# Would your protection dog alert on someone who touched your hat?



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

This is my first post but I've been lurking for some time so I'm going to jump right in with some questions. The first is about threat discernment.

Would your protection dog alert on someone who touched your hat? Would they bite?

I had this dude come up to me on the street the other day and he reached out to touch the brim on the hat. It turns out he was well intentioned, just a little drunk and stupid. Because he didn't have good judgment, he had just come right up and grabbed hold of it. He wanted to say he had the same hat and then shook my hand. When he touched the hat, my dog was watching him but stayed calm. Obviously it was a good thing he didn't bite but it left me wondering if it was because the dog used good judgment or because he didn't have the will? It's hard to say exactly how it might have looked to the dog.

The dog's still young so there's not much protection training into him. I don't have a lot to go on judging the dog yet, especially working in defense, plain clothes, civil drive and all. Obviously I'm curious about his instincts but I have a hard time setting up a controlled test.

When he's finished I'd want him to wait for a command in a tricky situation like the hat. But if the dude threw a punch, the dog needs to think for himself too.

I know it's kind of an amateur situation and the dog's not trained and I'm trying to make something out of nothing. I also don't want people to say that this wimpy dude wants his dog to fight his fights for him or something. I mean, I'm not really expecting the dog to rough up some drunk for me you know. But that's kind of what we train for -- because next time it could be my wife walking the dog it the drunk might be a little more foolish. Anyway, I wanted to hear what people think.


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## Adam Rawlings (Feb 27, 2009)

Personally, I would expect the same reaction from my dog, the last thing you need is a dog tagging some one because he precieved the person as a threat. The dogs reaction should be what you train your dog to do. If you want a dog to allow people to approach reach out and touch you or shake your hand it should sit there and allow it, but train for it. It's not difficult to train a dog to allow contact passively and react with force if that contact is violent, it's just an exercise that needs to be repeated until the dog is clear what the difference is. Just make sure you train for some situations that may be a grey area for a dog, a person bumping into you or running past you yelling are a couple of examples.

Good luck.


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## Jeff Threadgill (Jun 9, 2010)

I agree with Adam with the training. You can train him for what you want. Scenario training is the key. My dog would have probably nailed him to be honest. It all depended on his approach. I would usually tell my dog to watch in suspicious areas, I do make the final say unless the threat is fast and directional.


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## Gillian Schuler (Apr 12, 2008)

Bart Karmich said:


> This is my first post but I've been lurking for some time so I'm going to jump right in with some questions. The first is about threat discernment.
> 
> Would your protection dog alert on someone who touched your hat? Would they bite?
> 
> ...


In such a case, I'd have to control my dogs not to engage.

*This is it, a protection dog is really no use if you have to warn him to engage!* 

I haven't got so-called protection dogs but have two healthy chaps that are not too happy about people messing around with my clothing :-o :-o


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