# Collar and lead for the "real world"?



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

I have a question for people that don’t just train but also prepare to employ their dog for personal protection in the “real world.” I would use myself for an example but I always seem to attract the impression of being a total nut case so instead I’ll say,

Suppose Mr. Dobermann was going to go for a walk around Apolda to make a collection after dark because it’s winter and dark early and he will take one of his dogs. But suppose also that his dog was very well trained in the modern day fashions of PSA or one of the ring sports as well as pp, since we don’t have many details about how he actually trained. Since this is not a training walk but he is actually going to use the dog for protection tonight and has to prepare for a possible encounter with an assailant, what kind of collar, harness and lead should he use?

In training we use prong collars to give us a little more control than a fur saver or flat collar but we wouldn’t do agitation work on the prong collar. If we hit the street in the real world, not training, do you take the prong collar to keep the dog best under control, or do you prepare for the kind of protection encounter that you train for in sport by using an agitation collar or harness? Or would the plan for an encounter be to drop the lead or get the dog off lead first thing?

It’s hard to hypothesize real world encounters, but people that train PP set up scenarios all the time. In a way, even the protection routines in Schutzhund are a kind of fake shadow of a real encounter. I’ve seen hidden sleeve training scenarios (on video) like where the dog is in a down at the café table with its owner when an agitated person approaches and attempts an assault. I’ve seen the walking down an alley scenario, train station, bus stop etc.

So in the real world in an encounter, is the plan to release the dog for a bite right away, or to hold the dog like in agitation? The scenarios I’ve seen were bite right away and the dog was either off lead or the person dropped the lead at the moment of the attack but they didn’t have to be done that way (I’m not saying how they should have been done differently, I’m asking).

Would you prepare to release the dog to launch a counter offensive attack or to defensively guard the space around you, keeping the dog on lead? The prong collar is not ideal for the latter scenario but neither is it necessary to have a huge padded agitation harness. What would you walk the trained dog on? If you planned to have the dog go off lead, would you use a quick release or just drop the lead and join the fight/flight?

Since PSD's and security dogs have a lot more encounters than most trained PPD's, maybe someone that prepares to employ their PSD can answer. I think a lot of PSD's are sent off lead, but if they're kept close for handler defense or to guard a suspect that's been apprehended, would you do it on a prong collar or what?


----------



## mike suttle (Feb 19, 2008)

Well, if Mr Dobermann is walking a Dobermann on the leash, I would suggest a chain collar connected in the live ring. This way when the bad guy shows up and the dog tries to run away, the handler can prevent the dog from slipping his little head out of the collar and running for the hills. If the dog is not wearing a chain collar, he will slip the flat collar and it may take hours to find the dog.
If it is a well trained Mali or GSD, then I would not use a collar at all. Any collar will give the bad guy something to hang the dog with. I have had a few accidental bites and each time I was able to lift the dog by the collar to get him to release, no collar would have made that much harder for me to have done.


----------



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

I just can't win.

So no collar at all is the best deal for a fight, but what's the Mali going to do when it sees a cat on his walk? Maintain precision competition heeling the whole night?

The real world is a compromise of the gear we use for training and the gear we'd want if we knew a we were going into the ring for a fight. You could say "it doesn't matter" because the dog has to work with whatever he's given but there's still an intelligent choice. A K9 handler has to decide what he's going out on patrol with, and the PPD employer has to decide what he's going for a walk with.


----------



## mike suttle (Feb 19, 2008)

LOL, you are the one who said the dog was "very well trained". So while I would not expect focused healing all night, I would expect a "very well trained" dog not to chase a cat if I told him to leave it alone. 
The truth is that if I knew for 100% sure that I was going to be attacked by someone as you say in this scenario, I would not take a dog at all, I would leave the dog at home and I would take a gun.
But thats just me, I cant speak for anyone else. I trust my abilities with a gun far more than any dog.


----------



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

These PSD's are wearing fur savers and an agitation collar on patrol:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Swedish_police_dogs.jpg

This one is agitated on a choke chain, not on the live ring:
http://www.pbase.com/image/17658594

This one looks like an e-collar and an agitation harness:
http://www.policek9.com/html/courses.html

I see some patrol dogs in vest type harnesses.

I see a lot of PSD's on choke chains and fur savers but I think there is a large portion of them that are more likely to be doing detection work than getting in confrontations with suspects.
http://gothamist.com/2008/02/02/homeland_securi_2.php 


Do the patrol dogs just wait in the car until they're released off lead or does the handler use the lead? I think they use the lead. If they send the dog after a suspect, I don't think they remove the collar first.


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Why would the collar be any different for a PPD or a PSD in the real world? 
Both dogs "should" be trained and under control.
I guess "control" is a relative term though. Some feel a lunging dog on a leash is still under control because of the leash. Some feel obedience is needed for control. 
The collar (or lack of) is whatever a handler needs to "control" the individual dog.


----------



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

The agitated Tampa K9 only shows his choke chain but it looks slack and there may be another collar hidden in the fur. The other photos show wide leather agitation collars used: http://www.pbase.com/thpproductions/tpd_k9

I wonder if they patrol on those or if they're just for training.


----------



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

Bob Scott said:


> Why would the collar be any different for a PPD or a PSD in the real world?
> Both dogs "should" be trained and under control.
> I guess "control" is a relative term though. Some feel a lunging dog on a leash is still under control because of the leash. Some feel obedience is needed for control.
> The collar (or lack of) is whatever a handler needs to "control" the individual dog.


Right, but on patrol or a walk the amount and type of control varies from an encounter situation. A very well trained PPD or PSD is going to be on lead during a patrol or walk. When an encounter happens, the handler has a plan: let the dog off lead, or keep him on lead. If your plan would ever include keeping the dog on lead in an encounter, do you patrol/walk the dog on what? A choke chain? prong? A padded agitation harness?


----------



## Jim Nash (Mar 30, 2006)

PSDs are deployed in many different ways and many different situations . Its going to be dependantant on the individualK9 handlers and individual policies they work under .


----------



## David Ruby (Jul 21, 2009)

Hey Bart, I'd imagine it would depend on the level of the dog's training. In other words, if the dog will only reliably do OB on your walk with a prong, use that. If you can get down to a choke collar, or fur-saver, or can and want to use an e-collar, or whatever, use that. At some point, a well-trained dog can be reasonably expected to do pretty much everything naked. That's what competition dogs do.

Still, it's "real world" so you have to worry about things like leash laws, having licenses a/o rabies tags, which probably means some sort of collar is necessary. You can get whatever my neighbor's dog uses for a collar, which might be perfect for this scenario as that dog gets the collar off at-will and runs around the neighborhood like a total spaz. I wouldn't recommend it, but still . . .

As for Louis Dobermann and the like, they lived under different rules. Ye Olde Tyme Dobermanns were apparently pretty vicious. I would also imagine his OB was not like a III sport type of obedience like you'd see at Nationals or anything. There was no reason for it. So he could have one or more serious eat-your-face-off-dogs, send it on a bad guy, and not worry about the consequences as much as one of us might. I don't imagine his dogs were necessarily going to be the type of dog that could just be let to wander off-leash as he strolled down the street to collect taxes from bandit-infested areas. If somebody tried choking his dog, he'd probably have either tried to throttle them, run away, or if he had a spare dog sent _that_ one, but that's purely conjecture. Also, most people would probably @#$% is a serious dog came at them, and even a crowd might disperse. At least going from what I read, early Dobermanns were very, very serious dogs created to keep people like Louis Dobermann alive from serious attacks and apparently they were good at what they did.

-Cheers


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Bart Karmich said:


> Right, but on patrol or a walk the amount and type of control varies from an encounter situation. A very well trained PPD or PSD is going to be on lead during a patrol or walk. When an encounter happens, the handler has a plan: let the dog off lead, or keep him on lead. If your plan would ever include keeping the dog on lead in an encounter, do you patrol/walk the dog on what? A choke chain? prong? A padded agitation harness?



I'm not a LEO or a PPD person but even if I was training circus dogs or truffle sniffing dogs the collar it wore would, again, be whatever needed to control that particular dog.
With that, I'm sure that individual depts have their own rules and regs about leash and collar use during deployment. Then again $#!+ happens quickly so the "plan" may go out the window. 
You can question the why or when all day but it still boils down to what that individual dog needs to be under control.
"IF" I had a trained PPD I'd be sure to ALWAYS have it on leash off my property. If the bad guy isn't close enough for the dog to bite on leash, I'm sure as hell not going to have him chase anyone down the street. That, IMO, isn't what a PPD is used for and the lawyers would probably eat you a new ahole for turning the dog loose.
"IF" I had a trained PPD, the collar he wore would be whatever was needed to control it.
The What if or why has, again, came back to whatever that dog needs to be under control.


----------



## Bart Karmich (Jul 16, 2010)

Bob Scott said:


> I'm not a LEO or a PPD person but even if I was training circus dogs or truffle sniffing dogs the collar it wore would, again, be whatever needed to control that particular dog.
> With that, I'm sure that individual depts have their own rules and regs about leash and collar use during deployment. Then again $#!+ happens quickly so the "plan" may go out the window.
> You can question the why or when all day but it still boils down to what that individual dog needs to be under control.
> "IF" I had a trained PPD I'd be sure to ALWAYS have it on leash off my property. If the bad guy isn't close enough for the dog to bite on leash, I'm sure as hell not going to have him chase anyone down the street. That, IMO, isn't what a PPD is used for and the lawyers would probably eat you a new ahole for turning the dog loose.
> ...


 
There's some good points there. So for a PPD, dropping the leash would be a lot more defensible than activating a quick release. Of course you're not going to do a long send on a punk because he called you a name, but there's nothing wrong with dropping the leash if you're being assaulted.

Having the dog under control makes sense, and I think one of the things my question points out is that a prong or a slip type collar can interfere with the dogs job and if it needs one of those collars to be controlled, maybe it needs more training so it can patrol/walk on something that doesn't affect it's performance in the job adversely.


----------



## Ashley Campbell (Jun 21, 2009)

Whatever YOU can control the dog on.
My GSD bitch is easily controlled on a flat leather collar, even in situations that she gets excited over. My male needs a prong or I end up looking like a windsock being dragged down the street.

How hard is it to figure out that for Dog A that is well trained and obedient that you use what they work best on, and for dog B who is a blithering idiot, you use what they can be easily controlled on?

This is a rhetorical question. I'm very new to all the PPD and sports and the idea is to...use common sense.

If you think it interferes, don't use it. If you can't control the dog on a flat collar, don't use one. Oy!


----------



## Chris Michalek (Feb 13, 2008)

I like to use nunchucks for a leash and collar and when you get attacked.... WHOA MAN!! I feel sorry for the bad guy


----------



## Joby Becker (Dec 13, 2009)

collar no collar who cares...truth is someone getting bit by the dog is far less likely to think about using the collar against the dog than one might initially think...in my opinion...unless they also know about training dogs for bitework...


----------



## Thomas Barriano (Mar 27, 2006)

Chris Michalek said:


> I like to use nunchucks for a leash and collar and when you get attacked.... WHOA MAN!! I feel sorry for the bad guy


Chris,

How old are you in this picture?


----------



## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

I guess we're as real as the next dog group. Our dogs work on choker and 6ft leash. If on track, they are usually in harness. Other than that, except specific deployments, ie rapell etc, they are on plain old choker and leather leash. Some of the single purpose detectors do work on flat collars. While we don't do a "competition heel", I do expect the dog to remain in the heel if it sees a cat, another dog, squirell or even the bad guy running away, unless he is told otherwise. 

DFrost

DFrost


----------



## leslie cassian (Jun 3, 2007)

Back in my canine security guard days, I worked my dog in a wide flat leather collar and a choke chain. Leash clipped to both. I like double collaring... gives that extra bit of security if your dog fires off at someone or something he shouldn't. I have had almost every kind of collar and a couple of leashes fail in my many years of dog ownership.


----------



## Mike Ritland (Apr 11, 2009)

This one is for Suttle


----------



## Ashley Campbell (Jun 21, 2009)

Mike Ritland said:


> This one is for Suttle


But I wanted fricking sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads - I guess that'll do though.


----------



## mike suttle (Feb 19, 2008)

LOL, do they make those to fit Patterdales? That would be great for the barnstorming battles.


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Traditional LGD collar on a Anatolian Shepherd. 
Supposed to keep the wolves from doing a necklace job on the herd guardian.
Must be a pia for the dog when it needs to scratch an itch behind the ear.


----------



## Dennis Trzcinski (Jan 17, 2008)

First off PPD's and PSD have different rules of engagement. PSD's engage at distances in order to apprehend bad guys. PPD's are and should only be used to protect yourself or someone with you who needs help. So a PPD should be on leash and used as a deterent first, barking and acting nuts at the end of the leash under command control. Then if the idiot or bad guy still wants to come in against your best warnings then so be it give the dog a bite. Now if you walk your dog on a prong collar then get him used to it in protection, if you walk him with a fur saver than start doing protection work with the fur saver. Train as you work work as you train. Now if the bad guy has a gun send the dog and run, hopefully he will buy you enough time to get away.


----------



## Gillian Schuler (Apr 12, 2008)

I think it's pretty simple. 

Protection dogs or sport dogs.

I use a lead and collar on my dog that I know will enable me to control him. I do not use a lead or collar on my dog if I know he is well controllable without.

Why people can't work this out for themselves is beyond me.


----------

