Italian bonitations

[saschia]

OK, so quick overview:

1. The Slovak bonitation contains contact and weak attack by strange person with the owner absent
2. The Czech bonitation contains meeting of group of people with the dog on leash, and then contact and strong attack with the owner first present but not holding the dog and then again absent.
3. Italian bonitation contains meeting of group of people on the leash and then strong attack with owner holding the dog.

There are two main differences among these 3 types in my opinion:

1. Bonitations 1 and 2 contain contact and attack on dog without owner present. This shows how the dog reacts when on its own. Bonitation 3 does not show this at all.

2. Bonitations 2 and 3 show behavior with owner present. The meeting of group is a good thing but not vital, as the dog during the measurements reacts to strange people with owner present so the judge can see this. So the bonitation 1 also shows the behavior of dog with owner present. Therefore, if we take into account Sonya's word that the attack doesn't have to be strong to show the character, then there is no important difference between bonitations 1 and 2 and we can use the same code.

On the other hand, although bonitation 3 shows strong attack similar to bonitation 2, the owner is not only present, but is holding the dog. This creates even stronger influence of the presence of the owner, the dog feeling that he has both moral and physical support behind it (this is actually used for defence training - the owner holds the leash tightly to not loose physical contact with the dog), and actually having something else to protect except itself. With animals there is a distance limit, where the defense behavior changes from escape to fight. This distance is fairly short with wolves and dogs, so if the dog is attacked and afraid, it will try to run from even small distances. But with the owner on the other side of leash the distance limit may change and affect the dogs behavior.

Therefore I don't think the bonitation 3 should use the same codes as bonitations 1 and 2.

What I said here doesn't mean that the bonitations shows the dog character perfectly - far from it. But we didn't find any better way yet. But there is a big difference between 1+2 and 3, while only a small difference between 1 and 2.

I see the overview was not that quick ;o);