Customer Reviews

Schutzhund obedience: Training in drive with Gottfried Dildei

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'Schutzhund Obedience' is an excellent introduction to the concept of motivational obedience training. The basic concept of 'training in drive' is to teach the dog that accurately completing obedience commands will earn him a chance to satisfy his desire for food or play. The dog should therefore learn to enjoy training and approach it with an enthusiastic, focused attitude.

Although a little theory is included, this book is basically a series of step-by-step 'cookie cutter' recipes to be followed, with the end result a dog that can happily and accurately compete in a Schutzhund obedience trial.

Although the recipes in this book are exclusively aimed at readers wishing to teach Schutzhund obedience to large dogs, with a little creativity they can be applied to training for any competition obedience with any moderate-to-high drive dog. The main differences between training for these two disciplines are found in the heeling chapter - unlike Schutzhund heeling, competition obedience heeling does not follow a set pattern that the dog can learn by heart, and it is also difficult to use the 'lure' food method to teach heeling with smaller dogs.

This is not a basic training book - it will not teach your dog basic house manners. It is also not a book for the beginner trainer, as it helps to read this book with some understanding of operant conditioning, pack dynamics and drive theory. Although this book contains very useful suggestions for structuring a training programme, it can still be improved upon with a little thought - in particular, I have found including a marker/bridge with the training regime to be very helpful.

I am slightly dissapointed that the authors did not go into more depth about the theoretical basis of training in drive, but still found this book extremely useful for training for competition obedience.

If you're new to the game of raising a high drive dog, this is an excellent place to start. That bitch or dog is going to test you in the first three years (and beyond) so you had best be prepared to ensure you have a have a well disciplined animal. It's worth the effort and this book will guide you!

This book was a birthday gift for my husband who has been training two lab retrievers in obediance. The title is not entirely clear---the book is about different ways of motivating the dog to eagerly desire to follow the trainer's commands. That is what the Germans call "training in drive." My husband reports that the book goes into different versions of praise and when each method is relevant. He has already found it helpful with our daughter's laid-back black lab Sampson.