Talk:Schutzhund

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 January 2020 and 12 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sassenach75.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Training section

As I have written the training section I find that it does not provide any information on actual training methods. Each time I started to write a description of actual training techniques I found that there would be too many caveats. Schutzhund training, especially protection training, is fairly specialized and difficult. It is not something that can be easily or accurately described in just a few paragraphs. In the end I wrote about training resources. I would appreciate comments as to whether this is sufficient or should I try to provide descriptions of actual training. Dsurber 00:32, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it would be hard to discuss training techniques in detail. Can you give just some brief examples? For example, for dog agility, I might say that "training techniques and what a handler desires in his dog's performance vary greatly. For example, techniques for training the weave poles include using offset poles that gradually move more in line with each other; using poles that tilt outward from the base and gradually become upright; using wires or gates around the poles forcing the dog into the desired path; putting the hand in the collar and guiding the dog through while leading with a toy or treat; teaching the dog to run full speed between 2 poles and gradually increasing the angle of approach and number of poles; and many other techniques." Hmmm, I like that, guess I ought to put it into the agilty article. Elf | Talk 05:09, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm confused by the statement in the article that most dog trainers don't use clickers. In my experience most do - particularly when preparing a dog for agility - but I don't know about Schutzhund. Is this statement meant to apply only to Schutzhund trainers? --Laura Scudder | Talk 18:45, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the not using clickers applies to Schutzhund trainers only, not trainers in general. Lachatdelarue (talk) 21:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Clicker training is a variant of marker training, i.e., marking good behaviors with a physical or verbal cue appealing to the dog. ("Yes!" "Good dog!" etc.). Marker training is definitely used by protection sports enthusiasts of all stripes, and certainly the vast majority of modern Schutzhund trainers. They don't use clickers because they're annoying, can't be carried on the field (and certainly can be forgotten in practice)and are a poor substitute for actual handler/dog interaction and bonding via verbal and food-

 Done I reworked the article, though kept much of the original "training" section; merely splitting the club training from the theory-and-home training information. I don't think this article could bear to include some of the training techniques, if just because the dogs are trained for y-e-a-r-s, in many cases. Such training is beyond the scope of this article. Best to leave that to the article Dog training or some other article. Normal Op (talk) 04:45, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic, Subjective, POV, etc

Like so many of the pet articles, this one reads as if it were copied and pasted from the poorly-designed GeoCities page of some backwater puppy mill or uneducated "training consultant". Sure, it's no worse than the typical Wikipedia article about "Simpsons" minutia or my friend's band, but the list of links to photocopied propaganda pamphlets pushes this one below the usual standard of article quality. Thus, Request for Deletion is the next logical step.

While in many aspects this article has come a long way- there's still disputable material. While a big fan of Karen Pryor myself, I'm not sure that the specific books mentioned really belong here, unless as a reference at the end. Some mention of Behaviorism and Operant Conditioning on the other hand, might be appropriate (or not?) Cuvtixo 2006-12-22T03:34:00‎

Resolved

Normal Op (talk) 04:41, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Restored Introduction

I restored the introduction that was gutted by an IP address back in December. It is an introduction and should provide more context than the bald recital of facts that remained. No question the article needs work, but wholesale deletions are probably not the right direction. Dsurber 00:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Passing through on my way back to wikiretirement (or hiatius)--I rephrased the intro a little to clear up a couple of things and try to be a little less POV, but I haven't researched the origins so it might still be incorrect about the "developed for GSDs" concept. Elf | Talk 21:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

 Done I reworked the article. Normal Op (talk) 04:42, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Reworked the article

The prior version was horrible — entirely out of date, a patchwork of ideas with no cohesive plan, few citations, citations that didn't support any of the article content, and some of it looked like a bad translation from the German wiki article over a decade ago. I did, however, keep some of the text; the content wasn't completely tossed out. I interviewed people to get the lay of the land (ha ha, since I could learn nothing from the Wikipedia article), then did research, rewrote the article, and added bunches of citations. It's not perfect, but it's heaps better than it was. Normal Op (talk) 04:23, 15 July 2020 (UTC)