Feel free to post any questions regarding Schutzhund obedience in this thread!

This is the heeling pattern for all three phases of Schutzhund.

Oh gosh, that's a good question! Just like anything else you're training for, it depends on the individual dog, but as a general rule, I've found that females tend to pick up on new things quicker, but males are more consistent. Bitches can be moody and will sometimes decide that, nope, they aren't going to perform today and there's really nothing you can do to 'make' them. With males, you can make more mistakes because they aren't as apt to 'shut down' if you over correct them or whatever. Generally, females are a tad bit more sensitive. Males tend to take longer to mature, mentally, too.

Of course, there are always exceptions, because every dog is an individual!

Of course they can! Two of the dogs at our club are neutered

Interesting point...all we heard for years was they had to be intact...

Janet

They only have to be intact if you are planning on doing a breed survey. If all you want to do is the three phases of Schutzhund, it makes no difference if the dog is speutered or not.

During tracking, it's just one dog/handler team at a time, but for obedience, there are two dogs on the obedience field. One dog does his heeling routine while the other does a 'down under distraction,' with the handler 20-30 paces away (and for SchH III, the handler is out of sight completely). Then they switch places. The protection routine is just one dog. Yes, spectators are allowed and encouraged to come and watch a Schutzhund trial, just like an AKC event.

When we train, we may have more than two dogs on the field at a time during obedience, and we may have multiple dogs on the field during protection training as well. The dogs learn not to be distracted by spectators and other dogs during training, so that's really not an issue.

We are having members slowly starting to sign in and read...could you explain please to them what: 'down under distraction,' is? This is interesting and I noticed, it's grabbed the attention of many members....thanks for posting it all..

Janet

I explained it in my previous post. The down under distraction is when the dog must remain in a down position, off leash, with the owner 20-30 paces away (and/or out of sight completely), while another dog does his heeling routine.

She gets a free pass........this time.

What about moi being the behind-the-scenes brains? bruuuuuuuwaaaaah!

Seriously, I have known more than eight dogs and handlers doing obedience at the same time and getting the dogs to ignore 'distractions'. It all can work unless someone entered an 'anti-social misfit' and all hell breaks loose.

Just for interest, I once had a JR/TerrierX and she was so obedient it was angelic. Used to do a lot of obedience trials with her, she could put any big dog in their place! Next door nieghbour had an unspayed GSD bitch who thought she could rule the street but one word from me and Emma saw Emma off! Yep, by coincidence both dogs/different ages had the same name.

Personally I think that, unless one has a very special relationship with a male dog, a bitch is much easier to train. I have had male dogs that would run their socks off for me at shows but it was harder training them than a bitch.
I noticed that, since Hetty had to be spayed at age seven for health reasons, she is far less 'obedient' than she used to be!

hexie