Dutch Shepherd Forum

Hope just finished her obedience and is 6mos old. Just curious at what age generally to start aggression/protection work. The trainer we are working with saw something te other day and just introduced guard on lease and she started barking at him and I don't want to rush her. Thanks

What are your goals? Just home/personal protection? Or sport work?

It is an individual choice, depending on the dog, owner and trainer. In my experience, if a dog has the drive to do protention work, it will, even if you don't start early. Then again, many pups get taken to watch protection work from the time they are pups, and grow up watching it. That often leads to a little tug work, which leads to the next step and the next. If you work with someone who has done this before, then you can probably trust them to ease the dog into it. She is probably not too young for some tug work (I assume she finished teething) so if you generally trust the trainer, I would say that he is most likely just activating her interest.
There is no hard and fast rule though. If a pup does not show any talent, 6 months of age is pretty young to start testing. And for a pup that is pulling hard on the leash, trying to get to the decoy, it is totally okay to start some first bites.
So there you go. Depends on the dog, the trainer and the owner. If the trainer has started young dogs before (with good results) I would not worry too much, though I think 6 months is plenty early to have finished obedience.

Personal protection. He owns her brother and is working with him now but not pushing any bite work hard. Trying to build her confidence.

I agree with Judith about trusting your trainer and it being appropriate to play some tug games at this age.

I would worry about any suspicion training at such a young age. Especially since most working breeds go through a fear period at 8-12 months. My opinion is that this is when the dog starts to experience some natural defense and doesn't quite know how to deal with it. All of a sudden they start noticing things that have always been there - like the mailbox. I think it is important for the dogs confidence for them to be exposed to things and socialized during that phase (read that as introduced to things and taught that they are not scary - not necessarily make friends with everything and everyone).

I think defense work and suspicion training at too young of an age just encourages the dogs to react out of fear, instead of confident aggression.

JMO

I wan't clear if you're talking about protection work in general, in which case you can start drive and bite building and any confidence work with young puppies. However if you're talking about serious work with decoy, I would definitely wait until the dog is ready which will completely depend on the individual.

I have a question about fear. I got my dutch when she was 6 months old, we were her third family in this time period. I don't know the reason why but she washed out at a police department in Florida. My master trainer and I think she was hurt by a previous owner. My son came over to see her when we had her for about 2 or 3 weeks, he is a big person and when Inga saw him she went under the table really fast and would not come out until he left. So far we are just bonding with her. In our other dog programs we stress bonding very much. So I think we will get there but it's a slow process. Any suggestions. When it's just my wife and I outside she is a monster, jumping and hitting me about chest level,. it's our play game and she seems to like that but like I said, let a big person come around and it's over until they leave. As far as obidience, she will sit, down and hold for a short time, still working her on obidience but like I said earlier, we think she was hurt so we don't push her right now, besides she is still just a pup. 7 and 1/2 months old now.

She will probably overcome it, as you already suspect. I would get her out in public where there are other people around. The people don't need to come and pet her. They can just be people walking around and she will see that they are not interested in her at all. Or if they are interested, perhaps you have some handy treats they can feed to her for a positive experience.

I don't get my dogs out in public as much as I'd like, but they do go to a lot of classes and shows. But 2 weeks ago, I took my DS and my older Laekenois (because he's a confident friendly dog) to an outside shopping mall on a Sunday morning. There were a lot of families with children there, and a clown on stilts, and a man painted silver being a statue. All the children wanted to come and see Boaz and he was very happy to have them all pet him. The adults like my Laekenois. I try to do this as often as possible and wish I could do it more often. Sometimes we go to the soccer park and watch the kids practice for a little while. There's noise and balls flying around. Sometimes it's a baseball game. They don't get much attention from the people at the sporting events, but they watch everything that's going on.

Also, I have a phrase that I use when my dogs are suspicious or worried about something new. I say in a happy voice, "What's that?". But it kind of comes out as "Wazzat??" LOL! Anyway, they have learned that it means there's nothing to worry about.