Prey/play drive is the drive we see when a dog is playing frisby, or chasing a ball. Prey kill is when a wolf is chasing a prey animal, and kills it. In the dog sports we see dogs in ipo/schutzhund biting a sleeve and carrying it after the helper lets it slide off his arm. There is no real defense aggression toward the helper or the guy who wears the bite suit, the fight is with the equipment. The fight is toward the equipment, not the man. There is no aggression towards the helper, or the guy who wears the equipment as this is for safety reasons
Sport protection dogs are not practical protection dogs as they are prey-locked, this means that they are trained in a sport-disciplined style of training. When I imported dogs for police agencies from europe, the dogs would have to be deconditioned off the equipment. And onto a man without the equipment, the police would call dogs that were too conditioned to bite equipment/sleeve happy as these dogs would be reluctant to engage a criminal on the street. and after all, criminals do not wear bite suits or bite sleeves.
A business executive who has his protection dog traveling with him on aircrafts cannot afford a liability or lawsuit, because his dog is not properly trained. Sport protection can lay the foundation for control purposes before defense training is started.
As this is a balancing act, a lot depends on the needs of the owner and not one size fits all.
Many things must be taken into account such as the owner's handling abilities, a dog for a family protection dog must be balanced very carefully. A dog for security work must have more defense for their work, if a dog is not trained in defense drive and a real situation arises where he must protect, he will be at a huge disadvanage.
When choosing a protection trainer it is critical that they know how to harness the defense drive, which is a speciality.
Protection training a young dog is like training in a martial art, or boxing it is confidence building, and it is discipline, and it teaches what we want our dog to do in a car jacking, a home invasion, or a atm robbery. this is true practical protection training.
A dog must have courage and confidence to face a threat in the real world, good protection training is confidence building. Also the owner must be trained as the handler, not a pet owner, there is a huge difference as the dog is only as good as it's handler, and they work as a team.
For more information contact Ted Hoppe Call/Text (386) 337-0730 or email Ted@GatorlandK9.com or GatorlandK9WorkingDogs@gmail.com