Thinking about getting into the sport for the first time. I have a club about 25 minutes from me thankfully. So, besides countless hours and dollars, what am I in for? I started out looking for something to keep myself and our dog continually training and found this...It seems like a fun sport. I'm not exactly a fly ball kind of guy.

Thanks!

No PSA clubs in my area that I know of unfortunately. I'm far from snobby and I have no illusions of being truly competitive or being very active outside the club-level. Thankfully, I know a couple of the ladies involved with the club and they seem very reasonable. Though I have heard the "snooty" comments about some members of this club as well so I'm going into it knowing that I may have to deal with that.

Also, I just started tracking and really enjoy it...though my dog is more of a natural at it than I am.

I've had the opportunity to train with a few different clubs.  

Just like any other time you get a group of people together there will be several different personality types present. What I have found with groups generally (not just Schutzhund clubs) is that sometimes one or more particularly dynamic people set the tone for the group. For example- if you have a club with 7 members and three of them are very outgoing, dynamic, successful people who are big fans of clicker training, then the overall tone of the club may become clicker orientated.

Never ran into anyone I'd consider "snooty" but I have been to a club where there were a couple super serous, competitive handlers. They showed up to train- not to socialize, not to impress the newbies and not to offer much besides advanced level guidance to other members. As a consequence, they ended up sort of doing their own thing some nights. Those guys might appear snooty if you didn't know how serous and competitive they were.

The most important thing to accept about Schutzhund is that it's SUPPOSED to be a test of genetics/temperament. When it's run correctly, not all dogs can succeed. Every club I've been to has had folks willing to help newbies and their dogs work towards maximizing whatever genetics the dog has; HOWEVER, some dogs do not have the correct genetics to accomplish much.

Have a good attitude, listen/watch/learn. Strive to get the best you can from your dog but also be willing to accept that your dog may not have much to give. Just don't blame the trainers or other handlers for your dogs shortcomings. Many, many people get started in SchH with a poor quality dog and end up learning tons and tons of stuff while participating at the dogs level.

Yep, I can totally understand that. I'm perfectly fine with it being a standard to test genetics and don't have any delusions of grandeur as to what we may be able to accomplish. He comes from some good working dogs, but his drives aren't as high as the others in his litter. I'm looking at the sport as "continuing education" to keep us working together. Thanks!

I started with my GSD pup years ago. The club was pretty selective, the trainer had to approve your dog before you could begin.  I only lasted a couple of months for a few reasons.

First, the time commitment was pretty rigorous.  Couple hour sessions, twice per week.  Also, the trainer really wanted to up the alpha nature of my dog.  I had her pretty docile, pretty beta-ish.  The trainer would say, I want this dog to feel like the most badass dog around......just a bit anxious, pulling on your leash......just a tiny bit.  Not overtly aggressive, but right on that edge....much more confident and headstrong than I had her at.  That didn't really fit in with what I wanted with my pup.  I have VERY submissive, such that I walk her without a leash and she doesn't even dare to move more than a inch from my calf without my permission. If I stop.....she FREEZES in place.....she won't dare move.  I like that......but it doesn't quite fit in with the schutzand protocol.

Doesn't matter whether it's PSA, SchH. RingSport, KNPV, any other sport or trial/test; if the venue is one where the dog faces off with a human it's important to build up the dogs confidence.

With that said, the dog must possess the correct attributes at birth. You simply cannot build up what isn't there in the first place.

Dogs can be complex or they can be fairly simple. An individual dog can be very simple/black&white in one area and very complex in another. It's possible for a dog to be sensitive towards or submissive to the handler but still very confident in other areas. Other dogs may develop a close, respectful relationship with the handler where they accept leadership without being what we would typically consider submissive. The difference is predominately genetic. You can't do much to change it; what you get is whatever the dog was born with.

A dogs temperament does not change through training. You might take a confident dog and beat or mistreat him into a state of fearfulness and 'submission' but you didn't change his genetic temperament. You just made him afraid of certain things and/or tapped into self preservation instincts. The opposite is true also- you can take a reserved, cautious dog and build him up where he looks bold and confident in a particular situation but you didn't change his genetic temperament. Put him in a different situation that he hasn't been built up to and the dog will revert to back being cautious and reserved.

It's a real challenge to find people who can accurately and consistently distinguish between genetic temperament and conditioned behaviors. It doesn't stop there either, you still have to figure out how to proceed with the training regardless of whether the dog is presenting genetic vs learned challenges.

WOW!  One of the best responses I have ever read here.  Someone has a very good handle on canine behavior.

Um, you are misinformed and should have continued on with your training .......BUT, your bitch sounds like she may not have  what it takes.

Maybe you didn't have the best trainer and he/she did not properly describe the training protocol to you.

If you only lasted a couple of months, you were only at the beginning stages of training and just laying the groundwork and seeing if your bitch had the proper temperament and drive for bite work.  Most DO NOT. You first build confidence in your dog or bitch and go from there.

I have titled several Rotties over the years and my last one was the most dominant, hard, high drive dog I have ever owned......... and he heeled just fine. NO, not the "PERFECT"  heel you see with say soft canines at an AKC event but he heeled and obeyed great for a high drive dog wanting to get on with it. He did forge most all do.   Heeling and obedience in general is a HUGE part in Schutzhand protocol. Don't know why you think differently.

Shutzhund isn't all about bite work or owning/having an uncontrollable biting machine.  It's just the opposite.  Well trained dogs/bitches that attain a Schutzhund title are some of if not the most stable dogs out there.

Do it. You will learn in short order if your dog has what it takes to attain a title.

Thanks guys, lots of good info. I appreciate it.

I train IPO with my dog but do not compete. I also don't partake in tracking at all (don't have time with his detection training). The obedience and protection work is what I went for, and primarily the obedience. The dogs I've got to train around have won national and world level titles. Mean ass dogs in protection work, but the nicest balls of fur when they are off the trial field. The advice I got from the people I've worked with have got my dog exactly where I want him to be. The best way to put it, he is a General Mattis manifested in a dog's body. Extremely polite, professional, and friendly in public, but when it is time to fight he's a complete bloodthirsty nutbag that will kill anything and everything to get the reward.

I'd join the club. See what they are like. You don't have to compete, nor do you have to partake in all of the training. I know numerous people who are members of the club I used to be in before I moved, and they only trained in select areas. Everyone did obedience. Some did protection, some skipped out. Some did tracking, and others did not. And if you can/have the chance, work with people like Marcus Hampton, Ivan Balabanov, and Monty Ellison. The advice and tools they have gave me are invaluable.

Thanks again.

Interesting to see how many people have a hard time fitting tracking into their schedule as that will be my easiest. I have a weird schedule because I stay at home with my smallest kids so I have all kinds of time in the morning (at least for self-laid IPO1 tracks) but my hardest issue will be the evenings for club activities when the older kids have stuff going on. We have both really been enjoying tracking more than I though.

Thankfully, we have lots of land around here that I can put some tracks down first thing in the morning. He's got a good start on obedience so my concern is protection, but we will cross that bridge down the line after seeing if this is a good fit. His nerves/temperament are more solid than any other dog that I have had, but he doesn't have the drives to be super competitive. I'm very interested to see if this is something we will enjoy.
In any event, I think a BH will be our goal. If we decide to go IPO, great, if not, there's always an AKC club up the road to keep us busy.

My wife is a professional dog trainer and has been for 20+ years. We've both participated in dog sports off and on over that time. We started in Schutzhund in the 90's with a Doberman (Bred by Cindy Rhodes who is now the kennel manager at Leerburg), but our breed of choice is the Boxer, so we get the up-turned nose at pretty much every club we've gone to. We've dabbled in French Ring and, most recently, PSA.

We've trained with some Schutzhund legends (multi world team competitors and world winners), but even they gave us the side eye when they heard Boxer... until they saw the dogs. We went to check out Dean Calderon's (Google him) club a while back. We spent an hour listening to him talk about IPO/GSD this and IPO/GSD that, and how he'd never seen a Boxer that could compete. My wife was pissed, and we almost just left, but I asked him if we could get our dog out for him to evaluate. After a short bitework session, he said, "I can definitely work with that." We left and haven't been back since.

My wife and I attended a PSA seminar last year by Girard Bradshaw, the founder of PSA. We've decided that PSA is the sport for us. It's more "realistic" than the other sports and requires more of the dog because they have to work in both prey and defensive drive. There is no tracking in PSA, but that's the trade-off. My wife is planning to get a PDC on her current dog (4-year-old female Boxer from French IPO/FR lines) in August.

We drive 1h 45m one way to do bitework sessions with a PSA certified decoy every week. We meet in a club setting, but we pay per session. Our group has GSDs, Dobes, Mals and Boxers in it, and they're being trained for all different sports. Our decoy is versatile and he has titled IPO and PSA dogs himself, so he knows what is required for teach different sport and tailors the training to the dog and handler.

I just wired the final payment today for my new dog. I'm getting a fawn male Boxer pup from IPO title parents, from a working kennel in the Czech Republic. He's only 3 weeks old, so it'll still be a while before he arrives. He'll be a PSA dog from the start, though.

That is one good looking dog.

Thanks again for the input folks.
I've been attending the local club and the people there are very nice and super helpful. It's a pretty small club, but they are helping to produce titled dogs on a regular basis. The members range from very casual to a couple who are quite competitive. I'm fairly lucky that my dog's regular trainer for obedience classes is also a member of the club so she has been giving me a more "customized" approach based on what we would like to do with our puppy.
Seems like a good group and they aren't that far away so I think I'll continue to see if it works for us.
PSA looks fun too, just nowhere even remotely close that I could do it.