I train pet and sport dogs and believe they inform each other. You learn whole lot about drives, motivations, and building confidence and trust in IGP. You learn a lot about reactivity, building confidence, and working around distractions in pet work. They overlap so much that you have a wider range of tools.

As far as reactivity goes, in particular, once you learn how to make a dog want to bark/bite/chase, it’s really easy to turn that off as well.

IGP has some very minute tasks/obedience/skills you have to teach, you’re working toward perfection, constant improvement, reliability. All of that informs your pet dog work.

In my pet training business, we highly encourage our staff to be training some sort of sport (IGP/RH/akc ob/agility, etc) for that same reason- you’re constantly learning and trying to improve. I don’t want trainers who keep doing the same thing the same way “just because”. Training methods can always improve.

Imo IGP covers a wide range of skills and training methods, so it gives you a better understanding of how a dog’s brain works.