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My apologies for kicking the dead horse.

IMHO the difference is in how the dog is finished. All venues benefit from a solid dog with a good foundation. The difference in training comes when you begin to train in actual deployment situations. A sport dog is going to need quick outs, and a host of skills that a LE or MIL dog doesn't need. A sport dog needs polish and flair to score points. Hence you need to prepare that dog for that particular deployment. My ED dog needs to work off leash at a distance of 150m, and recall on gunfire, something a sport dog does not need to prepare for. You train how you fight, so you simply look at the particular situations you are most likely to encounter with your dog and prepare accordingly.

In sport, the dog is encountering a very strict set of challenges with hard fast rules to abide by. In LE and MIL, the dog has to be trained to meet a set of conditions derived from the experience of the handlers and TD. I can't speak for PSD or PP, but the logic stands that you would develop a training plan that best suits the most common situations in which that particular dog would be deployed.

What do you want the dog to do?

Work backwards and develop a plan that leads you to the desired end state with the dog. So the finished product is different, even if you start with the same dog.

IMO, you couldn't take an IPOIII dog right off the training field to a village in Afghanistan any more than you could take a soldier and throw him into a squad car and expect him to make the right decisions. I would have the basic foundation necessary to operate with a police force during building clearing or a firefight situation, as an IPO dog would have the foundation to bite a bad guy, but that foundation is not enough. There is too great a discrepancy in standard operating procedures and environments.

Every handler and dog needs to train in a manner that resembles the venue in which they will perform, and that training is going to determine how they operate, be it on the sport field, on the street, or outside the wire. Same dog inside, different finished product.
 
aside from the fact that there are defensive dogs that the typical foundation will not work on, that would kill someone in a home defense situation



 
aside from the fact that there are defensive dogs that the typical foundation will not work on, that would kill someone in a home defense situation

IMHO your training PLAN would change accordingly, but the principle is the same. In my experience, every dog needs an individual plan. I have almost no experience in protection training, but I see it as learned behavior. The training plan would be as individual as the animal you are training.

I assume that even in cases where the dog needs to work in defense because of lack of prey drive, there is still foundation work done to increase the probability of success when starting work on a sleeve or suit.

Tradition, to me, only indicates the probability of something working in most situations. I feel that every dog needs what it needs. A good trainer has the tools in their toolbox and the ability to read the dog and understand which tool to use.
 
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