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by Resi Gerritsen and Ruud Haak.

It's impossible to imagine life today without professionally trained Guard, Sentry and Police Dogs. In dog sports like Schutzhund and Rinsprt, reliable protection work is also of great importance, as it is for many privately owned companion dogs that work as Protection Dogs.

The successful training of a reliable Protection Dog doesn't start, as is often thought, with the bite work, but with a good education and obedience exercises. People who don't agree, and who don't have a good relationship with their dog and not enough obedience training, sometimes start bite work with very young dogs and that way spoil their dogs forever. The danger and risks that threaten the dog are really so big, that we emphatically advise against starting bite work with too young dogs. The result when the dog is older will often be either a dog that is very frightened, or a totally aggressive dog which can't be kept anymore. Therefore bite work training should be started only when the dog is physically and mentally ready for it. In most dogs that is almost never younger than the age of 12 months and often only at the age of 18 months or older.

So our advice is to thoroughly teach the dog obedience exercises up until about the age of one year, and also in that period of time start with the preparatory protection exercises, as mentioned in the chapter "Raising for Protection."

Every dog suitable to our community, and for sure reliable Protection Dogs, must have mastered certain basic skills. For instance he must: not pull the leash; on command: sit, lay down, stand, stay, come; and also have a normal behaviour with humans and other animals. To help you with that we describe these exercises clearly in the Obedience part of this book, before writing very comprehensively about the protection training.
 

The successful training of a reliable Protection Dog starts with good education and obedience training. With this in mind, Ruud Haak and Resi Gerritsen open their book with a solid coverage of the preliminary considerations: conditions for success, breeds suitable for protection work, a look at various training approaches, and an explanation of basic concepts in training dogs.

From there, they launch into basic training every dog should have, as well as thoroughly covering how to break bad habits in your dog. They also lay the foundation for protection work by showing you how to train your dog in the obedience exercises that he'll need to make him reliable. Every dog suitable to live in the community, and especially reliable Protection Dogs, must have mastered certain basic skills. For instance he must not pull the leash; on command he must sit, lay down, stand, stay, come; and he must also have normal behavior with humans and other animals.

The final section of the book deals with the specifics of protection work: raising a dog for protection work, basic exercises, advanced decoy techniques and other protection training.

The overall intent of the book is to help you train a dog to work reliably in the real world as a protection dog. While the exercises in this book can also be used to train a dog for dog sports like Schutzhund and Ringsport, the authors emphasize that a working protection dog must be able to handle many situations, sometimes in ways that contravene dog sport rules. They are careful to distinguish these areas of training from those more suitable for dog sports.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Introduction

Raising and Training
Conditions for Success
Breeds for Protection Work
Training Methods
The Association with Dogs
Education and Exercises
Breaking Bad Behavior

Obedience
Training for Heelwork
Training the Sit
Training the Down
Training the Stay
Training the Stand and Touching
Training the Recall
Training the Send Away
Practical Obedience

Protection
Advanced Decoy Techniques
Raising for Protection
Basic Exercises for Protection
Training for Protection
Dutch and German Commands
The Dutch Police Dog Test
Epilogue: A Lack of Character

Bibliography
About the Authors