Why is it important for the dog to carry the sleeve?

We need to teach our dogs to relax and calm down after a stressful session of defense work. The way this is done is to have taught the skill of carrying the sleeve. The carry is taught in prey drive where there is no stress to speak of. But when the dog is old enough to learn stress in training, he will have the skill in his bag of tricks.

In sport work we also want the dog to learn to come back to the handler when the sleeve is slipped. This gives the dog a target to come to and it stops a dog from running all over the training field and tiring himself out.