Ok, so I'm new here. I've been unable to find any local dog
sport folks as the Schutzhund club that was once here apparently disbanded. My dog is just shy of 11 months old. I've been working with building his prey drive, and teaching basic obedience (sit, down, heel, come, track, on and offleash) and he knows the command to bite the puppy sleeve I have (its like his crack, I'm not even sure why he wants the sleeve so badly). That being said, after finding and reading posts in the forum, I fear I've done things wrong, or at least differently. First, I didn't plan on really training hard until he hit a year old and just planned on building his drives any way I knew how. Secondly, I've been correcting him for months now. Thirdly, I'm not sure how dominate I should be over him, but I probably lean on the over-dominate side (former USMC, I'm sure it made me biased towards discipline). To make sure he gets good low impact exercise he swims a good 5 hours a week. Am I going about this all wrong? I find myself being perhaps overly concerned I'm screwing up because I have zero experience in this area. I seem to keep reading "Don't do X or it will destroy the dogs drive", and to make it more frustrating there seems to be a good deal of conflicting information out there. Whats a guy to do? What sort of problems may I have inadvertently caused myself (just a lack or reaching the dog's full potential?). Your thoughts?
