PATRICK T MERRITT
CONCORD POLICE DEPARTMENT
Lets
discuss Prey drive and hunt drive and how they effect you and
your dog. Prey drive is the internal drive or amount of
motivation, to Chase, Capture, and Vanquish its prey. Hunt drive
is the desire to hunt for it’s prey. The important difference
between the two is, prey drive deals exclusively with prey while
it is seen by the dog and within his eye’s sight only. The act
of movement and an item the dog considers to be prey triggers a
internal reaction within the dog. Hunt drive is dealing
with prey after visual contact has been lost.
We
evaluate the domesticated dog, through the study of wolf’s in
the wild, because all domesticated dogs as we know came from
wolf’s. Prey drive and Hunt drive is inherited into each dog,
some dogs have a very strong prey and hunt drive and others have
very little, and they may have good prey drive and little or no
hunt drive.
Through
the down breeding of the domesticated dogs, some of these
drive’s have been lost, this is the single most reason for the
importing of Police Service dogs today within the United States.
As a
Trainer or Handler, we must understand just how much each of
these drives effects our dogs, and if you understand their true
meaning, you will be able to harness that power within your dog
to do the things you want him to do. First of all remember,
that he is an animal, and as an animal who was made to live his
life in the wild, he really prior to coming into your life has
very little concern for capturing bad guys, or hunting for drugs
or anything else that we as human beings desire. The only
reason our dogs do anything at all for us, is because they are
being rewarded by their actions, either for food, or praise and
love by us. It is the food or praise that is the key to
communication to our animals, so when I say praise your animal
after he has done a good job, in reality, your are using the
only form of communication that you have to tell him that, yes,
this is what I want from you, the same as correction or no,
tells him, I dont want this reaction from you. It is important
for you to remember that you can not assume that your dog
understands your general dislike towards an action he has
committed, he can only make connection with something he did
right or wrong, if you praise him or correct him at the exact
time of the action, this is too many times not understood by
Handlers.
Now
back to hunt and prey drive. If we take an animal, who is now
domesticated, but still has the inherited drives of his
ancestors to go out and hunt for food, and we can harness those
drives to look for bad guys or hunt for narcotics, we have given
ourselves a sort of super human extension to ourselves, because
he can smell John Doe and where he has walked, where as we can
not, and he can smell John Doe’s dope, where as we cannot. Now,
I am telling my dog, that if you find John and his dope, I will
feed you, and give you water, and a place to live, and I will be
your buddy, and for leaving your family in the wild, you can
join my family, remember, dogs are family orientated, they were
not made to spend their lives alone in kennels or tied up on
chains, this is cruel and unusual treatment to the animal.
We
deal with prey drive or hunt drive in different training
scenario’s, but it is an inherited drive that we are asking
him to use when he finds something for us, whether it is finding
a man in the building, or article search, or drug searches, it
is always the same source of power, When the animal finds the
man, and he is within visual sight of the man, his prey drive
will trigger, and he will capture his prey. If you throw a ball
out into a field, and the dog sees the ball being thrown, and
you immediately release the dog as the ball is moving, the dog
chases the ball through prey drive, but if you hold the dog
until after the ball has landed for several seconds, and then
you release him, it is his hunt drive that causes him to locate
the prey. Now lets add one more drive, retrieve drive.
Retrieve drive is the inner desire of the dog, to bring prey
back to the pack, again, he may have a high inherited retrieve
drive or low, retrieve drive, depending on the animal. So,
given the same scenario of throwing the ball into the field, and
holding the dog until the ball is out of sight, I release my dog
and tell him to find it, the dogs attention is gained by prey
drive, but once the ball is out of sight, it is his hunt drive
that pushes him to find it, when he has found the ball, his prey
drive is triggered to capture it, and his retrieve drive would
cause him to bring the ball back to you, these drives work in
unison, and are called drive interaction. If one of these
inherited drives are absent in the dog, it cannot be trained
into him. Given the same training technique with another dog
with low or no hunt drive, lets try it again, we will say the
dog has a moderate prey drive, we throw the ball into the field,
holding onto the dog, releasing him just before the ball falls
to the ground, the dogs prey drive is triggered from the moving
object, and he chases after the ball, the dog sees the ball fall
to the ground and captures it by picking it up and we praise
him. We throw the ball a second time, and hold onto him, this
time letting the ball hit the ground in high grass, we release
the dog and tell him to find it, the dog working out of prey
drive quickly runs to where he last saw the ball and looks for a
short time, long enough for his triggered prey drive to cease,
now lacking hunt drive, the dog no longer has a desire to find
the ball, it is only the movement and visual sight of the prey
that keeps his interest up. The same condition would apply to
retrieve drive, the dog goes into the field, finds the ball, but
will not bring the ball to you, he has low or no retrieve
drive. The complete scenario takes only a short time from start
to finish, but 3 or 4 drives were triggered within the dog
during this time, this is what we call drive interaction.
Aggression training through prey drive is a comfortable place
for the dog to be, he does not feel threatened, it is through
prey drive that we are going to teach the puppy to chase and
play tug of war, as he learns the game of tug, we teach him to
bite a sleeve on the arm of a man. As we talked about earlier,
prey drive is triggered by movement of something the dog thinks
of as prey, it is a game to him, he does not hunt and kill for
his food as his ancestors did, but still has some of the
inherited instincts. When a dog reacts to the sleeve on an arm
of a man out of prey drive, it is a game of tug, although to
some it may look like a vicious dog biting a man, it is in
reality just a hard game of tug of war. It is through prey
drive that we initially condition the dog to interact with
physical contact of a man, we also through this game teach him
different techniques or training steps on how to react to our
commands and incorporate obedience that I refer to as control.
An important thing to remember is that aggression training
through prey drive is just the beginning of his training, and
not the end product, it is later when the dog has matured and
has had his training through prey bite development, that we
start the actual training to bite a man. I want to be sure that
you understand this last statement correctly, prey bite
development is the whole process beginning with a young dog
tugging on a towel or puppy tug, all the way through biting the
sleeve or bite suit, and incorporating the various commands of
control. When the dog has matured and is comfortable with his
training, only then can we go onto the next phase of his
training, which is then refereed to as defense, which includes
all prey bite work up to the point that you are currently at
with your dog. After Defense has been started in your dog, we
refer to his bite development.
Fight
drive, is in reality where our aggression training will go,
Fight drive is genetic through the inherited process of defense,
he either has it or he doesn’t. It is not something that can be
trained into him, rather it is developed. When we speak of the
dog inheriting defense, it is meant that when the dog feels
threatened for his life or well being, he will react in an
aggressive manner of force, initially in the beginning of
defense, the dog reacts to a threat by standing his ground with
a warning or threat of an impending fight, the dog is serious
about this warning, and if the pressure is continued, you are
going to have a fight on your hands. When the dog is pressed
into a defensive position he will either take the fight or
flight process, he will either stand his ground or he will not,
the dog without the genetics of defense will go into full blown
avoidance and leave for his self preservation. In order for the
dog to be placed into defense, he must feel threatened by the
helper, he must also be allowed to win his way out , and learn
how to defeat the helper. As the training continues, the dog
learns to defeat the helper or threat, and becomes very
confident in his abilities to do so. It is important to
understand, that the training of defense is done in short
sessions without over stressing the dog and it must be done by
an experienced helper.
Stress is an important factor in training defense, a dog cannot
deal with stress in a capacity that we can, if stress is
continued, or the dog is pushed to far in a training session,
the dog will break, this is where prey drive is interacted with
the training of defense. A prey bite is given to the dog at the
end of each session, this will help the dog to release his
stress, remember, he feels comfortable in prey and this allows
him to relax from a stressful training session. A dog who is
not mature must never be placed into defense, he is not capable
of handling the stress and will go into full avoidance, once he
learns that the easiest way out of a defensive position is to
retreat, he will in all reality react in this manner for the
rest of his life, at the very least it could take you months to
recover back to that starting point.
A dog
working out of prey drive is driven by an inner impulse to react
to stimuli, and is controlled through his own emotions, it can
be difficult to control a dog with a high prey drive, who is
concentrating on his prey. Fight drive is controlled by the
pack leader during the hunt with the pack.
The
more you train your dog, in reality, is the more you are trying
to make him understand, exactly what it is you want from him,
such as taking your dog to a woods line, and encouraging him and
releasing him to find the man, and he begins to learn through
each training session that, hey...there’s a man in there, lets
do it. Training sessions are just trying to make him understand
piece by piece, or session by session, to do a specific job for
you. Until control is placed into the training sessions of the
hunt, you cannot expect him to simply turn off his prey drive
while chasing a man with a sleeve and simply return to you on a
single command, its more difficult then that to acquire control
from him, it is something that has to be practiced over and
over, so, do not get excited, when through the encouragement of
prey drive, you have to work harder to control him, you have
encouraged through praise his great internal power, prey
drive.
We
know through our lesson’s, that dogs try to reach leadership and
control of the Family, this is another internal desire within
the dog, called rank drive, the more rank the dog, the more
aggressive he will be to achieve his position, other dogs that
have inherited less rank drive, aren’t as aggressive towards
you, and are easier to control, and they will fall into the
lesser position of the pack between you and your family, more
easily. A dog that is referred to as Rank dog is an aggressive
dog towards his handler. A dog with a high degree of Rank drive
will always attempt to dominate you, he will resist by force, to
him a command followed is a submissive act, and a show of
weakness.
Tracking drive, is the subconscious impulse to hunt by tracking
of scent that has laid on the ground.
Air
scent drive is the subconscious impulse to hunt through air born
scent. A dog with a strong drive to hunt by air and has low
tracking drive, is impossible to teach to track, he will always
resort to putting his nose into the air to find his prey. I
have attempted to train a dog with low tracking drive and the
drive to hunt through air scent, nothing I ever did got him to
track through land based scent. The Handler could find a
suspect hiding in a car lot, or wooded area with this dog. The
dog was by far better at locating an individual from a further
distance then any of the other dogs in the class, but nothing I
ever did got him to track from ground laden scent, he would
always return to placing his nose into the air and finding him
by air born scent.
Play drive is the desire from the dog to play and make
contact with the Handler, a dog who has no prey drive may still
desire to play, where as prey drive is the desire to chase and
capture prey. Play drive and Prey drive are not exactly the
same thing.
