Product Description

This training video deals with "Muzzle Fighting" for Police Service Dogs. Working in muzzle is one of the least understood exercises in bite work. In 1985, I produced my first Police Service dog video. In it we covered 10 minutes of muzzle work. Since then we have learned a lot about this training. This dvd takes the viewer step by step through muzzle fighting.

The reason we chose the term “muzzle fighting” is because there is a real difference between what we show in this video and what happens when someone just throws a muzzle on a dog and sends him after a helper without a sleeve. If a dog is genetically capable of muzzle fighting we will show you how to train it to use its body to go out and knock the snot out of someone.

The goal of this tape is to train a dog in muzzle to alert on a passive suspect located some distance from the handler. If that suspect tries to fight or flee, the dog is to physically fight the man by punching him center mass with his body. Training a dog to indicate on a suspect that is running away from him, or stimulating him, or agitating him is easy. Training a dog to indicate on a standing still man or a man laying quietly on the ground is another matter all together.

The video begins by exploring the various muzzles on the market today. We show exactly what a dog must be doing in bite work before it is introduced to muzzle fighting. We go through all of the training steps for muzzle and we show examples of what happens to dogs when they get ahead of themselves in training. We also show what happens to dogs that are not genetically capable of this work. We will go through the training steps for bark and hold in muzzle and we show you how to set up scenarios in muzzle that fit your needs. This video is as much of a helper training video as it is a dog training video because too many people go out and ask friends or other officers to help them with their muzzle work. Too often this creates problems.

Good muzzle training adds "fight drive" to a dog. It teaches the dog to work center mass on a helpers body and not focus on sleeves and other equipment. Sport dog trainers can learn a lot about improving their dogs through this aspect of police work. Teaching a sport dog to do bark and hold in muzzle really produces flashy Schutzhund dogs.

Training a service dog in the muzzle, hidden sleeve, and body bite suits is a must to produce a dog that is ready to work the street. This video shows you how to train the muzzle portion of this equation.