What in the Heck is Schutzhund?
You can be a long time lover of German Shepherd Dogs and still not have heard the word ‘Schutzhund’ but it has deep ties to the historical and ongoing development of the German Shepherd Dog breed.
Schutzhund is both a dog sport and a breed suitability test with three titles that can be achieved – IPO 1, 2 and 3 – and each is progressively harder. Each title involves tracking, obedience and protection work (bite exercises) referred to as “test phases”. The tracking phase is longer for an IPO 2 title than for an IPO 1. There is more obedience and harder bite work exercises for IPO 2 than IPO 1.
The testing is designed to evaluate a dog’s temperament, intelligence, workability, courage, desire to play, physical soundness, confidence and their bond to their handler. It was developed in Germany in the early 1900s as a suitability test for German Shepherd Dogs but it soon became the model for training and evaluating all five German protection dog breeds (Boxer, Doberman, Riesenschenauzer, Rottweiler and German Shepherd Dog).
The purpose of Schutzhund is to identify dogs that have, or do not have, the requisite character traits to be considered good working dogs. There are three phases that become successively harder for the dog to pass, each of which must be passed before moving on. All three phases must be passed at the same trial under the same judge in order to be awarded the title. And… you start, you finish! To quit before completing all three phases is considered poor sportsmanship, regardless of a dog’s success or failure at a particular phase.
The German Shepherd is a working dog, originally bred as a herding dog for herding sheep. The breed was developed starting around 1900 using a variety of working herding dogs in an effort to create a good general purpose working dog. It did not take long to see the wide local variations in the appearance and abilities of the resultant dogs.
it was clear the dogs were losing their working ability
Schutzhund was developed as a test of a German Shepherd Dog’s working ability.
In Germany, the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde (SV) will issue papers to purebred German Shepherd Dogs. The name of the organization translates to the “Society for German Shepherd Dogs”. It is the dog club which sets forward the standards and ratings of the German Shepherd Dog breed. The papers that are most desirable are the ‘pink papers’. These are given by the SV to an entire litter when both parents are titled and breed surveyed. This encouragement to test every generation’s working ability, helps ensure that working ability is maintained in the breed.
It is not unheard of for those unfamiliar with the sport and associated training to be concerned that it teaches dogs to be aggressive, to bite. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If a dog was not a fear biter before taking on Schutzhund training, they will certainly not become one with this specialized and intensive training.
The protection training starts young. Puppies get a start at this work with a burlap bag. Their work is all about using their natural prey drive and building their confidence. They progress to working with a soft padded puppy sleeve and then to a hard sleeve when they’re done teething.
Later, protection training evolves to include the dog taking two hits from a padded stick during their ‘attack’ on a specially garbed handler called a ‘decoy’. This tests that the dog can handle the threat and not be deterred from their objective. The training creates an extremely tight bond between handlers and their dogs.
CHANGES
Today, any breed of dog can enter a Schutzhund trial.
COMPETITIONS
There are tiered competitions leading up to huge annual national and international competitions in Germany and other countries where handler / dog teams compete against each other.
GOALS
The sport offers an excellent way to evaluate a dog’s response to stressful situations and how well that dog controls their drives and works with a handler even when intensely focused. It is not about teaching aggression.
Testing and utilizing the best performing dogs to improve successive generations maintained their working ability.
My own experience with Schutzhund was with my heart dog, Fergi vom Tanhäuser. She was an incredible female and so much fun to train and title. There was never a day she didn’t show up and give it her all.
I was extremely fortunate in that the day she went to trial there was a photographer with a telephoto lens taking pictures of the dogs competing. He captured gorgeous pictures of Fergi in different trial phases. You can see her above retrieving the dumbbell over a wall and rounding a blind as part of the obedience phase and her performance in the last exercise of the protection phase below.
In the trial, we passed tracking and obedience and went into the last phase – protection. Never a concern there! Fergi lived for this. This phase started with me sending Fergi around the first blind looking for the ‘bad guy’… the decoy. Of course, he is never there. He is in the next blind. The look on Fergi’s face! “There you are sucker, you’re mine!” She is not allowed to bite unless he tries to escape and the decoy knows not to move. Fergi is trained to hold and bark… hold him there and bark like crazy saying to her handler “I FOUND HIM!!!” “HE’S OVER THERE!!!!” Then, as I come to pick her up, the decoy steps out trying to escape and Fergi goes after him, taking her two stick hits. No problem! She passed that perfectly. Because the decoy is running away here, they become prey and the dog goes after them. This exercise is called the courage test.
The last exercise of this phase is the long bite test. This test is also a courage test as the dog has to be threatened with the stick but there are no hits in it. The exercise starts with the decoy at the far end of the field. They come running toward the handler and their dog screaming and waving the stick. When the judge tells you, you send your dog to get the decoy. This is much more threatening to the dog because they are now being pursued.
The judge nodded at me and I sent Fergi. She took off like a rocket. I saw her hit the sleeve like a freight train and go flying thru the air! I thought, “Oh my gosh what has just happened!? What is going on down there? This has never happened!” But she was not to be deterred from her goal. She hit the ground, turned around and went back on the sleeve.
The judge waved at me to “out” my dog and I wondered… could I get her to let go and move into guard mode from this distance when she was still barking and holding the decoy? Again, she performed perfectly.
The judge then motioned for me to hurry up because my dog was injured, her mouth was bleeding. I was about 3 minutes from her receiving her title. I picked up my dog, took the stick away from the decoy and heeled her over to the judge to finish the routine and listen to the critique. I checked her mouth and her upper canine was snapped off and bleeding. The judge explained that she hit the sleeve so hard that first time she broke her large canine tooth off and even in pain she swung back around and got back on the sleeve. He said, “This dog has the heart of a lion” and she did.
“Congratulations, IPO 1 today!” It was an incredible moment.
The amazing part was that photographer captured a photo of Fergi just after she hit the sleeve so hard. You can see that piece of her tooth in the air above her head!!!
She was a on-in-a-million dog, with fantastic temperament and workability. There will never be another Fergi. I miss her terribly, but these wonderful memories of her keep her in my heart and she lives on through her progeny at Tannhäuser.
¹ Wikipedia “Schutzhund“
I no longer title my females. I am physically not able to. I could send them out for a title, but that would require that I ship them to Germany. I cannot put my dogs on a long stressful flight to Germany where someone I don’t know well would work with them to get a title. This is very hard on the dog and they have always been my love and my priority. They would not know the trainer and certainly would not have that deep bond with them. Schutzhund is all about that dog-trainer bond and I wouldn’t be there for them. This is not something one develops overnight. It is the result of the long, intensive training a trainer and their dog put in for the sport.
My other reservation is that I train using entirely positive techniques. There are reports of a lot of dog abuse in the sport unfortunately. I will not risk my dogs being improperly trained and then pushed hard just to get a title.
A title does prove to a judge that a dog can pass a temperament test and do the competition work; track, complete obedience trials and is confident enough to take stick hits and defend itself. However, adult dogs can come from the same genetic lines, not be titled and still produce the same quality progeny. I won’t put my dogs through that incredibly stressful experience just so I can charge more for my puppies. My dogs could be titled, but I have chosen not to do it unless I do the training.
The pedigree of my breeding dogs (their genetic history) is a huge factor in ensuring they have solid conformations to pass on but it is equally important the dogs are individually certified as well. I ensure this is done carefully, according to standards, for each dog.
My experience with breeding companion dogs has shown me a majority of my customers don’t know what goes into titling a dog or even what Schutzhund is. Their priority, like mine, is to have a dog that comes from healthy, wonderful lines with a good temperament. They want to know the dog’s hips and elbows are solid, that their eyes are good… that they will not suffer from the known German Shepherd Dog genetic issues. They want to know that the puppies are raised in a safe, loving environment where they get early socialization and are exposed to things that encourage their natural curiosity and stimulate their learning. This is where I focus. This is my passion.
If you want a dog that can compete, my dogs can do that too and they’ll love it like Fergi did. Find a good trainer that uses positive training techniques and have a wonderful time bonding with your dog. It truly can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
I encourage you to read about my breeding standards and use the insights in this article to decide what is important to you in your search for a new companion. Read the reviews from my customers and see the photos of them with their dogs. They too found their heart dogs and that relationship means so much.
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