Today a lot of people take puppies of German shepherd, malinois, Herder, etc. without any intention to develop their defense talents. I met dog masters who bought malinois only because they liked their exterior.If it is a working dog it is highly desirable to give him/her opportunity to develop the defense talent on the training ground. However, in real life there are a lot of situations when you can sharpen your dogs' skills. For example, you are in the street late in the evening. ..
This video shows how - while going with my dog to a bank and back home late in the evening - several elements of obedience and mondioring were applied.
It is highly important to teach your dog to make a stop, better to sit down, even for a few seconds before crossing a tram line or a road. It might be a situation when this simple habit save your dog's life.
When
we take a puppy or a young dog we, being responsible dog owners, start thinking
about educating or training them. The first step in this long and enjoyable
(maybe more, maybe less) process is obedience. However, what is the goal of
teaching obedience? Let’s think it over. For most dog owners the key sense of
obedience is to make your life with the pet more comfortable and pleasant.
There is no doubt that it is very convenient to walk in a park with a dog who
quickly fulfils your command “come” or sits patiently while you talk to your
friend. Of course, obedience disciplinises your dog. However, does it develop
your dog? It is a big question.
There
can be another attitude to obedience, and here again I’d like to refer to
Mr.Kipling’s “We be of one blood, thou and I”, and put aside our
anthropocentric attitude towards dogs (and animals as a whole). Every dog is a
personality and has a lot of talents that we even do not see. Today it is a mainstream
topic of a lot of publications. Alexandra Horowitz’s “Inside of a dog. What
Dogs See, Smell, and Know” is one of them.
So, it seems better to treat obedience as only the first step for further education of your pet as well as a necessary element in helping your him/her in adaptation, for example, in an urban environment. Taking this as a starting point one will treat lessons on a training ground only as a basic minimum, developing various elements in practice, in real situations. For example, in a city it is very important to teach your dog how to cross streets. Do not doubt that a dog will understand very well the practical importance of commands “foot” and “sit”.
Summer is the best period to combine training with the instructor on the training ground (classes) and games in the open air, to develop defense skills as well as ability to be equal to any practical situation.
During the World War Two 68 thousands
well trained dogs struggled side by side with soldiers in the Russian Army. The
four-legged soldiers rescued 700 thousands wounded men, found 4 millions mines,
participated in demining of 300 big cities - Russian as well as European,
delivered 200 thousand messages, layed 8 thousand km of cables, blew up 300 tanks.
