite does not lie along its line of sight. It goes first to its handler’s face, and it is here that the dog now directs its energy.

Once we have the dog’s attention, once it looks in its handler’s eyes, then we have it under control, even on the protection field.

The side transport, the recall to heel from the blind and the down and search are simply obedience exercises. Once we made the dog realize that to readily obey obedience commands on the protection field is to win bites, the dog can be taught the commands quite easily.

The attacks on handler, on the other hand, are biting exercises. At the judge’s signal, the agitator suddenly attacks the handler and the dog. He charges menacingly at them and, in Schutzhund I, strikes the animal twice with the stick. However, there is no need to teach the dog to bite an attacking man. In drive work we have already accomplished it. Nor is there a need to teach the animal to out after the attack is over, for it has already learned this in field work.

The problem of the attacks on handler is keeping control of the dog before the attacks come. In a Schutzhund trial, whether it is Schutzhund I, II or III, there is a routine to all the exercises, and the attacks are no exception. Certain events occur, every time in the same order and the same way, that predict for the dog that the agitator is about to charge it, and that it is about to get a bite.

The dog reads the cues, and it anticipates the attack. It becomes progressively more excited and more difficult to control as the moment nears. Finally, when it is nearly completely out of hand, the bite comes and rewards its anticipation. Therefore, with every attack on handler the dog will become more difficult to manage.

During training, we deal with this problem of anticipation of the attacks on handler in two ways:

1. by teaching them as obedience for bites exercises, so that the dog learns that it must heel attentively, looking directly into its handler’s eyes, or there will be no attack and thus no bite.

2. by initiating the attacks at the handler’s discretion, not the decoy’s. The decoy does not simply pick his moment and attack. It is the handler who signals the bite by telling his dog to “Get him!” and he will not do so unless the animal is perfectly controlled and attentive. For his part, the decoy waits to hear the “Get him!” command and then charges at the handler and dog.

Thus, the handler’s voice, face and eyes predict the bite for the dog. Like a motorist who looks up at a traffic light instead of down at the road, the animal tends now to watch its handler rather than the agitator. And when we control its eyes, we control the dog.

GOAL 2: The dog will search the field for the decoy, running around all six blinds rapidly and according to the handler’s instructions.

The blind search, or revier, is in our opinion the most difficult exercise in Schutzhund protection to teach. The exercise depends upon patience and good methodology for success, and to teach it well is a slow and careful project of several months.

Success is seen in a dog that searches the blinds at a dead run, full of drive and lovely to watch, and utterly in its master’s hand. More commonly we see animals that lope or trot apathetically around the first four blinds, and then gain momentum and spirit as they draw near the sixth blind, where they know that they will find an agitator. For these dogs the first five blinds are simply a duty.

Performance of this sort often arises when trainers teach the blind search as strictly an obedience exercise. On the contrary, the revier is, just as much as the hold and bark or the out, a control exercise that involves a ticklish balance between drive and responsiveness to command. The blind search should be a display of obedience driven by intense desire, of control over a dynamic and powerful force.

In our method, there are two distinct stages of training for the revier: an inducive teaching phase and a compulsive training phase.

The inducive phase we call the shell game. Just as the old carnival hucksters used to confound the public with the question “Which shell is the pea under?” we confound the dog with the question “In which blind is the person?” If we do our job well, we eventually convince the animal that the only way it will find the agitator is by following its handler’s directions.

^{During the revier the dog must search all six blinds on the field under the handler’s direction. When the dog finds the hidden agitator, the animal must detain him by barking aggressively. (Paul Hombach, background, with his Schutzhund III dog.)}

By using the shell game we seek to accomplish two important objectives:

1. Teach the dog a clear understanding of and a pattern of habit for the complicated skill involved in the blind search—traveling from one side of the field to the other, crossing its handler’s path and looping around six blinds in succession, starting with either the first one on the left or the first one on the right.

2. Teach the dog to move with spirit and at top speed by

• linking the search directly to its desire to bite.

• making the dog’s expectation of a find and a bite equal for each of the six blinds, so that it goes as strongly to one as it does to the next.

In conventional, purely force-trained methods, the first five blinds are disjointed from the dog’s desire to bite, because it knows that they are empty. The animal knows that it will find a decoy only in the sixth blind, and it searches the first five simply in order to avoid punishment. Only the last blind represents to it the possibility of a bite, and for this reason the dog runs at only the sixth blind with full spirit. On the other hand, when we use the shell game, and use it well, the dog believes ^hat every one of the blinds may contain an agitator. Because each of the six blinds represents to it an equal possibility for a bite, it searches all of them diligently and with intense eagerness.

With the shell game we arrange the conditions to induce the dog to search the field without resorting to force. When the dog finds the decoy, we made it bark a few times and then we let it bite. In the process it learns not only what we expect, but also the habit of doing it in the manner we want—at top speed and with spirit.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Running the shell game (inducive phase)

2. Forcing the send (compulsive phase)

3. Remotivating the dog

For the shell game we employ all six blinds set up on the field. In addition, we use a seventh blind in which to hide the dog. We put it there when we do not want it to see what happens on the field. In the beginning, however, we use only blinds 1 and 2.

We allow the dog to watch the agitator run, yelling and agitating, into blind 1. Then the handler hides the animal behind the seventh blind for about thirty seconds. While the dog’s view is obstructed, the decoy moves quietly from blind 1 to blind 2.

The blind search is a complicated skill. The dog must travel from one side of the field to the other, crossing the handler’s path and looping around six blinds in succession, beginning with either the first one on the left or the first one on the right, according to the judge’s instructions.

The handler brings his dog back out onto the field and sends it to blind 1 with a sweeping arm signal and the command “Search!” The animal runs out eagerly at the blind because it remembers seeing the agitator there half a minute earlier. The dog is therefore quite astonished to find it empty. During its moment of confusion, the handler calls it back and sends it to blind 2, where the dog finds the decoy, barks at him a few times and is then allowed to bite him.

Next time, of course, the dog will be absolutely convinced that the agitator is hiding in blind 2, because that is where it last found him. So, while the dog is hidden behind the seventh blind, we have the helper move stealthily back over to blind 1.

The handler brings his dog out and sends it to blind 2. The animal goes there willingly and finds nothing. The handler then calls it back and sends it to blind 1, where it finds the helper and gets to bite.

Eventually the dog’s expectation of finding in each of the two blinds will be about equal, and this is precisely the principle of the shell game—that by keeping the dog’s anticipation of finding an agitator in each blind equal for first two, then four, then all six of the blinds, we cause it to be equally willing to go to any of them. The dog does not prefer one to another, because it believes its chances are the same in each one.

As the shell game progresses, the dog also becomes increasingly mystified and distrustful of its own conclusions about where the agitator is hiding. It begins to rely unquestioningly on the handler to tell it where to go to find the decoy.

Accordingly, the dog must have no idea, when it begins a blind search, if it will find the agitator in blind 1, or 5 or 3. Consequently, it has no reason to disobey its handler. The dog does not prefer to run to blind 5 when the handler commands it to go to blind 1 because, as far as it knows, blind 5 is no more likely to be “hot” than blind 1. Since no one blind offers a greater chance of a find than another, it will go to each one the handler sends it to, all six in order, until it discovers the helper.

The result of this process of juggling the animal’s expectations will be a scorchingly fast blind search, and without the use of force. However, there still remains one difficulty.

In a Schutzhund II and III trial, the agitator is always found in the sixth and last blind. Consequently, after we show our dog in just a few competitions all our meticulous work on the shell game will be absolutely undone. The dog will quickly learn that in trial (a context that it easily learns to recognize) its chances of finding the decoy in all of the blinds are far from equal. It will see no point in visiting blinds 1 through 5, when it knows perfectly well that the agitator is hiding in blind 6. Now the dog has good reason to disobey its handler. There is only one remedy—force.

We go back to using just blinds 1 and 2. We make no attempt to fool the dog about which blind the decoy hides in. We let it see exactly where the decoy goes.

Then the handler forces the dog to go to the other blind anyway. This is much easier to do if the handler walks the animal up very close to the empty blind before sending it. Anyway, it is easy enough to accomplish because with the shell game we have already taught the dog the skill of going out to an indicated blind and searching it. Now it is just a matter of making it do it. The instant the dog rounds the empty blind, the handler praises it enthusiastically and sends it across to the other blind where the agitator is hiding.

The concept that, in order to get its bite, the dog must first run away from the helper is a difficult one for the dog. It must come to realize that the empty blind is an intermediate goal, that it represents the bite, and the faster the animal gets to it, the faster it will get back to the decoy in the “hot” blind.

Carefully, one step at a time, the handler forces the dog to search one empty blind, then two, then three, and so on, always rewarding it with a bite as soon as it completes the search. Eventually the animal will run all six blinds on command, even though the agitator stands in full view outside the sixth one.

One thing still remains to be done. The dog, although still eager, probably no longer travels the blinds at its best speed.

We can easily regain its speed by again manipulating the dog’s expectations, by resuming the shell game. Make no mistake, the handler still compels it to run all six blinds as directed, and we still place a decoy outside the sixth blind where the dog can see him. However, we also conceal one or more other agitators in blinds 1 and 5. We do this on a random basis. Thus, the animal has no idea whether it will have to run all the way to blind 6 for its bite, or whether it will suddenly come upon another, hidden decoy in the first blind it searches or the second or the third and the fifth as well.

By returning to the shell game we render the dog’s expectations for a bite at each blind equal once again. Therefore, it has no reason to grudge its handler’s commands to search every blind. The animal goes willingly and at top speed. As far as it knows, there is always a chance that the next blind contains a decoy.

In addition, and very importantly, the dog recognizes that it has no choice in the matter. Whether it expects a bite in the next blind or not, it knows that it must go where its handler sends it.