# Ball Drive. Why is it so important?



## Findlay (Jan 8, 2015)

When Finn was 5 months old his trainer evaluated him for obedience class and noticed that he didn’t have much of a ball drive and told me to try and get him interested in playing ball. 
Finn liked catching a ball and being praised for catching it but he wasn’t interested in picking it up or chasing it around or carrying it in his mouth. 


A couple of months ago I learned about two ball fetch on this forum. I got the lg. Kong balls that squeak (because he loves anything that squeaks) and that started him loving the game of fetch. I keep him on a long line when we play and I have been able to work his basic commands in to the game, Sit, Stay, Bring it, Drop it, and Leave it. And he’s amazing at catching the ball.


At 9 months old, does Finn finally have ball drive or is he just obsessed with fetch? 

And why is it so important that he have ball drive anyway?
Are ball drive and prey drive the same?


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## MadLab (Jan 7, 2013)

I'm thinking the ball stimulates the dogs instincts to chase and catch a moving target. Bringing it back to you to throw again is like bringing home dinner, but really the dog wants the rush of the chase again.

People aim for ball drive because it is easy to train a dog with it rather than without it. The dog once addicted to the ball will avoid distractions and perform tasks to get the ball.

I have a female dog with not much ball drive and more defense and real wanting to catch and kill prey.

Over time of mellowing the defense and stopping the will to search and seek real prey, the dog seems to redirect into a more healthy ball drive and be content simply playing around with objects.

I would say ball drive and prey drive are a little different. Actual prey drive involves scenting out a prey, flushing, chasing, catching and killing. While ball drive is more chase and catch. It is a practice for hunting real prey and why pups love to play so much imo. It doesn't mean the dog wants to go catching moose though.


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## Findlay (Jan 8, 2015)

MadLab. Thanks for answering all my questions. 

The way you've explained It makes perfect sense and I understand why his trainer suggested I try and encourage ball playing with him. Ordinarily when we work on his basic commands he has a Ho Hum attitude (even in class) but during fetch he responds quickly and is more attentive.
I'm going to try the flirt pole next, I think he'll like that.

Ps. I hope Finn would never chase moose. We have a camp in Maine and wouldn't want to ever lose him in the woods up there : )


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## Ace GSD (May 30, 2014)

When i have a ball in my hand Ace ignore squirrels, cats, other dogs, my wife, even treats...


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## wyoung2153 (Feb 28, 2010)

Careful with creating ball drive.. wouldn't want to create a monster  While I do suppose Titan had the drive all along, I encouraged it as a pup a lot. Let's just say he's a tad obsessed with fetch.. period.. I literally mean obsessed. If there is nothing to fetch, he will find something. He has brought me a leaf once when we were hiking. 

Good news... With a ball or tug in my hand.. he's mine. No one else can touch him as I am his sole reason for breathing in that moment, lol. Training is also much easier as he will do ANYTHING to just get the ball or tug. It's reason it's so sought for in dog sports.. very helpful.

I am for whatever makes my dog want to learn and play.. if that is a ball, awesome, if that's a treat and cuddles.. we'll do that too. I think it's up to you to find what your dog wants and leans towards naturally. Just my opinion for what it's worth.


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## Blitzkrieg1 (Jul 31, 2012)

Ball drive is important for sport and essential for police work. For regular obedience it is unneccessary. 

Personally for sport I want to see a dog that will chase a ball, pick it up, carry it and tug for it. I want to see the dog stimulated by the moving ball, persistence to catch it even if I make him miss numerous times and commitment to win the ball from me in a game of tug. The more the better.

For LE work, I want to see all the above with the addendum of the dogs willingness to search for the ball for a couple of minutes. As in I throw it into some cover and he commits to the search. I also like to see the ability to ignore distractors in the search including other sounds, environment and smells. 

My current sport dog loves to tug and fight with me for the ball. His true enjoment is not the ball itself but playing with me WITH the ball.

My green dog for LE, lives for the ball. He does not care about me when he has the ball, the ball is his crack. I have taught him the only way to access the toy is through me but the ball is his ultimate reward.

My pups I have imprinted on multiple toys and I make them as crazy for it as I can. They do not get toys other then in training. When they are old enough I teach them to cap and work for the toy instead of self satisfying with it.


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## Blitzkrieg1 (Jul 31, 2012)

Vid I did of a medium drive pup I was working on the ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sre3Aqn2byM


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

Blitzkrieg1 said:


> Ball drive is important for sport * and essential for police work. * For regular obedience it is unneccessary.


This depends on what system and theory is in use for the training of police K−9's. For the work that I do, ball drive is not necessary, or even desirable, for either man work or detection work.


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## Blitzkrieg1 (Jul 31, 2012)

All I know is every dept I have heard of won't buy them if they don't have it. Some want more then just ball, plastic, metal etc.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

Blitzkrieg1 said:


> All I know is every dept I have heard of won't buy them if they don't have it. Some want more then just ball, plastic, metal etc.


Most departments are still teaching individual behaviors and using handler supplied rewards systems. 

Do you think that there is are _"plastic"_ or _"metal"_ drives?


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## Blitzkrieg1 (Jul 31, 2012)

No I dont.. A doggy that has the right drives will happily pursue, search for and retrieve anything. If you do some prelim work and again its the right kind of dog they can be made crazy for anything..but you know that. 

Lets not play 20 questions Lou .


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

LouCastle said:


> Most departments are still teaching individual behaviors and using handler supplied rewards systems.
> 
> Do you think that there is are _"plastic"_ or _"metal"_ drives?


I think the drives are the naturally occurring drives. i.e. prey drive. Everything else however can be 'tricked into the dog' or developed through the natural occurring drives, whilst the real application of those drives are suppressed? i.e. dont chase cats.

Sort of like a supernormal stimulus?

"A supernormal stimulus or superstimulus is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.
For example, when it comes to eggs, a bird can be made to prefer the artificial versions to their own, and humans can be similarly exploited by junk food.The idea is that the elicited behaviours evolved for the "normal" stimuli of the ancestor's natural environment, but the behaviours are now hijacked by the supernormal stimulus."


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## Blitzkrieg1 (Jul 31, 2012)

There are many dogs that will not show the necessary level of hunt for plastic as they do for a ball or a bunny regardless of how you imprint them. 
Copper is a different story all together as it tastes strange and many dogs find it aversive to pick up and carry in their mouth.

This is why you need the right dog with the right drives not just one that will chase a bunny or cat.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

Blitzkrieg1 said:


> No I dont.. A doggy that has the right drives will happily pursue, search for and retrieve anything. If you do some prelim work and again its the right kind of dog they can be made crazy for anything..but you know that.
> 
> Lets not play 20 questions Lou .


Yes, I do know that but I don't know if you know it. The way that you referred to those substances, _"Some want more then just ball, plastic, metal etc,"_ made it sounds as if you thought that there was a drive for those substances.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

WesS said:


> I think the drives are the naturally occurring drives. i.e. prey drive. Everything else however can be 'tricked into the dog' or developed through the natural occurring drives, whilst the real application of those drives are suppressed? i.e. dont chase cats.


I agree that drives are naturally occurring. They are either present in the dog or not in sufficient quantities to be used in the training. I'm not sure what you mean by "tricked into the dog" though. Can you clarify please?


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## onyx'girl (May 18, 2007)

when a suspect knows a dog has the ball drive(chase) it may help them...many K9 handlers I've trained with know the ball can be a huge deterrent if someone wants to distract/redirect a dog. Not saying all dogs will run after a ball vs a suspect, but it something they do know they need to train out as it isn't a secret that tennis balls may be a nice little thing to have around..


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

LouCastle said:


> I agree that drives are naturally occurring. They are either present in the dog or not in sufficient quantities to be used in the training. I'm not sure what you mean by "tricked into the dog" though. Can you clarify please?


Talking about supernormal stimuli.

What I am essentially saying is not really proven in dogs at all. It is just observations. So I am asking if this is essentially what is happening. Should get some thought or exploration at the very least.

There are some observations all over, (Not just dogs all species). There is however strong scientific proof for example in birds and other simpler animals.

It is known that birds lay on their eggs to be hatched. They have some sort of genetic predisposition to find the strongest and healthiest egg an sit on it. Call it 'survival drive'. Yet the birds have only evolved to recognise certain cues about what 'identifies a healthy egg'. So it was found that and artificial stimulus, with no other intevention, could trick the bird into laying on a bigger artificial egg, with blue dotts. So the birds drive although evolved to sit and care for their eggs, had nothing to do with the act of actually doing that, but more with an evolved propensity to identify large eggs with deep coloured dots.
Something a human can easily trick the bird into doing. 

This is very very rarely occuring in nature. However it does exists. The cuckoo hatches foreign 'parasite' eggs into nests of other birds. The other birds again often prefer the cukoos eg, which has 'supernormal stimuli' making that egg have a better chance of being protected disregarding their own eggs. The cuckoo might even kill of the other young birds, by rolling them out the nest.

Now humans have a strong ability to trick other animals with artificial stimuli. They can even trick each other. 

The point is, (and this is the theory I am getting at) that what people refer to as 'prey drive' in dogs is not necessarily a propensity to chase a natural prey. It could be a propensity to engage when anything mimicks natural prey. The stimulus to action could be many. And people on this thread obviously know how to achieve that much better than just about anyone. To the point that the propensity could be completely exaggerated, and supersede the natural drive.

It could be any number of things that the dog recognises. It could simply be a 'movement chase drive'. You might find that a toy that looks and feels a certain way, or with a sound, might create a supernormal stimulus, that reall stimulates a dogs prey-drive more than a naturally occuring incentive ever could.

The book I coppied an image of is by Deidree Barret, and is called: "supernormal stimuli, how primal urges overran their evolutionary purpose". PhD and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. And she is writing a lot about evolutionary psychology.
And it is kind of essentially, at least in my eyes, the people in the dog world have been doing for years. If however they were able to acknowledge and better exploit the idea that its not necessarily the idea that copying exactly natural prey animals, but rather enhancing that natural stimulus, (I.e. Bigger unrealistic egg with darker blue dots, is better to the bird than her real egg.) but rather identify which characteristics the dogs are naturally predisposed to chase, you could theoretically exploit, 'prey drive' in less and more driven dogs.


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

WesS said:


> Talking about supernormal stimuli.
> 
> What I am essentially saying is not really proven in dogs at all. It is just observations. So I am asking if this is essentially what is happening. Should get some thought or exploration at the very least.
> 
> ...


Now this theory completely substantiates what both, you and Blitz are saying. And in the end it becomes a linguistics debate on how to define what you are doing. 

I however dont think that you can breed genetics and dogs fast enough to have a liking to say 'copper'. But you can breed to inherent drives, that might be more able or coherent with using 'copper'. Then it becomes a game of 'trickery', in how to get the behaviour you want. Based on even better identified natural occurring drives.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

onyx'girl said:


> when a suspect knows a dog has the ball drive(chase) it may help them...many K9 handlers I've trained with know the ball can be a huge deterrent if someone wants to distract/redirect a dog. Not saying all dogs will run after a ball vs a suspect, but it something they do know they need to train out as it isn't a secret that tennis balls may be a nice little thing to have around..


I've moved completely away from handler supplied rewards for any kind of search work or man work. I don't introduce balls, toys, kongs, etc., so I don't need to train those things out.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

WesS said:


> Talking about supernormal stimuli.
> 
> What I am essentially saying is not really proven in dogs at all. It is just observations. So I am asking if this is essentially what is happening. Should get some thought or exploration at the very least.
> 
> ...


OK, I understand now, but don't see what it has to do with using drives to train dogs. Can you tell how it applies to drive training?


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

LouCastle said:


> OK, I understand now, but don't see what it has to do with using drives to train dogs. Can you tell how it applies to drive training?


I think they are good ideas to explore. I cant say how it applies without using hypothetical subjective examples. People in the dog world are already doing it with tugs/movement and other artificial stimuli. Just not along those lines or based on that hypothesis. 

Im im this thread more to learn anyways. There is a lot of experience here. Just think it is very interesting and there could be carry-over. Something to be explored. I believe it has application to every species to an extent, from very basic organisms all the way to controlling human behaviour.. And is something humans can take advantage of. It is certainly being used by major corporations in dictating consumer behaviours.


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

Also what it does do, is show that evolutionary drives are not that easily defined. And what other users term maybe 'ball drive' could be a supernormal stimulus for scavenging an egg or a prey item and bringing it back to the pack, or pack leader. In other dogs, maybe they just like the chase. I dont really know. Its all invariably connected. And just like each breed may have emphasis on different drives, so do the definitions 'change'.

Essentially based on this theory 'ball drive' is just an easier way to explain highly complex drives, and relate to other people, for transferal of ideas. It is for human understanding sake, or being clear. Its hard to connect the dots otherwise. Maybe you could call it a 'ball-ascosiated drive'. I really don't believe anybody is 'wrong' here from this discussion. That just my personal opinion. It depends how we observe the world, and the reasoning behind it.


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

So in wolves we observe that they will chase prey/hunt/scavage.

Is this just prey drive? How do they differentiate which prey they can or cant take on? Is it movement speed? Injury? Blood? How do they differentiate between species? Do they think logically like us? Or is something hard wired?










Do they hunt healthier targets? Or do they hunt weaker targets. Do the quality of colours on the deer give wolf information? Is it just opportunistic? Or do they have a preference base on naturally occuring colour markings, that could indicate a harder target, or maybe a healthier one. One that will tire more easily? 

If there are multiple prey, and make the wrong choice and go after prey they are not equipped to catch, they can go hungry.

Do wolves understand that the deer has such and such an injury? Or are they hard-wired to detect abnormal movements? Smell-blood?

Its all about *WHY* Why you start asking why, and applying to dogs there will better application.

If the wolf is indeed driven by quality of colour markings. Hypotheticaly as the most important drive stimulus. Could you trick a wolf with more emphasised colour schemes? A supernormalstimulus? Whereby a hungry wild wolf might ignore the prey animal, in favor of a mechanical toy car? 

Its a lot easier in fish. And Fishermen trick fish all the time this way with artificial hooks.
So yes, development in identyfing multiple drives and utilising them correctly could theoretically go a long way. In the pet industry, people are oblivious to dogs drives. 

The people here in this thread are not. Many of you know more than I will ever know. Yet even still, its a hard thing to identify. Hard to classify.

If the drive is the white markings, is it hardwired to chase prey? or is it hard wired to chase white? Is that now called 'white drive'. More complex animals, will be more complicated, and their are multiple factors, including operant conditioning enforcing drives.

So eventually, if you identify more specific innate drives, you can artificially change the stimulus where they are genetically evolved to go after, 'trick' or 'artificial' items with exaggerated colourings, or movement dynamics.


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## Findlay (Jan 8, 2015)

onyx'girl said:


> when a suspect knows a dog has the ball drive(chase) it may help them...many K9 handlers I've trained with know the ball can be a huge deterrent if someone wants to distract/redirect a dog. Not saying all dogs will run after a ball vs a suspect, but it something they do know they need to train out as it isn't a secret that tennis balls may be a nice little thing to have around..


onyx'girl. This is off topic and so coincidental. 
Last night I found Finn's litter certificate and decided to google his parentage.
When I googled his father, the name usso von kirschental came up (finn's grand father) the GSD forum showed up with a conversation on Kirschental and you had a couple of posts on the topic.
Also Fiin's great grand mother Tinkie von Kirschental.

Anyway two of my nephew's have K9s, one inner-city street dog (just retired) the other state police bomb dog (both GSDs).
My nephew, the street cop. calls Finn a "poor excuse for a GSD." LOL.
He's joking.
Well even though he has absolutely no prey drive, at least I know he has a few good genes.


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## mspiker03 (Dec 7, 2006)

Continuing OT - TJ's grandma is Tinkie. He has tons of ball drive. Nothing else exists if I have his ball.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

WesS said:


> I think they are good ideas to explore. I cant say how it applies without using hypothetical subjective examples. People in the dog world are already doing it with tugs/movement and other artificial stimuli. Just not along those lines or based on that hypothesis.


I'd not call using _"tugs/movement and other artificial stimuli 'tricking the dog.' "_ Since prey drive is usually evoked visually, at least until a dog gets some experience that, for example, the scent of a deer means that a chase may be imminent, this is merely * substituting * the movement of the prey object for the movement of actual prey. 



WesS said:


> And is something humans can take advantage of. It is certainly being used by major corporations in dictating consumer behaviours.


While that may be interesting as an aside, I'm only interested in using the dog's drives to get it trained, and I don't see that this has any influence there. I think that humans have lost the overwhelmingly majority of our drives as a species, and so I think that this is more of a sociological/marketing question.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

WesS said:


> Also what it does do, is show that evolutionary drives are not that easily defined.


I see no reason to complicate what is basically a very simple theory. Training is already complicated enough so that some are easily confused and head down the wrong road. But there are some who want to mystify it, thinking that it makes them better trainers, or will at least give them some mystique and make them more marketable. I disagree and think that all it does it make it harder for JQ Public to understand. 



WesS said:


> And what other users term maybe 'ball drive' could be a supernormal stimulus for scavenging an egg or a prey item and bringing it back to the pack, or pack leader.


I don't use the term _"ball drive"_ in my work at all. I don't use balls. I supply prey substitutes, that in texture and feel, resemble actual prey. I don't use Operant Conditioning in a handler supplied reward system for dogs that hunt. It introduces too many problems. 



WesS said:


> In other dogs, maybe they just like the chase. I dont really know. Its all invariably connected. * And just like each breed may have emphasis on different drives, so do the definitions 'change'. *


I don't think that _"the definitions change"_ across breeds. Prey drive is always the inherent instinct to chase, catch, and kill prey. The goal of the drive is death of the prey. It's fulfilled by killing the prey and then shredding it. Herbivores don't have it, their food doesn't run from them. Hunt drive is always the instinctive search for an animal or desired object using sight, smell and/or sound. The goal is to find the animal/object. It's fulfilled by locating the object of the hunt. 



WesS said:


> Essentially based on this theory 'ball drive' is just an easier way to explain highly complex drives, and relate to other people, for transferal of ideas. It is for human understanding sake, or being clear. Its hard to connect the dots otherwise.


I have a friend that has two pages, single spaced of various drives he attributes to dogs. He considers that ball drive is different from stick drive. And both are different from Frisbee drive. This lets him assign a value to each of his 'drives' to use the one that works best for each dog. I find this to be a needless complication and just use the term 'prey drive' to describe all of these compulsions. I'm a KISS kinda guy. 



WesS said:


> Maybe you could call it a 'ball-ascosiated drive'. I really don't believe anybody is 'wrong' here from this discussion. That just my personal opinion. It depends how we observe the world, and the reasoning behind it.


I think that needlessly complicating things and trying to apply what's going on in a dog's brain to what's going on in our minds, is off base. It's an interesting past time and may help people sell us soda and cosmetics, but it seems 'wrong' for training dogs.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

WesS said:


> So in wolves we observe that they will chase prey/hunt/scavage.
> 
> Is this just prey drive?


The 'chasing, catching and killing of prey' is prey drive. Hunting is a separate drive that is fulfilled by the act of hunting. A dog does not need to find the object that he's hunting for, for the drive to be fulfilled. Scavenging may be an end of a hunt but it's not part of prey drive. 



WesS said:


> How do they differentiate which prey they can or cant take on? Is it movement speed? Injury? Blood? How do they differentiate between species? Do they think logically like us? Or is something hard wired?


When you get into drive training you learn that there are two radically different types of prey drive. If an animal can not injure the dog, it's "small animal prey drive." If it can injure the dog it's "large animal prey drive." This will change from second to second as a dog pursues larger animals, that can cause injury. In this case, you'll see the dog switch from prey drive to defense drive as the animal flees or turns to defends itself. 

The following video, put together by Donn Yarnall, shows this happening. It depicts a hunt of wildebeest by Wild Dogs on the plains of Africa. WARNING: it is fairly graphic at times. (I'll throw in a spoiler – it has a happy ending [unless you're one of the dogs]). At about the 2:50 point the drives are labeled and then relabeled as they change. The changes in the animals' carriage are subtle, but if you watch it enough times you may come to recognize them, if you don't already. 








WesS said:


> Do they hunt healthier targets? Or do they hunt weaker targets. Do the quality of colours on the deer give wolf information? Is it just opportunistic? Or do they have a preference base on naturally occuring colour markings, that could indicate a harder target, or maybe a healthier one. One that will tire more easily?
> 
> If there are multiple prey, and make the wrong choice and go after prey they are not equipped to catch, they can go hungry.
> 
> ...


While these are all interesting questions, how will they give us any insight as to how to train better? 



WesS said:


> In the pet industry, people are oblivious to dogs drives.
> 
> The people here in this thread are not. Many of you know more than I will ever know. Yet even still, its a hard thing to identify. Hard to classify.


Many pet owners only become aware of drives when they become a problem. It often happens when they take their training into environments where distractions that invoke those drives are present. Then we see posts like, "HELP! Fido chased a deer and would not come when I called him!" 

Even then, they only get peripherally involved. 

But people who work dogs that hunt for a living would do well to learn as much about these drives as they can, how they interact with the behavior they compel and how to use them in their training. Those people with working dogs who train only with OC are limiting themselves. Often they're working at odds with their dogs, creating conflict. Conflict causes confusion and confusion leads to unreliability. 


The Brelands wrote an article called "The Misbehavior of Organisms," CLICK HERE. that people who use OC on dogs that hunt for a living would do well to read. It shows what can happen to OC training in the face of strong instincts. 

A comment from that article,


> ... we have run afoul of a persistent pattern of discomforting failures. These failures, although disconcertingly frequent and seemingly diverse, fall into a very interesting pattern. They all represent breakdowns of conditioned operant behavior.
> 
> These egregious failures came as a rather considerable shock to us, for there was nothing in our background in behaviorism to prepare us for such gross inabilities to predict and control the behavior of animals with which we had been working for years.
> 
> * The examples listed we feel represent a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory. * They are far from what one would normally expect on the basis of the theory alone. Furthermore, they are definite, observable; the diagnosis of theory failure does not depend on subtle statistical interpretations or on semantic legerdemain – * the animal simply does not do what he has been conditioned to do. *


These are people who, like the pet owners that were referenced earlier, as being _"oblivious to dog's drives,"_ completely ignored the drives of the animals they were working with. I call


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## Findlay (Jan 8, 2015)

mspiker03 said:


> Continuing OT - TJ's grandma is Tinkie. He has tons of ball drive. Nothing else exists if I have his ball.


TJ and Finn are related. So funny.
Finn loves fetch and loves searching for his ball but doesn't seem to have a drive for prey... he has a live and let live attitude : )
He doesn't mind cats, squirrels etc...definitely doesn't want to chase anything except a ball.


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## wick (Mar 7, 2015)

Findlay said:


> mspiker03 said:
> 
> 
> > Continuing OT - TJ's grandma is Tinkie. He has tons of ball drive. Nothing else exists if I have his ball.
> ...


And then there is Wick who chases after anything that moves (birds and bugs beware !) but won't fetch a ball for all the treats or tugs in the world ?!? Sigh. He saw a squirrel for the first time yesterday and I nearly lost my arm.


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## mspiker03 (Dec 7, 2006)

Findlay said:


> TJ and Finn are related. So funny.
> Finn loves fetch and loves searching for his ball but doesn't seem to have a drive for prey... he has a live and let live attitude : )
> He doesn't mind cats, squirrels etc...definitely doesn't want to chase anything except a ball.



TJ has prey drive. Will chase small furry creatures. We also instinct tested him on sheep when he was young - he needed to grow up more before we started training. In the meantime, we are focusing on IPO.


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

Just because a dog will chase something does not mean that he has prey drive to any significant degree. Some dogs will chase while in play drive. The difference in intensity can be dramatic. The first is useful for drive training, the second, not so much.


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## DJMac (Jun 16, 2014)

LouCastle said:


> Just because a dog will chase something does not mean that he has prey drive to any significant degree. Some dogs will chase while in play drive. The difference in intensity can be dramatic. The first is useful for drive training, the second, not so much.


Just to be clear, are you saying that the willingness to chase something is good for drive training?

I once saw a guy at the gas station who had K-9 unit on his truck and I so happened to have my GSD with me so I inquired about protection training. He pulled out a tennis ball and concluded and since Sam wasn't fixated on the ball, she wasn't suitable for protection training. Is that the assessment that protection trained dogs have to pass?


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## WesS (Apr 10, 2015)

LouCastle said:


> .



Thanks for info


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## LouCastle (Sep 25, 2006)

DJMac said:


> Just to be clear, are you saying that the willingness to chase something is good for drive training?


For detection work, it depends completely on WHY the dog is chasing he object. If it's in play drive, it's all but useless. But if it's pronounced in prey drive, it's essential. 

Here are two videos. These dogs are the same age but one is in prey drive and the other is in play drive. Play drive is just what it sounds like, the dog is playing a game. When he gets bored, frustrated, hot, cold, wet, hungry, thirsty, insecure, or any other condition that interferes with his comfort, he'll quit working. The dog that's hunting in prey drive is compelled to do so by a food gathering exercise and so even though he may be feeling these same issues, he'll keep working. Such dogs will work themselves into exhaustion and must have rest periods enforced on them as needed. 

Play drive work. 







Prey drive work. 







A few of the most noticeable behaviors that show each drive. Look at how the play drive dog chases after the prey object. He's 'bounding' kinda like Scooby Do. Does. And watch how he picks up the prey object. It's almost delicate. Now watch the purposeful movement of the prey drive dog. Straight forward, all business. Watch how he 'attacks' the prey object when he picks it up. The difference is the difference between playing with a toy and chasing, catching and then killing a rabbit. 



DJMac said:


> I once saw a guy at the gas station who had K-9 unit on his truck and I so happened to have my GSD with me so I inquired about protection training. He pulled out a tennis ball and concluded and since Sam wasn't fixated on the ball, she wasn't suitable for protection training. Is that the assessment that protection trained dogs have to pass?


I'll disagree with that assessment. Nowadays those who use OC want a dog that will chase a ball. I don't use a ball for training such dogs, I use the dog's drives directly, so I don't care about this. A dog that's fixated on a ball, would be OK for sport work. But I've seen some PPD's (personal protection dogs) and some LE K−9's that would chase a ball if one was thrown by a crook. In the real world that can be a problem. It becomes a balancing act, those folks want the dog to want the ball but not more than he wants to hunt for the human. If such a dog gets out of balance, there can be serious problems. 

The test that I use for a candidate for patrol work or for training as a PPD are about the same. They measure the dog's level and balance of combat drives. I don't care about his drive to play with a ball.


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