Mike Schoonbrood

Taken from another thread, I'm genuinely curious here.

I know that generally when people talk about civil in the dog world, they are referring to a dog who has focus on the man not equipment, willing to engage an unequiped person, and in theory would just as soon bite a guy running around in his boxers as he would a guy running around in a bite suit.

This explanation though is, to me, an "end result" explanation. A fully trained 2 year old dog that has gone thru the appropriate training methods, should engage an unequiped person, but as a puppy they may have been Captain Social.

However, while obviously genetics play a huge role in this, as there are dogs who will bite a sleeve and just do not have the temprement to ever want to engage human flesh -- does it make sense to believe that there are multiple types of civil? Or perhaps just multiple understandings of what someone may consider civil?

For example -- an untrained 8 month old pup that has never been taught anything, who will strain at the end of a leash snapping his teeth at a passive man for no reason other than a desire to bite someone, vs. a dog who is a social friendly pup, grows up to be a friendly but indifferent adult, who has been trained to bite, taught to bite someone without equipment, and has proven himself in the street with actual bites.

The end result is, by the average definition, a civil dog on both counts. However, there's plenty of handler soft police dogs out there. Jeff made a point that a civil dog is a hard dog, and cannot be a handler soft dog by definition. So, is dog A a civil dog? Or is dog B a civil dog? Or is one a natural civil behavior vs. dog B being a learned civil behavior? Or is dog B not civil, even though he will willingly engage and fight a man, but is handler soft?

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