How to Assess Prey Drive in a Dog

Prey drive is one of the key components of your dog's hereditary makeup. It's hard wired into him. Training a dog like this means knowing how to bring out the prey drive. Interestingly enough, many of the traits dogs are bred for such as hunting or herding are the ones that get them into trouble today during training, as they chase anything that moves. This isn't always appreciated by the owner.

Instructions

1. Determine if your dog chases everything that moves, loves to retrieve, digs and follows the scent trail of other animals. Prey drive is brought out in your dog by using motion.

2. Implement the use of hand signals, but not the stay signal, to get the prey drive to kick in. Be aware that dogs high in prey drive are easily distracted.

3. Excitedly speak in a high-pitched tone of voice to capture the dog's interest and get him revved up to work without over doing it. Signals and tone of voice mean more to dogs with high prey drive than commands. So long as the dog finds what he is doing interesting, he will cooperate.

4. Engage your dog's attention with an object he finds attractive such as a stick, ball, Frisbee or food. Those dogs with a predominant prey drive are easily motivated, but at times hard to control.

5. Chase your dog and see if he loves chasing in return. If your dog gets wildly excited, he is in prey drive and will concentrate on what interests him. Patience is required to teach this dog. While you may think he has a short attention span, he doesn't.