Can rottweilers be a good first schutzhund dog?

tacdog15 said:

Hi I want to get into Schutzhund later on in the future I was originally thinking about bully breeds but some of the members on this forum recommend getting a breed that has some drive and I want to do Schutzhund with an off breed and was thinking about a rottweiler there are some rottweilers that do Schutzhund work is good to have as first Schutzhund sport dog?

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I’d vote no on this Schutzhund is an extremely demanding job for you and the dog Just getting the right drives up and running is hard enough. You need to learn advanced dog trading The average obedience classes just aren’t going to work . We could spend all day just working one dog sometimes . Just getting proper heeling is hard enough but there are many moves required from heeling log down with distraction , send out with down proper recalls retrieves plus’s jump and climbing wall . Miles of tracking practice . Then proper basic protection . Just because the dog is big and strong does not make it a good dog for the work . Both the dire and the dam of my GSD were SCH3 and came drone a long line of Schutzhund dogs . I consider my dog as once in a lifetime dog . I had to match the dog drives day in day out you really have to eat live and sleep the sport it’s much like being an athlete I was a swimmer in middle school high school and college , plus I played baseball football and hockey untill I was 72 never the best player but always first on the field last off the field . As for bully breeds I don’t think I ever saw a bully breed get more than weak Sch1 I did get to work with a world champ Rottie and trainer soi got to see the best of Rotties .
I don’t even like to recommend getting started unless you have a deep pocket book and plan on the best of dogs probably 10 grand or more . I’d say attend as many Sch and IPO events as you can maybe try and see some ring sport . A very good Mal is a lot of dog and will be a huge challenge itself. Here is a good one we trialed in a down pour one weekend my dog was near perfect in tracking he downed in a pool of water on the tracking field with the arrival almost dead centered between his front paws. I was soaked to the bone . My dog didn’t even shake off the water when he continued the track . He never missed a step or article . That’s the drive both you and the dog need . For retrieves you need to be able to toss the heavy dumb bell perfectly so it doesn’t take a bad bounce . This means practice all weather just throwing them I saw so many poor retrieves because the dumb bell took a bad roll. The dog needs to go straight to it not be looking around for it . The better your obedience is the better everything else is .

I’ll add a little more to this . You need to get a rule book so you know what the sport entails . It took me a whole lesson just to get an overview of what goes on. I attended a number of trials viewing all 3 levels I tried to pick as many unknowns out . How was a first level track started . Did you get a starting point or did you have to find it correctly . How about advanced levels then what was required I didn’t know anything but I quickly learned listening to the post event critiques . You got to hear in front of all others just how bad you did I found a nice tracking field and secured permission to use it for our training . With a little creative sketching I found I could get at least 6 tracks in a relatively small area . Then I found that you not always got a start point so I practiced finding our own starting point by carefully marking my plastic map of the area. Sticks were often used to mark corners and articles . Dogs are smart and a stick with a little flag indicates the track so the dog gets to cheat. To get around this I noted dandelions and other natural objects once the dog learned there were rewards for correct actions and he got instruction from me tracking became easier . Getting very deep nose was harder and my field was not always clear of cockleburrs and wood ticks so that was a continuous issue. Asctracks got longer it was much harder to get more than one track in the area I secured a larger field so the issue went away . We passed first level track easily the second level was just longer but much more detailed as far as correctness . As I recall we scored a high in trial on a rainy day . The three level was on a strange field we had never been on so an extra level of difficulty for the dog . By this time the judge just said find your track somewhere over there . Fortunately I had already figured this out so we worked on searching start points . We did pass third level the first time so I was happy . Other parts of the obedience had quirks I didn’t know about until I heard critiques of others so obedience took on a new level of difficulty . Then the protection event took on new levels but it became apparent that obedience was required as well as working with the dog drives you fail if you have a poor out Especially in the courage test . The dog can get really wound up here and many just would not out from a distant call protection can be failed at third level many ways again goingvto trials you can learn this and run your training so you don’t get caught here . We never failed any sch event . Certainly not the best on the field but that was my fault for not training properly . When we got to K 9 training the whole world changed . Things now were real life MUST. Became the most common word . Obedience became an absolute MUST. Now we had a REAL judge that was going to ask all kinds of just plain nasty questions we had legal eagles following us around ready to rip you apart for the slightest miscue . Fortunately I was no an officer I don’t know how the officers were able to operate ith all the chains on them you couldn’t let the dog savage the suspect no matter what the crime was the lease had to be just right No handler help with few exceptions Dog conditioning became important. You might have a 4-5kbydvtrackbthroughbroughbground then only maybe a single bark if a missing person were found to an all out shoot out knife attack yet the dog had to respond correctly every time Training in 3 different languages patrol dogs had to respond to a new handler based on one or two commands no matter what the situation . I’ve yet to see another K 9 group like ours I’m proud to have been a part of it .
So as you can see there can be a lotto big dog training I’m not the best trainer or I’d still be involved but I can pass on some experiences and occasional tips . The general plan was to state the problem or situation , what is required , at least plan A,B,C then open plan analyze what happened a course of action.