A few days ago a heated discussion started within the dog sport community. Why? Because one of the most renowned dog trainers in Germany, Martin Rütter, talked about IGP and Mondioring in a public podcast. Why is this significant? Simply because Martin Rütter has a broad reach throughout German society and thereby opens up discussions with people who probably did not even know these sports existed – let alone the reasons why they exist, their benefits and their role in maintaining the working dogs used by public authorities.
Two statements in particular caused a stir on this topic: 1. IGP (feel free to replace this with any other bite sport) turns dogs into dangerous weapons; and 2. IGP or any other bite sport no longer has a reason to exist today.
With respect to statement 2, things are simple: in Germany, as in many other countries, the police, the military and other public authorities rely on working dogs and their capacity to fulfil their tasks. This requires appropriate training, but also that the working breeds used are capable both physically and mentally. Both the police and the military in Germany make it clear that they rely on the broad base of people active in dog sport for good breeding. That is precisely the historical origin of protection dog sport, and it remains valid for as long as we have and need service dogs for the police, the military and public authorities.
Now to the claim that our bite sport dogs are turned into weapons: this is a topic that is frequently discussed when people talk about our sports. Usually there are plenty of opinions and considerably fewer facts. Fortunately, in 2006 Roman Mikus published his doctoral thesis under the title "Statistical evaluation of expert reports on dogs involved in biting incidents in Bavaria". The author analysed all reported bite incidents from numerous angles, including the training level of the dogs involved:
"... 87.6% of the dogs involved are family dogs or are regarded as 'life companions' by their owners. A possible reason for the frequent occurrence of these dogs in connection with bite incidents could be a lack of leadership, guidance and control of the dog. (p. 65)"
"... dogs that had attended a dog school were the second most frequently reported group (males 34.5%, females 22%). ... GOLD examined 16 dog schools in Bavaria and found that the majority of the trainers had acquired their qualifications mainly through seminars and internships and were not specialised in problem dogs. (p. 66)"
"Dogs that were trained as protection dogs (IGP) were underrepresented (males 2.2%; females 0%). This shows that well-trained sport and protection dogs do not represent a potential danger. (p. 66)"
These numbers already tell us everything we need to know. Of course we would like to have numbers and evaluations from last year, and hopefully one day we will. Even so, this data exists, it cannot be ignored, and there is very little reason to assume that the situation has changed to our disadvantage – particularly when you consider that training methods keep becoming more modern while the number of people doing bite sports continues to fall.
The lesson from this podcast: let us talk about our sport, about why it exists, what our working dogs are capable of and what tasks they fulfil in our society (including drug and explosives detection, protection work, searching for missing people and much more).
#speakup4oursport
