Following Orders
Maddy the Pit Bull Wins Awards for Obedience, Protection Skills
Maddy doesn't look like a pit bull — at least not if your idea of a pit bull is that of a muscular, snarling, teeth-baring canine. Make no mistake. When Fred Hassen, Maddy's owner, tells her to attack an accomplice wearing a padded sleeve on his arm, Maddy will chomp down and hang on for dear life until Hassen tells her to release. But, other than that, and most of the time, Maddy is a friendly, tail-wagging charmer and just about as normal a dog as you'd ever meet.
The two sides of Maddy's personality may be best illustrated by the awards she won October 3 during the National Association of Protection Dogs National Championship in Rio Vista, California. Maddy, according to proud owner Hassen, took first-place awards in both obedience and protection. And, in doing so, Maddy is a fur-covered advertisement for Sit Means Sit, Hassen's dog-training business, and, Hassen says, proof that any dog can be trained with patience and proper technique.
Hassen — who also co-hosts a talk show about dogs and dog training at 11:30 a.m. Fridays on KLAV-AM 1230 — and Maddy, a three and a half-year-old American Pit Bull Terrier, have been a team since Maddy was about six weeks old.
Hassen, who was training dogs then, too, says he "saw some local people's dogs that have done pretty well in competitions, and I just kind of thought, comparing my dog to their dogs, that [Maddy] could do better than this."
Maddy competed in her first event at the age of 11 months. Hassen says she has won awards in several obedience and protection trials since then, but this month's win was her charter national first-place finish.
Sonny Henegar, president of the National Association of Protection Dogs, says the group was created about five years ago. One goal was to create a standard of performance for personal protection dogs, he says, and the other was to educate the public about protection dogs.
During competitions, dog owners put their dogs through events designed to simulate possible real-life scenarios, Henegar says, adding that "we believe in courage and control equally. So, you don't have just a bunch of maniac, biting dogs out there."
In fact, he notes, dogs must perform well in obedience trials before being permitted to participate in protection trials. For the obedience part of her trial, Maddy and other dogs were judged on their ability to follow a series of commands in sequence as they and their owners walked a specified course, Hassen explains.
"This isn't something you can prepare for," he adds. "The way it works is, you don't know what they're going to make you do until the day of the trial."
He demonstrates by putting Maddy through a series of about a half-dozen commands, walking a circuitous route with Maddy at heel, sitting, waiting while he walks away and then coming to him when he calls her.
Henegar says the dogs also have to deal with obstacles and distractions placed along the course. "There'll be guys in `bite suits' kicking footballs, and … we've pulled stuffed animal cats in front of dogs, and we've had gunshots go off as you walk the dog, simulating the backfire of cars. We have a lot of stuff going on because we try to be realistic."
For the protection trials, dogs are required to cope with a number of real-life scenarios. They'll be judged on their ability to attack a mock assailant on command, refrain from attacking a mock assailant, and even start to attack a mock assailant and cancel the attack in midstride.
Hassen and Maddy demonstrate this, too. As Hassen's associate stands about 30 feet away, his arm covered in heavy padding, Hassen orders Maddy to attack. Maddy streaks toward the padded arm, jumps, grabs hold and hangs on, even while being swung around in the air. Hassen counts down from five, tells Maddy to release, and the dog lets go and returns obediently to Hassen.
Hassen again sends Maddy to attack, but calls her off about 20 feet into Maddy's sprint. Although Maddy's momentum carries her past her mock target, she doesn't chomp down on his arm, but returns to Hassen.
Henegar says the concept is that a protection dog must be trained not only to attack, but to not attack, too. "Once you teach a dog how to bite, you have to take responsibility to teach him control," he says.
Hassen is, of course, proud of Maddy's award-winning performances. At about 57 pounds, Maddy "was one of the smaller dogs there," he says. " A lot of the dogs competing were German shepherds and Rottweilers, and she was the only one to knock the decoy (a man wearing a full set of pads) over."
When she's not working, Maddy is a friendly ball of fur. Even after she's been put through her paces, still catching her breath and waiting for the adrenalin rush to subside, she'll calmly cradle a stranger's bare hand in her mouth on Hassen's command. When she's not obeying Hassen's commands, Maddy is just another frisky, inquisitive canine. " You'll see a lot of people think these dogs are robots or whatever," Hassen says. " But as soon as I give her the `release' command, see how she turns into a regular dog?"
Maddy also is evidence of Hassen's belief that dog training is as much about training a human owner as it is training a dog.
"If I were to take this dog, as well-trained as she is, and give her to somebody who doesn't know what to do, they'd untrain her," he says. Hassen says he tells his clients that, even though Maddy probably is more highly trained than their dogs, they, too, should expect their dogs to sit, heel, stay and perform basic commands, regardless of distractions around them.
"The most important command for a dog is for the dog to come to [the owner]," Hassen says. "You can tell how well-trained a dog is by the dog's reliability off-leash and under distraction."
Dog training isn't a one-time endeavor, but an ongoing process, Hassen adds. " You've got to stay on top of it." Hassen says some people might be surprised that Maddy — a member of a breed often thought of in starkly negative stereotypes — is so friendly, so obedient and so well-trained. In fact, he says, "I train everything, but I get a lot of pit bull clients."
But if you need further evidence of Maddy's character, consider that Maddy even is trained to pick up trash in the park.
"A lot of people have trouble getting a dog to just get a ball when [the dog] feels like it," Hassen says. "So what I'm trying to show here is that a dog can pick up anything you tell it to and come on command."
Maddy, still panting from her workout, just offers a slightly slobbery smile in what could be agreement.
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