A high work drive is different than a high prey drive…two different entities?..
This is all my opinion now, I'm not speaking for the author of that quote up there...
I think there are different drives for different things: prey/toy drive is referring to movement, chase & catch, then if you go further add shake/kill & eat. High prey drive is extremely useful to train whether it's obedience or police work or detection/nose work etc.
High food drive is useful for the same reason. A dog that doesn't want to eat is hard to motivate.
An untrained high prey drive dog only thinks of chasing the cat, squirrel, ball or whatever. Has nothing to do with you, unless you throw the ball. Training obedience (or circus tricks or anything) using the dogs love for the ball (or food) as a reward, and then teaching the dog self control to do more and more before getting the ball is how most of the highest obedience is achieved. They develop a love for the game, not just the reward. Same with food. High "drive" kicks in when the game is the highlight of their day rather than the reward. They are happy & excited to go do whatever it is your gig is. I'm not sure you can get high drive to play a game if they are not super excited to get food or ball or tug session in exchange to begin with. Except maybe herders like Border Collies? Sheep and herding is all they think about, not chasing a ball or getting treats. They are born loving that game and pity the poor person who gets one and has no sheep.
So my guess is two different entities, but you train the dog by saying "your favorite thing is coming if you do this for me". You never quit rewarding, but on the path to excellence the dog enjoys the training as much as the rewards.
How do you decipher if one is high drive but doesn’t have the obedience to back it up- would that present more of high energy because that is more or less uncontrollable? You get it under control and it changes from high energy to high work drive?
In my mind, high drive is wanting a job and loving training. I don't know how you can decipher that they have high drive without training something? Puppies chasing a flirt pole is prey drive, but chances are you could trade the puppy a 3 second sit if he knew the rag chase was the reward. High energy, untrained, no obedience is getting zoomies in the house and flying over couches. Completely untrained dog? Like just lives in a fenced back yard? I don't know if you could tell until you started training.
What comes to mind - I have watched beginner-beginners learning basic household obedience at my local kennel club. Most have a nice dog that they got from the shelter, some have purebred dogs. So they are training sit, down and heel. After the sit with luring and then moving forward to heel the dog is looking around (not reactive, not looking for trouble, but bored) and after two treats for sitting is no longer interested in food. It sniffs the ground as the team walks. This goes on after suggesting hot dogs, big parties for small efforts, and I personally have no idea how to train a dog like that. We had an into to nose work class, same thing with at least half dozen dogs: 5 open boxes in a row, one with a hot dog slice in it. Walk down the row of boxes and let the dog discover the food & eat it. The next time they walk the row the dog should be smelling hard for the hot dog, easily find and eat the treat. Some dogs had zero interest in searching for a hot dog. We always ask if they'd rather have a toy for a reward or whatever. No, that's just how they are. Cycle through many foods trying to find something that the dog finds valuable enough to put out effort to find it. These dogs make fine pets to sit with you on the couch and watch TV I guess, but I have no idea how to motivate a dog with no food or prey (toy) drive. On the other hand plenty of dogs went faster & faster to look for the box with food in it, and for that level ANY drive to play the game is an indication that the dog will eventually "trade" work for rewards.
The high energy dog, that seems to have no off switch, may or may not be easy to train. It may have a monkey mind, unable to concentrate, unwilling to try to please you in exchange for food or toy. But if we are talking about a Doberman with this kind of energy, as we've said in so many of these threads, obedience, play & exercise is usually the cure. When you do all that and still have nervous energy, I think it's just genetically too nervy. Other breeds I can't speak for, but I recently read about a guy who worked in a rescue for Mals & Dutchies, almost all were surrendered due to "out of control" "untrainable" behavior. He has re-trained and re-homed them one after the other. I think 9 went to K9 Police work. He said this is clearly high drive dogs with no job, not high energy dogs that are impossible to train. He didn't use those words, but that's what I'm seeing - that so many times a high energy dog that can't seem to shut down actually just needs a real job and tons of training.
I think the main point of the article is that a well bred high drive dog can come with calmness and a good off switch, it can be taken to the top levels of work with out being a nutcase at home. My dog doesn't have a natural off switch. I could make her down and stay, but it took years before her brain joined in, and to this day she cannot totally relax if anything is out of place. So in addition to extreme high drive, she also has a dose of that excess energy in her brain that prevents relaxing well.
