Hey Sapph, its just an excuse that a certain person or persons likes to use when they don't have the knowledge or experience and they just like to say what fits their bill so they can breed and try to sell anything they want.
That's why I'd love to know how many dogs they titled and when. Its easy for me to see a dog trained in SchH to know if the issues i'm seeing are training issues or temperment or drive issues (generally).
These people seem to forget that although SchH is mainly a sport, it's still very valuable. When you drive a dog, do an attack out of the blind, long bites, escorts back to the judge, you can read the dog, is he biting out of defense, prey, is he avoiding slightly on the escorts, is the dog controllable?? all these things and much more can be judged.
A good dog is a good dog, no matter how it was trained, BUT schH is the test that was developed long ago, to test and pressure breeding stock against a standard. It is why the GSD has the reputation it has now. Certain people like to use "schH is only a sport" that's why we don't train for it as an EXCUSE. BYB"s are full of excuses, and these people have lots of 'em.
Some of us know that some dogs can do well at bite work, some only at OB, some only at tracking, some do really well in bitework, and OB, but have no drive to hunt or track, or can bite all day long, but can't be controlled. SchH can easily be used to pressure and test the dogs in all these phases, which is how we got the working GSD in the first place, yet these fly by nighters think they know better:yikes: , (where's the emoticon with the hammer bashing someone's head, that would fit better)
You don't have to win these "sports" or place very high, but if you're training a working dog, it shouldn't take much to be able to show your dog at one of these "sports" and get a title, it shouldn't take much at all. NObody is going to care what score you got, in fact the last one I was at, most of the dogs I liked best, scored the lower. Mostly training issues I saw, not drive or temperment issues. and before I'd breed to any dog titled or not, i would test the dog myself on a neutral field, or with a helper that I bring along, no matter how many titles or times the dog has been shown, but that's niether here nor there. Real breeders don't make excuses, they just do it. I just worked a 10 year old police dog titled all the way to Sch III.