# Undriven...



## Andres Martin (May 19, 2006)

We all know how to train (bite, track, ob) a dog that's crazy for food and biting...at least in theory.

How do you train a dog with very little drive for food and tugs/play? Assume the dog has good nerves and is dominant.

Many will be tempted to answer, "*I* don't." So...if you HAD to, how would you do it?


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Andres Martin said:


> We all know how to train (bite, track, ob) a dog that's crazy for food and biting...at least in theory.
> 
> How do you train a dog with very little drive for food and tugs/play? Assume the dog has good nerves and is dominant.
> 
> Many will be tempted to answer, "*I* don't." So...if you HAD to, how would you do it?


A dominant dog with good nerves but no drive, or very little drive? Training in what? Obedience, protection, sport? 

How about a combo of compulsion plus finding and working with the dog's strongest drive.... since teaching by example isn't gonna work for most areas of training the way taking down the decoy yourself might. :lol: 

Cool question.


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## Doug Wendling (Apr 1, 2006)

Andreas
I have done this a number of times and one of my personal dogs was the last dog I trained using a less then conventional method. I got him as a puppy from Holland, he is a Dutchie and he was blessed with VERY little prey drive. His defense drive is very nice and he works very strong in defense. He also stimulates (like so many of the good KNPV dogs  ) very nice and strong to pain. Oh, he also frustrates very easily and he also likes to be with me.

So as a young dog what I would do is use this aggressive state I could put him in at any time using some pain stimulation and frustration and made him aggressive and crazy over toys. Once I had this aggressive state at the site of a toy I started to play tug games with him using the toy. Soon I started to make the aggressiveness over the toy less of a factor. Over time and using some careful manipulation the toy started to mean he just did something with me and that is what motivated him. I could still, with a couple of pops with the prong bring that aggressiveness out in him towards the toy whenever I wanted, but that type of behavior is not exactly what I wanted all the time when I worked with him. 
Today when people see me play with him using a ball or a tug toy they think he is a prey crazy dog, but he just loves to play games with me.

To prove a point to some people I started him in narcotics and once the scent association was done (and I had to go back just a little and revisit some of my basic toy training) with him he became and is a very good narc dog.

So using his aggressiveness that was brought out by pain and frustration I was able to instill a love for toys. Then once that was in place I changed things up in training and made it about doing something with me and now he looks like any prey crazy dog when you see him play.

Doug


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Excellent question!
I myself have never had the pleasure of working with a dog as you described so what I say is partly conjecture, partly from watching a few club dogs that fit this description. 
All dogs have something they have a strong desire to possess/own/defeat/etc. It's just a matter of finding what turns that dog on. 
I think it could be a problem with a dog that works totally in defence but I doubt that dog would be worth working. To stressed!
IMHO, ANY good working dog should have a balance of drives. prey/play/fffi....er..fun drives. 
Each one of us will have a different idea of what we like that balance to be, depending on what the dogs are used for. Sport, PPD, etc, but I do believe every dog wants something we have to offer. 
Our prey only dogs do a more finessed obedience for a bite then the serious dogs, but both are willing to do focused obedience in order to get that bite.


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## Doug Wendling (Apr 1, 2006)

> I think it could be a problem with a dog that works totally in defence but I doubt that dog would be worth working. To stressed!


Bob
It depends how the dog handles defense? The Dutchie I described has no stress issues and is very content working in defense. And now that the initial drive manipulation is over when I do obedience with him or narc work he no longer goes into a defensive mind set, in fact most people that see him doing OB or narc work think he has very nice prey drive. 

One of the problems working a dog in defense comes with a dog that has poor nerves. I don't see defense as a bad thing, it's how the dog handles the defense that makes or breaks the dog.

Doug


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Doug, it sounds like your dog has more prey then you give him credit for. You said he likes being with you and started the tug game with aggression, then less so. 
It sound like he's extreamly high in defence but I can't equate his liking to play tug with defense. I would think there has to be a certain amount of realxing his defense to play tug. A fine line for him, but sounds like the line IS there. JMHO!


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## Doug Wendling (Apr 1, 2006)

Bob
I did not work him in defense for the tug, I am sorry if I made it sound that way. This is what I wrote in the first post. 



> He also stimulates (like so many of the good KNPV dogs ) very nice and strong to pain. Oh, he also frustrates very easily and he also likes to be with me.


He also did not work well for food.

I used frustration (teased the crap out of him, pushed him away again and again, that kind of stuff. That kind of work can also get the handler bit pretty quick :wink: ) and pain (quick pops with a prong collar) to make him aggressive towards a toy, in other words he took his aggression out on the toys. Timing is super important at this point, because this type of training can back fire big. I did this to create an artificial desire (looks like prey drive) for the toy. I say artificial because genetics did not give him the drive to work for a toy, so I created it. Other wise I had nothing, he had no desire to play with toys, ball, tug, whatever.

Once I had this and was able to transfer it over to other objects I started to do less and less of the pain/frustration stimulation and since the dog had a strong desire to be with me it soon became more about doing something with me and the drive manipulation I did in the beginning went by the wayside.

If you look at narcotics work for example, the finding of the odor means Spot gets his toy, right? Dogs with prey drive can be very happy and content getting their toy and holding it, running around with it, chewing on it whatever. For my dog, the odor means he gets his toy, but the toy on it's own (if it was left up to genetics with my dog) is meaningless. His kick is the game he plays with me with his toy.

Did I do a better job of explaining this time :?: 

Doug


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## Liz Monty (Oct 22, 2006)

I had one dog with no drives at all. Nice GSD, was young and in a guard dog kennel. They tried to train him with defence but it made him shy away and hide. They used costumes and threat postures and the handlers tried to get him to react. Nothing really, his only reaction was in a fear bark, but not a defense bark. Of course, their training was al wrong because the dog was smart enough to know that the people he was fed and loved by where the ones hiding behind the silly costumes they wore.
Anyway, I couldn't get anything at all out of the dog, so I left him as was, I noticed after some time that when I played with Anni in the yard, he would begin to want to be involved. Soon he was just as active as here in seeking out a scent or a find. He was not really toy or food driven, but he loved the game of find he learned from competing and playing with the other dog.
Also, when he became relaxed and no more pressure to alert or be defensive, he actually alerted and charged when an unknown person came bursting through the front door one night. Great response, but too bad it was just one of my son's friends coming through the door. Of course I had his collar before anything could happen.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Much better! Pretty much how we reward with the tug. It's all about the interaction between the handler and the dog. NOT the possession of the tug. For some dogs, once the dog has the toy/tug, he no longer needs you. Thats what we don't want.
Without prey, how do you determine the dogs hunt drive? That's a necessity in detector dogs.


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## Doug Wendling (Apr 1, 2006)

Bob

Because this was my personal dog I had no pressure to have him trained by a certain time or within a given time frame. But, yes the desire to hunt is a big one in detection work. It did take me about another time as long to train him solid in narc work as it would have with a dog that had the right drives for the work.
But, once he understood that finding the toy meant he got to do his favorite thing play time with me then he was willing to hunt for extended periods of time without a problem.



> Without prey how do you determine the dogs hunt drive?


If this was a dog I was looking at for a PD I would have passed on him right away. But, I got him as a puppy and I wanted to make the best of things with him, plus I learned a LOT from him, so it was worth doing for the education I got out of it.

Doug


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Understood! 
Kinda like the goofy little mal pup I have now. She doesn't have it, IMHO, but I'm trying. :lol:


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## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

@ doug, do you know the bloodlines of the described dog?

@ Andres, I really don´t know..Anne won´t do any thing for food, fetch isn´t her thing either, playing with me is/was, so I played with a bitreroll. Kind a like Doug did I guess, without the artificial part.


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## Doug Wendling (Apr 1, 2006)

Selena
Yes, the father is Nicky (Verlee) I loved this dog when I saw him at the 2000 Championships.

And the mother is Kwinta # 2711 on the bloedlijnen web site.

Doug


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## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

nice line!

i think you walked in a typical dutchie thing: "why would I bother?!"


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## Greg Long (Mar 27, 2006)

Connie Sutherland said:


> Andres Martin said:
> 
> 
> > We all know how to train (bite, track, ob) a dog that's crazy for food and biting...at least in theory.
> ...


 Im going to have to strongly disagree with you on this Connie.  

Teaching by example works very well with most dogs.I use it alot.I use it in agility all the time.It also works with bitework and searching.

I would train a dog like this pretty much the same way I would train any dog. :wink:


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Greg Long said:


> Connie Sutherland said:
> 
> 
> > .......A dominant dog with good nerves but no drive, or very little drive? Training in what? Obedience, protection, sport?
> ...


Well, I believe you 100%; I just can't get a good mind picture of training obedience or sport by example. Or bitework. Or tracking.


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## Lyn Chen (Jun 19, 2006)

Have you ever had a dog who learned what "Shake" means just by you offering your own hand to him? That's teaching by example. :lol:


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Lyn Chen said:


> Have you ever had a dog who learned what "Shake" means just by you offering your own hand to him? That's teaching by example. :lol:


That sounds good.

It's just....... I guess I'm not that good at bitework or tracking myself. I'd be a bad example.

I guess I could probably demo "sit" and "down" and "place" OK. :lol: 

I have to think about this. Training by example. :-k I don't WANNA climb up on Greg's old truck!


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