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by adhahn on 27 May 2016 - 16:05
It could be that my definition is odd. Perhaps I'm just old rather than odd..... or maybe I'm both old and odd.
To check my memory I looked in Dietmat Schellenberg's book "Top Working Dogs". Some folks probably consider the book obsolete. I'm not going to try typing out everything he had to say about hardness, but here are a couple excerpts-
"For Schutzhund competition, and especially a novice trainer, we recommend to get a hard dog."
"Hard dogs don't get disturbed when handled wrongly, they forget it in an instant and retain their happy working spirit."
"For example: On the retrieve over the hurtle the dog comes in too low, hits the barrier and knocks it over. The hard dog soon forgets the mishap and further training poses no problem. The soft dog however remembers the pain and the noise of the tumbling boards for a long time. He will try to avoid the hurtle, walk around it or remain on the other side. It requires a patient, understanding and skillful handler to repair the damage.
For these reasons, novice handlers are always better off with a hard dog."
In the example provided by Mr. Schellenberg, the dogs cognitive ability to grasp what happened or why is a mute point.
If you pick up any older book it's likely that you'll find similar definitions of "Hard" and "Hardness".
Mr. Schellenberg also points out what should be obvious- "There are soft and hard dogs and there are as many dogs in between as there are shades of grey between pure black and pure white."
If folks took that obvious truth to heart, there would't be so much debate. Those 'shades of grey' confuse people. A dog can be handler soft and helper hard. A dog can be hard as nails during protection and soft during OB, etc, etc.
Pain tolerance and other Thresholds are also separate traits from Hard/Soft and this causes further confusion.
Terms like Hard, Sharp, Thresholds and so forth are great for communication between humans (as long as we somewhat agree on the definitions).
When it comes to actually handling dogs, terms don't matter much. A good trainer reads the dog in front of him and adjusts accordingly.
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