# Interested in starting Schutzhund



## LittleLebowski (May 19, 2008)

with my 2 yr old Malinois. I am looking for tips and tricks, what to expect, etc. He only knows basic commands and neither of us have done Schutzhund. However, he has good ball drive and an eagerness to please and also is extremely fast and agile.


----------



## climber (Apr 28, 2008)

Well, we recently started Schutzhund training with our 2 year old Dutch Shepherd. He may have had a bit more training going in than your Mal, but that honestly might be beneficial to you (we had done some personal protection with our DS before Schutzhund, and still do periodically).

In terms of tips and tricks, my only advice to you would be to find a club that trains in your area, using training methods that you agree with. I know that can be much easier said than done sometimes, it took us a long time to find our way to a club near us - they don't exactly advertise, our club doesn't have a website, etc. We found it through word of mouth. 

What to expect, well that depends greatly on the group of people that you find to train with, the methods you have used to date to train, the methods they use to train, and how flexible they are. I know the club we attend uses methods that are very similar to how we did all of our previous training, but we still had to almost start over. They wanted us to play tug a certain way, wanted our dog to play a certain way, etc - all before we got to do any real Schutzhund specific training. They are not very flexible in the methods used to train. While that was frustrating at first, we did what we were asked to do because we know the training director is very good at this (he has trained a back-to-back world champion, and we've never done this before - so it's kind of hard for us to disagree), and we have seen good results.

My advice would be to find a club, visit a day (or more) or training without taking your dog, and pay attention to the dogs being worked. Talk to the members, ask questions, etc. Many times, people claim that they train one way, but the dogs tell the real story - if the training is heavy handed, or if many of the dogs look unhappy to be doing the work, I'd run away. If the training is done fairly, the dogs should love doing this work, it's what breeds like the GSD, DS, and Mal were made to do. Other than that, realize going in that you are way behind the curve (most people start a Schutzhund dog as a puppy), be patient, and have fun.


----------

