Working Dog Sports

I consider the following sports as the main working dog sports: Schutzhund (now also referred to as IGP), Modioring (there are also other ring sports such as French and Belgian ring that were used for creating this sport), KNPV, and PSA.

Schutzhund or IGP

Schutzhund (in German this word means protection dog) was established in the 1800s for the purpose of testing the quality of the German Shepherd Dog (GSD) breed. To qualify for breeding, every GSD must get at least the first Schutzhund title (today referred to as IGP 1) as proof that the dog is suitable to doing police work that GSDs were bred to do.

Schutzhund includes three phases — tracking, protection, and obedience. For the dog to be eligible to compete for the first title (IPG 1), the dog must pass temperament test (BH).

There are three levels of Schutzhund competition (IGP1, IGP2, and IGP3). The requirements get harder in each phase as the dog progresses through levels. Each phase is graded by a judge, and a competitor must receive a minimum passing grade in each phase to qualify for the title. When a dog reaches the highest level (IGP3), it can compete on a local, regional, national and international levels. Today many dog breeds participate in Schutzhund with German Shepherds and Belgian Malinios dominating the winner circles.

Most of my dog sport experience is in Schutzhund (although I also trained exercises in KNPV, Mondioring, and PSA). I have earned Schutzhund/IGP with several dogs starting with my Giant Schnauzer, Mansi. My last dog, Luna, has earned the highest IGP3 title and we won many best in trial awards. As Luna is a mixed breed (Dutch Shepherd and Malinois) KNPV pedigree dog, she is not the easiest dog to win major competitions as Schutzhund is mainly pure breed dominated sport.

Schutzhund is the most challenging sport to train as it includes three categories (tracking, obedience, and protection) with high performance standards. In Schutzhund we use bite sleeves in protection work. Bite sleeves are less effective than bite suits for training dogs for real-life bite work. Since most bite training experts recommend starting any dog on a sleeve, Schutzhund is still a good basis for training bite work.

A larger issue is the fact that in the last ten years, sport has required an increasingly choreographed performance — i.e., demanding a show of perfection rather than a true performance. Dogs are trained for maximizing scores during trials are less likely to be suitable for real-life work.

Mondioring

Modioring is a working dog sport developed in the late 80’s by representatives from different major countries that established working dog sports such as Schutzhund, French Ring, Belgian Ring, and Holland (KNPV). Like Schutzhund, Mondioring has a series of exercises organized in phases such as Obedience, Jumps, and Protection.

The Modioring’s obedience phase includes some limited nose-work, but it does not have tracking. Modioring is much more physically demanding than Schutzhund requiring a dog to make high elevation jumps and long jumps. This is why the more athletic breeds such as Belgian Malinios and Dutch Shepherd dominate this sport.

Mondioring is using bite suits with most of the dog bites focusing on the leg areas. Biting the legs is not a specific requirement, but since dogs are measured on holding the decoy in place as much as possible, they are trained to focus on the legs. Most real-life protection trainers train the dogs to prefer biting the left upper arm and only if the upper arm area is blocked to focus on the upper leg. Biting the large muscle areas is always preferred. From this perspective, this sport bite work is not ideal for real-life work.

Some police and military dog training experts find more problematic the requirement of this sport for the dogs to have to put up with a lot of abuse from the decoys without being able to express any aggression. On one hand, this level of control is good, but on the other, this can encourage breeding of softer dogs not suitable for real-life work.

KNPV

KNPV stands for Koninklijke Nederlandse Politiehond Vereniging (Royal Dutch Police Dog Association). This is a Dutch sport established in the early 1900s for the purpose of qualifying dogs for Dutch police work. Every dog that was sold to Dutch police and later to Dutch military must have earned a KNPV title. Most dogs get the KNPV PH1 certificate, but over the years KNPV added other titles. KNPV phases mainly include obedience and protection with some limited trailing (finding a person) and object finding exercises.

The focus of KNPV is on dogs with the best characteristics for doing police work rather than a specific breed. KNPV enthusiasts focus on breeding dogs with pedigree that demonstrated achievements in the sport and real-life work rather pure-bred qualities. This is why many mixed breed dogs excel in KNPV.

KNPV is mainly practiced in Netherlands with no trials done in the USA and very few outside Netherlands. Also, there are many exercises very specific to Holland. For example, attack on a bicyclist, retrieve an article from a canal, or crossing of a canal with an article.

Some exercises do not seem practical for real-life modern police work. For example, in one of the exercises a dog must pick up evidence that was dropped by the suspect. What police would want a dog to touch evidence in modern police work? The protection and obedience requirements of this sport, however, are closest to those in real-life police or military work. This is why in many cases we prefer to procure dogs with KNPV pedigree.

Protection Sport of America (PSA)

PSA stands for Protection Sport of America. This is a relatively new working dog sport developed in 2001 in United States of America. Judging based on my personal observation of the size and growth of local clubs and participation in sport trials, it seems that this sport has been growing fast lately in US and even world-wide.

PSA also has three levels PSA1, PSA2 and PSA3, and to qualify for trial for level 1, each participating dog must receive a PDC certification (Personal Protection Dog Certificate). The focus of PSA is on obedience and protection and this sport does not have any nose-work (such as tracking, trailing or detection).

PSA has no scent phase, which is a shame as most real-life working dogs may be required to do either tracking/trailing or detection. PSA’s protection requirements are similar to KNPV from attack and bite standards perspectives. At the higher levels, however, PSA has a similar issue to Modioring requiring dogs to put up with a lot of abuse from decoys without being allowed to respond to protect themselves.

Summary and Conclusion

Many dogs that excel in these working dog sports may not be able to perform in real-life police and military work. For example, dogs that get high scores on Schutzhund tracking, may never be able to track a real suspect in real-life. Their training is focused on getting the most points in a trial rather than on tracking a person in the real world. Many of these dogs — even those trained in KNPV and PSA — may not bite a person not wearing a bite suit and not in a sport type of scenario. At the least, all the dogs trained in these sports must be retrained and qualified for real-life work.

The original intent of some of these sports to facilitate breeding and developing dogs for police and military work may not be met anymore as these sports evolved into show training. I believe that dog sports are still important for real-life applications by facilitating the efforts to develop advanced training techniques whose effectiveness is measured according to structured rules and scoring methods. The ability to measure progress is always important for improving the art and science of working dog training.

For more information about K9 Tech Security protection dogs, please refer to Our Protection Dogs page.