Why I quit Schutzhund.

I find myself procrastinating writing about why I quit Schutzhund. I'll try and just jump on in despite my hesitations.

It got to a point where I found myself dreading going to training.  I would feel sick to my stomach as I prepared myself and the dogs to leave for practice, I guess out of fear for what might happen. The training director changed how we practiced the obedience part of the sport.  I felt the new method was dangerous and I was worried and stressed out the entire time we practiced this aspect. Originally and the norm for practicing obedience with high drive Schutzhund dogs is to have no more than 2 dogs on the field at a time. One of the dogs would be in a long down while the other dog and handler practiced the obedience routine. After the first dog completed practicing, the handler and dog would switch places with the dog in the long down. We trained with 2 dogs on the field because that's how it is set-up in an actual trial although sometimes we just trained one dog on the field at a time.

The training director decided to begin training all the dogs out on the field at once. This meant we'd have about 6 dogs and handlers all training at the same time, working on various aspects of obedience.  Much of the training is off-leash and the usual method of rewarding a Schutzhund dog is by throwing a toy for them since their high-drive makes retrieving the dog's favorite activity. These are not "dog-park" type dogs, it is more the norm that these dogs don't get along well with other dogs and sometimes not even with other people so training in this method was very dangerous in my eyes. Having someone's dog go racing after a toy right past my dog as I trained was a dog fight waiting to happen, and actually came close to happening on a couple of occasions. Dogs fighting is never good but when you are talking about German Shepherds and Rottweilers and Malinais and Doberman's mixing it up, well, serious injury to the dogs and any handler who tried to break-up these fights would be inevitable.

Than there was the impatient and uncommunicative training director. This sport was supposed to be fun but his criticisms and the way he dealt them out was harsh. I found myself dreading working with him. This training director was also the Helper and he would try and give me instruction over the excited barking of my dog so I couldn't hear what he was saying. He was not good at expressing what he wanted done either. Especially in bite-work, mistakes can mean someone gets bit and so if I didn't do things quite like he'd asked, I would get yelled at.

In addition to these problems, I found I had lost my nerve to compete. If you aren't planning on competing and titling your dog, it can be considered a waste of everyone's time that you are training and in the club.

Changing clubs was not really an option since it is very hard to find Schutzhund clubs to train with and there were no more in the area I was interested in.

That is why I quit Schutzhund.