What is your opinion on Schutzhundsport in the USA ? - Page 7

I agree with zdog.  I am in my mid-20's and and have been involved with the sport for 4 years now.  Typical new person experience.  My first dog was not cut out to do the sport, but I worked my butt off thinking it was, not knowing any better.  Well I learned and got as far as I could with that dog.  I then got a dog that is now Sch3 and getting ready for the WDC/AWDF. 

I was told straight up from the beginning how hard it was to title a dog from puppy to sch3.  My club does not accept people who want to dabble in the sport.  If you are serious and show up and want to get better, we are all about helping somebody out.   It made me even more intrigued.  

Part of the trouble with the sport is all the watering down of it to allow dogs to title (read: show dogs).  Momo you are just advocating one more way of watering it down.  If they only want to do an OB-1, and come to club on the weekends that they don't have Dock diving and agility practice, goodbye.  This is a sport with three phases.  It is more of a lifestyle.  People who do not have the drive to do the sport seriously are never going to be coddled enough into having it.  Just the way it is.

I bet you a dime to a donut hole that you can take 100 people and try to get them interested in schutzhund and after a very brief time the vast majority will bail regardless of age for one reason or another. Nothing worth doing or having is ever really easy in my opinion. Of course I grew up in an age where yes sir and yes ma'am were a requirement, getting your ass-spanked was not a matter for Child Welfare Services, videos consisted of pinball and a little later on we got pong, space invaders and asteroids and of course pac-man. We actually worked for what we wanted.

Keith
 

All those in opposition of my observations are being extremely short sighted and narrow minded.  A very workable solution to accommodate "weekend warriors" is simply to have levels of membership at your clubs.  Full membership would be reserved for what many of you consider to be the "ideal" schutzhund participant doing bite work, pursuing SchH/IPO titles, holding leadership postitions etc.  Associate Membership would be folks who come by mostly on weekends and are only allowed to train for BH, OB, AD, FH and serve on club commitees to inject fresh perspective.  I know you don't like the mentality of the person that wants and asks for a certificate in 6 weeks, but thats the perfect time to talk them into a completing BH, which can certianly be achieved in a time frame that most of these folks would find acceptable.  If they learn about the sport with thier unsuitable mentality and crappy dog by training for achievable things like a BH or OB-1, you never know, when they are ready for a second dog they may go all in.  But instead of explaining and coming up with a way to baby-step them through the process, you are simply saying "all or nothing".

The fact that many of you believe the sport can survive without casual memebers just boggles my mind.  I guess it never occured to most posting here that "weekend warrior" types have been known to pay various "club dues" and also rarely show up to take advantage of the fees paid.  In addition some may be better "money managers" and "fund raisers" that can actually help with the club bottom line.  But hey, not only can you train dogs, you guys are also running tight ships at you clubs finacially, you don't need the extra bodies and casual support.  Beacuse, well, afterall, you KNOW EVERYTHING!

Keep digging the grave of the sport, unfortunately many of you will be too old or dead by the time the seeds you are sowing today have taken root and grown.  Believe it or not ,your clubs won't stay afloat without backing from folks who are not the "ideal canidate"

Feel free to take a look at the link I posted below.  THIS IS THE FUTURE IN STORE FOR SCHUTZHUND:

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2011/01/20/pet-greyhound-dog-racing-made-illegal-in-38-states.aspx

At the bottom of the article the following is written:

If you live in a state that either still has active dog racetracks or one that has not yet made the sport illegal, write to your state officials to encourage anti-dog racing legislation.

Contact the HSUS, the ASPCA or GREY2K USA to join their public awareness and legislative efforts.

You don't need much imagination to realize that one day "greyhound racing" will be swapped with "schutzhund sport".  If you take my "30 and under profiling" opinion seriously, it also becomes quite obvious who potentially will be spearheadig such efforts, and its NOT the current 40 and over crowd.

greyhound racing died for a number of reasons, very few of which have anything to do with schutzhund or dog ownership in general.  They built mini stadiums with seating and concenssions and had tons of overhead to keep those tracks open.  Then you had to deal with the gambling aspect that some in society aren't for and right there you had a recipe for disaster.  Toss in that dog racing was never all that popular to begin with and then a culture built around cramming hundreds of dogs in tiny spaces and tossing them aside, usually by death, unless someone "rescued" them and yeah, it kind of tanked.  can't say I'm sorry to see it go either. 

Momo,

Another issue is that these people who do not want to train consistently and are "associate members" take up time.  One of the biggest reasons that I have seen new people come to club, then abruptly quit, is that it took too long to train.  They anticipate it being a petsmart obedience class that lasts 45 min.  I don't know what it is like at other clubs, but with our small club of dedicated people, it takes 5-7 hours(tracking, ob, prot) to train. When you have people who make no progress with their dog and are just there to socialize, and you have to take other people's training time to teach them something that you taught them a month ago.  I love training, and I love spending time with my family.  If I have a bunch of "associate members" wasting my training time, and biting into my family time.  It creates nothing but problems.  These "associate members"  are usually the first people to complain that their dog is not titled yet, or that the helper is the reason they are not progressing.


Just my experience.

 

I really don't even know what people are arguing for.  I don't see this making any difference anyway.  It's not going to draw anymore numbers from the general dog public.  Not in any substantial numbers anyway.  A few here and there are going to blend right in with the regular numbers that show up and disappear every yeat.  It might let those with dogs that won't title all the way, do an OB or tracking with their dogs so they accomplish something, but in the end it's not going to change a whole lot.

Those that are serious, will continue to be, those that aren't, won't, those that want to trial will and those that don't, won't. 

 

zdog, hey smart guy, dogs doing bitework in some parts of Australia must be declared dangerous and a ban almost happend in Austria (an exemption saved them).  Use the searchy, it been posted here already.

Michael Scarn, thanks for adding your boots on the ground experience.  Nothing wrong with non-regualrs wanting to train for an hour, if your club can't make such an arrangement work, I guess it won't happen many places.

RIP Schutzhundsport.

I am rather smart, thanks for noticing.  Good for Australia, when I move there, I'll let you know how it is.  In the meantime I can do it in my backyard here. 
it has as much to do with training here as racing tracks.  They failed because nobody went to them, not because of some people writing their legislators.  They failed because the business plan wasn't sound.  They failed because they spent too much and made to little. 

 

My .02
I jumped into Schutzhund head first. Bought an outstanding dog & moved closer so I can train everyday. After about 1 year I started to dis like going to training & I started paying for private sessions. The bitchy, back stabbing, elitist attitudes that I found were just ridicules. If you didn't know so & so you weren't part of the click, or if you were friendly with someone else, they didn't like you. Nice face to face then back stabbing. If your dog didn't have xxx last name they just scouf & turn their noses up. Everyone talks behind everyones back & the world of shutzhund really is worse than a bunch of high school chicks. I train somewhere else now & it is better in some cases, But I did check out other clubs & they were pretty much alike. Schutzhund regulars make it real difficult for new people starting out. I have met some very nice people that have taught me along the way but the majority of the "elitists" I wouldn't want to even associate with them off the field. Kinda reminds me of PDB. So now I train my dogs for me, forget the natioanls or regionals. Alot of you (genralizing) have ruined the sport for me. Again jmo ;)