Diverty Chien

Saturday, 17 November, one of the top 5 best days of my life.  Nine hours of the Cote D'Azur Arrondissement Belgian Malinois Attack Dog Competition in our town, Le Pradet. (The nine hours does not include the "pause dejeuner" when owners and spectators went into the barn for café, whiskey, cigarettes and baguettes.) This was not a friendly dog agility demonstration, instead a very serious competition that people devote a large part of their lives to. Most owners/trainers had two dogs and would use French commands for one dog and German commands for the other in order to improve training.

What is a Belgium Malinois? Essentially a more compact, smarter, lighter, stronger, more disciplined, faster, more lethal German Shepherd.  I'll take six.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzobIbXyY3c

The most impressive of the graded competences were;

- clearing the perimeter: the dog clears the enclosed field as quickly and quietly as possible, then as soon the hidden intruder is located, the Malinois barks to sound the alarm. Through intimidation/threatening posture, the dog then keeps the intruder from moving but never touches him. As soon as he makes a run for it - lights out. Usually the guy made it two strides before being taken down town to China town if you will.

- defense of inanimate object: test to see how well "calibrated" the dogs are in their ability to estimate distances and react to trained distance tripwires. Dogs guard an object in a field in the middle of a bullseye of lime circles for distance measurement. A guy begins walking indirectly towards object. Dog is judged on how his response changes based on his perception of the slowly evolving threat to the object. The tests escalate until the man is finally within the 7 yard circle. When the perpetrator enters the next circle, the dog knows thats close enough and takes him down.

I could not believe this dude was not wearing a helmet.

- strength test: can your Belgium Malinois jump over this nine foot wall? Unbelievable.
- lethal attack: dog is given command to attack the man on the far end of the field. The Malinois go from calmly sitting by their owner's leg to full speed and launch themselves right into the chest of a guy firing blanks at them. During one of the stages of this test, the owner calls the attack off when the dog is   a second or two from launching himself into the perpetrator. The Malinois slams on the brakes and returns to the owner and resumes his position by the left leg. One second the dog is about to kill this guy, literally two or three seconds later, he is calmly trotting back to his master.

I could write forever on this day but if you're still reading this then you have begun to wonder when I am going to wrap it up. JoBu was glad when the day ended because she was terrified and hid in the bottom of the Fiat, trying to stick her head under the seat. It's good for everyone to be taken down a few notches every now and again.