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Sabotage – The training procedure of trying to make the protection dog’s training fail in order to make a new learning experience. For example increasing distractions with the dog’s favorite toy to get the dog to break a stay command and then immediately correcting the dog.

Scenerio Training – Setting up real life training situations so the protection dog gets experience and will not be confused when an actual attack occurs.

Schutzhund – A protection and obedience ring sport

Scratch Apron – An apron similar to a butcher’s apron made of heavy duty material and designed to protect the trainer from being scratched by the personal protection dog.

Scratch Jacket – Jacket version of a scratch apron

Scratch Pants – Pants version of a scratch apron.

Seat belt Connector- Simulates the end of a seat belt to connect your personal protection dog’s harness to your car.

Secondary Reinforcer – Verbal praise and petting to mark wanted behavior in a personal protection dog.

Send Away – A. Ringsport exercise that has the dog going against its natural tendencies to want to come to its handler. B. More practically for a personal protection dog owner it’s used to send the dog to it’s crate (away from the handler) or to it’s bed or to search a home or office.

Separating Anxiety – The negative emotional feelings of a personal protection dog prior to family members leaving which subsides after they have left.

Separation Anxiety – The negative emotional feelings of a dog when it is a away from its family.

Sex Drive – One of the natural instincts of the dog to preserve the species.

Shaping Behaviors – Rewarding close approximations of a desired behavior and then requiring more accurate approximations before a reward is given with the final goal to have the personal protection dog accurately complete the entire behavior. An example would be to reward a dog when he puts one paw on a target. After you can consistently get one paw on the target you would reward only when two paws are on the target and so forth until the dog is standing with all four paws on the target.

Shedding – Casting off of loose hair.

Show of Force – See ‘Deterrent‘

Showing Aggression – Behaviors of your personal protection dog toward a threat such as barking, baring of teeth, growling, snarling and lunging.

Silent Commands – Normally hand signals that make no noise so that you don’t reveal your position to the bad guys when  commanding your personal protection dog

Sit in Motion – During a heel the dog sits but the handler continues in forward motion.

Sitz Command – German for “Sit”

Sleeve – A piece of training gear worn on the decoy’s arm designed to be bitten by the personal protection dog.

Sleeve Cover – A cover for a sleeve to protect it and make it last longer and also to present different surfaces for the personal protection dog to bite.

Slip Collar – See “Choke(r) Collar”

Slippery Surface – Any floor surface like marble, concrete, linoleum or polished stone that the dog may be standing on when it needs to defend. Testing for slippery floor acceptance is a mandatory test before putting a dog through any protection training.

Snake Proofing – Teaching the dog to stay away from snakes

Socialization – For the purpose of teaching proper behavior introducing your personal protection dog or puppy to every day life events involving other animals, adults and children.

Soft Dog – A dog with little ability to handle tough situations or corrections. Opposite of ‘hard dog’.

Spike Collar – A collar adorned with pointed metal protrusions. In the past this was to protect the dog’s neck from being bitten by other dogs, but now spikes are usually included as a doggie fashion statement.

Starter Pistol – A blank firing gun normally used to “start” a race. For protection dogs it is part of the dog’s gun fire acceptance training.

Stay Command – The command to require the dog to stay exactly where he / she is. This command normally is used for staying in place for an extended duration.

Stealth Aggression – Considered one of the most dangerous traits of an animal. By not displaying the typical overt signs of aggression which in many cases are warnings by dogs that don’t really want to fight, the dog that does not give warnings is frequently the one who wants to attack and has little inhibitions about doing so.

Stimulation – Term connected to remote collar / e-collar training when a button is pushed on the transmitter.

Stimulus Discrimination – The protection dog’s ability to tell the difference between words.

Stomach Bite – A target area when training the personal protection dog on frontal attacks.

Stressors – Things that bother a personal protection dog. It could range from mild stressors like the jingling of keys to heavy stressors like screaming. Each dog will have its own set of items that make it feel uncomfortable.

Stretch Collar – See “Elastic Collar”

Studded Collar – A collar adorned with rounded off metal rivets.

Superstitious Behavior – When two things happen coincidentally and the personal protection dog thinks that one thing caused the other thing. Example. Someone who doesn’t know how to properly use an  e-collar  stimulates the dog when the dog is near a car. The dog may think the car bit him or the car is hot and now the dog won’t go near that car. Click here for a good explanation of superstitious behavior.

Surprise Attack Training – Functional defense training where the protection dog is surprised with a threat during non-training times.

SVV – The Eastern European equivalent to Germany’s German Shepherd Dog Club.