GSD (Is there such a thing as too much Drive ?) - Page 5

THis has been off topic for awhile.  Nothing but a bitch fest about what's wrong with this or that type of dogs.  Enough misinformation to choke a small pony.

Easy to tell who knows dogs and who doesn't from the posts though. 

That was sort of my point duke. It is not too much prey that makes these screaming over the top dogs.

A dog with good balance and a good head does not need to be worked everyday in order to keep in check.

And that good solid dog can be, and should be able to be more than just a sport dog. Dual purposes. 

I think the bottom line is you either like and see the value of having a high drive dog or you dont, if thats not ones cup of tea thats just how it is.

kitkat; deprivation of a need creates drive. nature or nurture will teach a dog how to express behavior to fullfill the drive. ie a dog is not fed for enough time to be very hungry. The food drive is high. Prey drive kicks in to get food. If you want the dog to work for food, let's say track, but  you allow it scream and run in circles and then feed it for that behavior you get an anxious behavior and the dog gets fed. You get no tracking behavior. The videos of Dukes training speak volumes. There are about 20 different dogs in that clip. He works with a helper to shape prey drive into trainable behaviors for protection and search. The helper adds some defence to the prey drive building to balance. Watch Duke add obedience to the drive building to get focused and predictable behavior. Some of those dogs which duke shows are not high drive dogs but worked in the drives they have, properly. So the topic '' is there too much drive [ in the breed]?'' Which drive? I dislike defence drive when it is expressed in advoidence and fear. I dislike prey drive when it is expressed as ''hectic behavior''. I love a dog with the ability to create high drive! I love a handler who creates clarity for his charges! 

Like I said.  Easy to see on this thread who the real trainers are.

Thanks Duke, I watched the whole string of videos ...

YR

didnot plan to string it, youtube does that without asking

back on topic, the over the top preydogs are good for something, single purpose detectiondogs cant be crazy enough on prey and hunt

Thank you Duke; Too many of us do not get to see a cross section of dogs receive training. The ''single purpose dog'' who finds a bomb and saves the world from another attack is a very important dog. If our  GSDs produce these detection dogs maybe we should not neuter them? 

A lot of people have stories about their dog that happily lies around the house all day and then morphs into a high drive worker on the field.  Im betting 90% of those stories fall apart when video of the obedience and secondary control gets made..  That being said I have seen a few of these dogs but imo most people on the forums are living in fantasy land when it comes to evaluating what they actually have.

When your asking a dog for highly complex behaviors over extended periods of time during which you also require animation/speed you quickly find out what your dog is and is not.  That is why finding top level sport dogs is not so easy.

I personally like high prey as long as there is some real aggression / dominance mixed in. Not easy to find around here.  I see lots of dogs with high prey and decent nerve but no true aggression.  They dont truly fight the helper or view him as an adversery.  Plenty of them leak during OB.  Its not anxiety its a verbal expression of the restrained frustration the dog is experiencing while capping himself.

Their prey drive makes them easy to keep in drive during B and C phase as they are less likely to lose hope that the ball will appear at some point (if trained properly) or get tired of being rewarded.

I got to work a dog recently.  Lots of prey, very safe dog to be around, easy to live with, when I pushed him during the guarding phase with some presence he bit full, hard and gave good fight.  He has all the traits necessary to do quite well in sport.

Not a great dog but defintely a good one that is also someones pet.

There was a dog that I have seen a few times from Flugge's kennel. Very high drive, screamer, hectic, out of control. Just saw him a couple weeks ago at a mock trial. Clearly the handler has developed as well as the training. He still leaks a bit but has become very dominant towards the helper during protection while remaining under control. One of the few dogs that naturally trys to drag the helper down on the escape. An actual powerhouse.

In the end I much prefer a dog that has some issues capping over a dog that you have to struggle to keep in a sustained drive state. As a handler, you are always forced to come up with new and innovative ways to improve expression and speed. After a while it becames a grind that negatively impacts the handler and dog. Better a dog that you have to scale down a bit.  jmo..

I remember (and some still believe) when extreme angulation was justified by the extreme sidegait made herding easier for the dog!...lol, anyway, I handled and trained single purpose detection dog in the seventies in military. We didn't have over the top screamer dogs at that time, he was a good strong nerved dog with good prey that would work tirelessly for praise and his handler. His reliability was incredible, was he good dog?....Well we called 130 alerts over 18 month period and had 129 finds. I judge most things by performance and reliability over time.....in that regard he was excellent. I have worked with many over the top prey Malinois and a few over the top prey GS in detection work over the years....inquire about reliability???
The question was basically can you have too much drive, I am simple man who has the fortunate of being able to read the standard and have seen and worked many many GS in many fields over a number of years.....just like you can have too much angulation( which is now generally accepted but still has some justifying even with examples), you can have too much drive, even though there are some justifying it.
I just hope I have enough time on earth to see the trend go back to strong drive instead of extreme drive, just as I see many of the structure people who supported the extreme angulated dog now scramble to get this dog back to sensibility in angulation.