Schutzhund Dog Training requires working with your dog using much more advanced techniques than mere obedience training. You will need to have a special dog to  start with if you would like to get involved with Schutzhund dog training.

This dog sport originated in Germany in the early 1900′s as a way to test German shepherd dogs’ abilities to be police dogs. Schutzhund literally is German for “protection dog”. Nowadays the Schutzhund dog training has changed to include tracking and obedience as well as protection as the focus points of the training.

Most of the Schutzhund dogs historically have been German shepherd dogs, but nowadays there are clubs that allow the entry of other breeds that are sufficiently athletic, courageous and intelligent enough to compete in this rigorous training. To qualify as a good candidate for a Schutzhund dog the following characteristics must be present:

The dog must have a very strong desire to work.
must display courage.
must be easy to train.
must display intelligence.
must develop a very strong bond with his handler.
must display a strong protective instinct.
must show perseverance.

A Schutzhund dog trial will consist on three main areas of dog training: Tracking, Obedience, and Protection. There are also rankings of Schutzhund 1, 2, or 3-with each level requiring more difficult tests during the trials.

Tracking: The tracking phase is designed to test your dogs ability to track through scent (find dropped items and following a trail set previously by a decoy)  as well as its mental sharpness and physical stamina. In the tracking trial the handler  follows his dog on a 33 foot leash.  The dog is required to find the dropped items and mark where it is, often by lying down and putting his front legs around the item.

Your dog will be scored on a 100 point scale depending on how well he performed.

Obedience: The obedience section of the competition is held in a large open field. Each dog works in a pair with another dog-with one dog waiting on the side of the field while the other dog is worked by the handler. The dogs will switch positions after the first dog completes his competition. The actual exercises are varied and require your dog to have total focus. Among the exercises are heeling among crowds of people, while shots are fired from a gun, male dogs remaining focused within the scent of a dog in heat, a variety of retrieves over jumps,  recalls and more.  Your dog is judged by his ability and enthusiasm to perform the exercises correctly.

Protection: The protection part of the competition tests your dogs courage and ability to protect both himself and his handler from a “decoy” that has been placed behind a blind. Your dog is commanded to search among the various blinds to find the decoy, and announce the decoy’s presence by barking.  The dog then must be able to guard the decoy until your arrival. This is the police work side of Schutzhund dog training. While the handler interacts with the decoy-searching or escorting him to the judge- the decoy will attempt to escape. At this point the dog must move to stop  the attempted escape by grabbing onto the decoy’s padded sleeve. When the decoy stops, your dog must release the decoy immediately on command. Your dog will be judged by his ability to control his aggression, enthusiasm for the work and courage.

To learn more about Shutzhund dog training it is a good idea to try to find a local Schutzhund club. Because the Schutzhund dog training requires more than one person-for the tracking and the protection phases of the competition, you will need the help of someone else with your training. That is another benefit of trying to find a Schutzhund club if you are interested in training your dog to the highest levels. If there are no clubs near you, you can watch a Schutzhund training video or DVD to get an idea of just how incredibly well trained Schutzhund dogs really are. For the hard core dog trainers among us, this is the highest level of dog training.

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