What Is Schutzhund? IGP, Explained

Schutzhund — German for “protection dog” — is a working-dog trial first held in Germany in 1901 to decide which German Shepherds were fit to breed. Since 1 January 2019 its international name has been IGP, after years as IPO. A dog is judged in three phases, tracking, obedience and protection, at 100 points each, and must pass all three in one trial to earn IGP 1, 2 or 3. Before any of that, it has to pass a companion and traffic test called the BH-VT.

That is the encyclopedia version, and it leaves out the parts that make the sport interesting. Schutzhund was never designed as entertainment. It was built as a breeding filter, which is why a test with “protection” in its name spends two thirds of its points on a dog following a scent and heeling through a crowd. The rest of this page takes the sport apart in the order a dog meets it: the history, the names, the entry test, the three phases, the other titles you will see in a scorebook, and the organisations that run it.

One thing to be clear about up front. Our checkable record is as decoys at PSA trials, a different protection sport mentioned near the bottom of this page. This page is a reading of the published IGP rulebook, not IGP judging or helper experience.

The German Shepherd is a young breed with a founding date. Max von Stephanitz founded the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde, the SV, on 22 April 1899 with his friend Artur Meyer. The dogs he started from were herders, but, in USCA’s words, the industrialisation of Germany encouraged breeders to promote them as police and military dogs.

That push created the problem Schutzhund was built to solve. According to the United Schutzhund Clubs of America’s own account, the SV “became concerned that this would lead to careless breeding and undesirable traits such as mental instability” and developed the Schutzhund test in response, with the first trial held in Germany in 1901. The same page is blunt about what the bite work was for: the protection tests “are intended to assure that the dog possesses the proper temperament for breeding.” The protection phase was a temperament exam for parents, not a product for buyers.

The filter was later formalised. USCA’s breed survey page says that in 1922 the breed survey became a tool for breeding the German Shepherd Dog. The same page lists what a dog needs before it can be surveyed: an endurance test, a BH-VT, a show rating of at least “good”, certified hips and elbows, and, for an SV breed survey, a performance title of at least IGP 1. That is USCA’s summary; we have not read the SV’s own breeding regulations. On USCA’s account, a working trial still sits in the path of SV breeding more than a century after the first one.

Why that history matters to anybody shopping for a dog. It explains the shape of the sport. If you were designing a protection competition from scratch, you would not make a dog track an hour-old scent across a field before it was allowed near the helper. If you were designing a test of whether a dog should be bred from, you absolutely would, because you want to see nose, nerve, endurance, trainability and courage in the same animal. Most of what confuses outsiders about Schutzhund stops being confusing once you read it as a breeding exam that happens to include bites.

The German Shepherd’s side of the story has its own guide, the history of the German Shepherd, and our German Shepherd breed page covers what the breed is like to live with now.

Most people asking “Schutzhund vs IGP” are really asking whether they are the same thing. Broadly, yes: they are successive names for the same three-phase trial, and the rules have been revised along the way.

SchH is the original German title, written SchH 1, SchH 2 and SchH 3. IPO stood for Internationale Prüfungs-Ordnung, the international trial regulations. The two names ran side by side for years in the United States: a USCA club application revised in January 2001 lists its requirements as “BH, IPO/SchH1, IPO/SchH2, and IPO/SchH3.” You may also meet VPG on older German paperwork; Wikipedia’s account is that one German association renamed its Schutzhund titles VPG in 2004 while the SV kept SchH.

IGP is the current name, and here the date is firm. An FCI circular dated 23 March 2018 announced that the IGP, the Internationale Gebrauchshunde Prüfungsordnung, would replace the IPO regulations “as from January 1st, 2019”, having been approved by the FCI General Committee that February. The current edition of those rules was approved in September 2024 and has been in force since 1 January 2025.

In the US the switch was handled title by title. USCA’s Director of Judges set out that IPO titles earned before 1 January 2019 carry over — an IPO 3 dog continues as IGP 3, and an IPO 1 dog can go on to IGP 2. USCA kept offering IPO for a few months afterwards, then a motion carried on 20 October 2019, 19 votes to 1, to stop, noting that IPO titles earned after January 2019 “are not valid with any other organization worldwide.”

The practical reading. On a pedigree, SchH 3, IPO 3 and IGP 3 sit on the same rung of the same ladder in different decades. They are not identical tests, because the rulebook has been rewritten several times, so a SchH 3 from the 1990s and an IGP 3 from 2025 were earned under different exercise lists. If a date matters to your decision, the scorebook has it.

No dog enters IGP 1 without first passing the BH-VT, the companion dog test with a traffic part. The rulebook says the focus “must be on social compatibility and not on the technical execution” of obedience, and the traffic half is the part worth knowing about, because it reads like a list of a family dog’s ordinary week.

Out on real streets, the dog walks on a loose leash past pedestrians and is cut off by a passer-by. It walks through a group of at least six people, one of whom stops to shake the handler’s hand while the dog sits or lies quietly. A cyclist overtakes from behind ringing a bell, then comes back the other way. A car starts, a door slams, a car pulls up and the driver rolls the window down to ask directions. Joggers pass in both directions without slowing. Another dog goes by. Finally the handler ties the dog to a fence or ring and walks out of sight into a shop or doorway, and a stranger walks a second dog past at about five paces. The left dog “must remain calm”.

There is no protection anywhere in it. The sport’s first gate is neutrality, and that theme runs through the whole rulebook. A temperament evaluation happens before every IGP trial, in a neutral place away from the field, and the judge keeps evaluating through the awards ceremony. A dog that is not neutral while the judge reads its microchip is disqualified for unsocial behaviour. Under the rulebook, a dog that bites or attacks a person or another dog at any time — before, during or after its own turn — loses every point, is disqualified, and has to pass a BH-VT again before it can enter another trial.

What the judge is scoring. The rulebook lists the primary elements as “Intensity, self-confidence, concentration, direct persuasive referring” and asks for a dog that works the whole track “with a deep nose” at a steady pace. One line in it explains the whole phase: “It is important to see for the whole track that the dog is the one that leads and is making the decisions.” Circling at a corner costs points. A dog that relieves itself on the track loses eight. A handler who helps with the line or the voice is penalised.

Why it is there. Tracking is the only phase where the handler cannot steer the dog. Nobody is shouting, there is no helper, and nothing is moving. The dog has to settle, commit and concentrate for up to twenty minutes on its own judgement. For a breeding test that is invaluable, because it shows the opposite end of the dog from the one the protection phase shows: what it is like when there is no arousal to run on. From our side of the fence, that end of the dog is the one a family lives with for most of every day.

Obedience is worth 100 points and runs with two dogs on the field at once. While one works, the other lies in a down under distraction at a spot the judge picks. At IGP 1 its handler stands at least ten metres away and in sight; at IGP 2, at least twenty metres away with his back turned; at IGP 3, at least thirty metres away and out of sight.

The working dog does, in order: free heeling off leash through a pattern that includes running and slow paces, about-turns and a group of people it must weave through and stop among; a sit and a down from motion, with a recall from at least 30 paces; at IGP 2 and 3, a stand from motion; a dumbbell retrieve on the flat; a one-metre hurdle and a 1.6-metre scaling wall, which an IGP 1 dog simply jumps and an IGP 3 dog must retrieve over; and a send-out, where the dog runs straight away from the handler for at least 20 metres and drops on command.

Two details tell you most about what the sport values. First, during the heeling, two 6 mm shots are fired five seconds apart from at least 15 paces away. The dog “must be indifferent to the gunshots”, and a gun-shy dog is disqualified with every point removed. Second, the rulebook does not reward a dog that is merely accurate. Its basic requirements say the dog must show “that they want to do the required exercise for the handler and not show that they are being pressured to do it,” and it tells judges to watch facial expression, ears, tail, muscle tension, breathing and salivation. Stress and fear behaviour cost points, and “joyful, motivated work” is written in as a scoring criterion. Whether every judge applies that consistently is not something a rulebook can show; what it does show is what the judge is told to look for.

The out is the hinge of the whole phase. Every grip has to end in a release when the helper stops fighting, and a dog that will not let go, bites the helper anywhere but the sleeve, or targets anybody else on the field, the judge included, is disqualified. How the out is timed and scored, and how it gets trained, is covered in how protection dogs are trained. For an out on a training field, see our video of Turbo, a Malinois, releasing and sitting to watch a suited decoy after a bite.

Notice how much of it is not biting. The search is obedience at a distance. The hold and bark asks a highly aroused dog to stand nose to nose with the man it wants and not take him. Every grip ends in an out and a guard, with the dog watching a motionless helper and doing nothing until something changes. The transports are heeling past the person the dog was just fighting. The rulebook scores the hold and bark on confidence and persistent barking, not on the bite.

What this phase does and does not prove about a dog in a house — including what it means that every grip is on a sleeve — is the subject of sport titles vs real protection, which is the natural next read after this page.

The three levels must be earned in order, each behind a pass at the level below with at least 70 per cent in every phase. The FCI sets the minimum ages at 18, 19 and 20 months for IGP 1, 2 and 3. A trial is 300 points, and a dog can earn only one title per event — the one exception being a BH-VT on one day and an IGP 1 on the next. The score bands, and why the number behind the title matters more than the title, are laid out in the sport titles guide linked above, so we will not repeat them here.

Most of the confusion comes from the other abbreviations, all defined in the same rulebook:

FCI. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale writes the IGP rulebook through its Utility Dogs Commission. The 2025 edition says the regulations “are valid for all FCI members and contract partners” and that “The titles must be accepted by all FCI member countries”. National kennel organisations can add local rules, but those additions have to be confirmed by the commission.

SV. The German Shepherd club that started it all, founded in 1899. The SV does not have to write the rules to shape the sport: as USCA describes it, an SV breed survey requires a performance title of at least IGP 1. While SV breeding runs through a trial field, the SV stays at the centre of the sport.

USCA. The United Schutzhund Clubs of America has run “since 1975”, describes itself as dedicated to preserving the German Shepherd’s working heritage, and is a member club of the WUSV, the World Union of German Shepherd Dog Clubs. It conducts breed surveys in the US alongside its trials, which is why its pages were the source for much of the history above.

DVG. The Deutscher Verband der Gebrauchshundsportvereine, the German association of working dog sport clubs, was “formed officially in 1947” and is all-breed, unlike the SV. It is organised into regional divisions, and every one of them is in Germany except LV DVG America, which covers North America and offers individual tracking and obedience titles alongside Schutzhund.

AWDF. The American Working Dog Federation was founded on 17 June 1989 in St. Louis as a platform for organisations dedicated to preserving the working characteristics of their breeds. One of its stated purposes is to become affiliated with the FCI; its own page says it “participates as a guest member at FCI meetings and invitational events.”

None of this makes it a one-breed sport. The FCI rules say plainly that all registered dogs “regardless of size, breed or heritage” may enter. Wikipedia’s summary is that the upper levels are dominated by German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois; the Malinois side of that story is told in the history of the Belgian Malinois.

Schutzhund is not the only protection sport in America, and it is not ours. The Protection Sports Association describes itself as “conceived and born in 2001”, founded by Jerry Bradshaw of Tarheel Canine Training with Joe Morris, with a mission “to provide an outlet for civilian competition in canine obedience and controlled protection.”

Where IGP grew out of a breeding test, PSA was designed from the start as a civilian competition, with its own ladder from the PDC through PSA 1, 2 and 3. How those titles are earned and what they show is set out in sport titles vs real protection, and our own PSA trial listings are on the about page.

Find the full title, not just the number. “IGP 3,” “IPO 3” and “SchH 3” are the same rung in different eras. “IFH 3” is tracking only. “BH” is a manners and traffic test. “AD” is an endurance run. “SPr 3” is a single protection phase scored on its own; like the other single-phase results, the FCI says it is not a training title for breeding or breed survey. Each of those is honest and useful information about a dog, and only some of them involve a helper at all.

Check whose title it is. On a German Shepherd pedigree, Schutzhund titles are often on the parents and grandparents, put there to satisfy the breed survey, rather than on the dog for sale. That tells you something real about the breeding behind a puppy. It tells you nothing about the training of the puppy itself. If you are buying young, our guide to raising a protection dog puppy explains what the first year actually involves.

Then ask what the title is evidence of. That question has its own page, and it is the one to read next: what a sport title proves about protection, and what it does not.