Your K9 CAN do better! All about Bite Development in your Patrol Dog!

He's more focused on outing. Okay, when's Dad going to tell me that, or when is he going to make me out, versus being focused on his task. So in his head, it's kind of reversed. The bite is a function, but it's more geared towards getting ready for the out. So we want to kind of rebuild that thought process too in his head that my full engagement needs to be here.

Mm-hmm.

And I need to be fully focused on the fight per se and the, the bite, you know, fully engaged in that. And then the out may come. So we want to deteriorate the out a little bit. In order to focus on the dog being more keen and more focused on the engagement and the fight with the bomb.

Yeah, because when I left here the last time, um, I— that's one thing I did when I went back. I stopped outing him, um, like how Simon said, this gets his dog a little dirty because when he was younger, somebody told me I had too much control measures on him already. Um, but so I started just choking him off. Yeah, I just walk up and choke him off. And another thing that was a bad habit I did when he was young, um, was when we'd send him, I'd be like maybe 10 feet coming behind him. So as soon as he hits the, the decoy and he's maybe hanging on there for about 20 seconds, I'm already there looking to get him off. Yeah.

And yeah, you know, that's where it becomes the out drill versus Yeah. Building that solid, that solid bite and engagement. A lot of people say, well, you kill drive with, uh, with control and obedience. I don't believe that. I believe that you focus a dog more with control, but the dog has to clearly understand the task first. So if the task is to engage, that task needs to be crystal clear in how he does it. And he has to do it a certain way. Then we begin to build the control in there and integrate it. But when the dog is not clear and then we're also putting control on him, he never gets to fully release it and fully commit to what he's doing because he's expecting now to come off the bite, and that has been the focus in the control. So what we're thinking is kind of deteriorate that a little bit, and even if you come up to put your hands to out him and then let him win. He fights a little bit, boom, you're in there. Good boy. So then we start to feel that desire to continue to be engaged. I don't think it'll hurt you in the long run to then implement the out back into it. Um, but I think at this point, I think some of that can be a little bit of a hindrance as well.

So instead of completely taking him off, as soon as he comes off, put him right back.

Yeah. So you're gonna get on the collar And then, ah, and then let him re-engage, praise him up. And depending on how he reacts, we may have someone with back pressure already. Um, that way, that way if he does let go, he loses everything. But at the same time, if he starts to back out, then we can reinforce the re-engagement to get a deeper full invite. 'Cause he came off really easy when you were like, he was like, he'd pop right off. So he's expecting you to come off versus expecting to engage and stay on. He's looking around like, okay, when's daddy gonna get me off this bike?

Oh, it was really bad when I was here for school.

Yeah, yeah.

'Cause up there, as soon as I walk up, you see his eyes transition to me and he's just looking at me as I'm coming up.

So a lot of people will say, well, what you're doing is wrong or this. That's not what we're saying. We're saying that, okay, you may have done some things that were counterproductive to what you want now, but remember, experience also will teach you things, right? When I was with my first dog or first handler or first dog I trained, it's vastly different than the dog I'm training now, right? Because I learned and I got experience. But because it's conditioned, we can recondition it another way, right? We just gotta now figure out how to recondition that. So what you did was not wrong, or the mistakes you made weren't necessary because you were acting to your capabilities or your knowledge base or someone else's knowledge base. But now as you learn more and as you do more with him, then you learn and he learns different methodologies, different ways of thinking, and pros and cons to both. Well, the problem with that is this, you know, and I wouldn't know that unless I seen that in the past or I experienced other things. That's why I asked you, like, what was the background? Was it sport-based? Because— and the only reason why I asked that, because that's pretty for the sport, because you're going to get points for coming off clean and all this other stuff. But in the real world, it's not necessarily because you have people running up, or, you know, as a family dog, and he has to engage somebody that breaks into your home and chaos happens. He's going to be looking around like, oh shoot, what's going on? So we want to train past that. Think about a training plan. You break it down to what, what do we really want to accomplish? And my vision of what I want to accomplish with a dog may be different than yours, but I'm not working for myself. I'm working for you as an example, right? Because you're the client. So you tell me what's good. I hate when a trainer goes, oh, that's crap, you shouldn't do that. But they never asked a person why. Why are you doing that? Is that what you want in your dog? Because if that's what you want, that's perfect. And the dog's accomplishing the goal that you want as the handler. Or the client or the trainer. It's not my illusion. There's certain things I won't do because of my experience, but we need to ask questions and go, okay, is that what you want? Okay, well then let's make that the best we can because that's what you want and that's your vision with that particular dog. So I, I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's just something that, okay, now I want this and this is why I want that. All right, well, let's push it.

My mom once told me, if you want to be stupid, go learn how to be stupid. If you want to do wheelies, go to a wheelie school. I wanted to do dog shit, so I started going to dog schools, you know, dog courses, um, to learn more. Come out here just a week with Simon and seeing his perspective of how he sees him. Yeah, I started seeing more there too. It's like, all right, yeah, I see just little things. Was he— never even said anything. He's like, hey, was he on a table before? I was like, yeah, he's been on the table just by certain things that he saw.

Yeah.

And it started to build. I was like, all right, I see this. I don't wanna say mistakes, but I mean, what kind of arm mistake would you say? I mean, well, that's also being inexperienced.

As a trainer, it's important that we understand different philosophies in training, different styles in training. Because again, when he sees those things, I don't want to re— I don't want to deteriorate all that. I want to take what you already know and make it better, per se, right? Like BASF, I don't make what you do new or different, I make it what you do better. And so we don't wanna reinvent the wheel because totally getting rid of everything is not good either. So we wanna take what he knows and then build on that. And that's also important for us to kind of assess that and go, okay, why are we seeing that? Where did that come from? And then how can we make that and transition it to something else? Um, and then, you know, again, just, just having that, um, I, I see a lot of trainers that will go, well, that's wrong, or that's wrong, that's wrong. And we got to be cognizant of that because that's also not right to do that. Because I think every experience is a good experience in some form or fashion, even if it's bad, we learn something from it, right? So let's just be cognizant of that, take what he knows, and then build upon it to make it something that we want.