Learn the History of Schutzhund

Series Summary

The German sport of Schutzhund was developed and first organized in Germany, and involves the testing, training and execution of various techniques for protection and guard dogs. Usually the sport draws German Shepherds but can be enjoyed by dog owners with any breed that excels in communication skills, has strong desires to work and be useful, has courage, intelligence and trainability. Dogs are challenged with a series of events and activities that test their endurance and strengths, illuminating the character of a dog through trials and tests. Though the sport was originally intended to determine which dogs would be best suited as protective or hunting dogs, the sport is now enjoyed with a little less intensity on the protective side, offering owners to showcase their animal's skills and obedience while determining and discovering their character.

In this free instructional video clip series, our expert Schutzhund dog trainer and sport enthusiast will discuss the sport and help you understand how it works, what its purpose is, and how you and your pet can get involved. Learn tips for Schutzhund training, obedience tests, skill level determinations, tracking measures and much more.

Video Transcript

" My name is Phil Hoelcher and I am representing Expert Village.com this morning and we are going to be talking a little bit about the sport of Schutzhund. We are going to try to show you a little bit about all three phases; the tracking, obedience and protection and give you an idea today a little bit of what this sport is all about. The sport of Schutzhund is over 100 years old or the concept of it at least is. We have been working in this country since about 1970 and Schutzhund has grown a large amount every year and become a very popular sport in this country at this time. The people in Schutzhund that are competing on a world level and there is many competitions all over the world that the people from the United States are now participating in, we are doing quite well against the rest of the world competition. Remember the original thought of Schutzhund was to test the dogs to see how that they would work with man. When we first conceived this sport or the sport was first conceived, we are looking at was a way to test the dogs for breeding. Anyone that you ask about their dog will tell you that he is the best dog in the world, so it is very hard if you had a female and you want it to take it to a nice male everyone you talk to said that they had the best dog there was. Well they decided is to devise a test to find out which was the best dog, so what they would do is they design tracking to see how well the dogs natural instincts to hunt and to work on his own, that was the tracking phase. The obedience phase was to see how well the dog would work with his handler or with his owner, how well he would adapt to the training that we were going to put on him and the third test of protection is to see whether or not the dog had the natural courage and hardness that we would want to see in a working dog. So the original thing was a test for breeding. Now the sport is huge; there is 39, 40 nations, 50 nations around the world now that are either in the sport or getting into the sport and just starting it. You will see this in the major competitions where there are people now coming from all over the world to watch this sport. If you would like to talk further about Schutzhund or like to know anything else you can e-mail me at philhoelcher@aol.com. "