I am training my dog for SAR, we had an incident and the trainer was bitten. Other members of our SAR groupthink he is too unpredictable to be in this field. What are your thoughts?

Hello,

I want to thank you for the great info in your videos, podcasts, eBooks and forums. I've got an 18 month old female GSD who is doing SAR training. Specifically, we're doing trailing work and loving it. We just got one of your fabulous leather trailing harnesses. I'm a lifelong member of the 'explainers club' and really appreciate your explanations. It's a big help for me that you work with high drive dogs because I've got one myself. I loved the video of Dayma at 6 months because she was acting a lot like my dog did at that age. I also like a direct answer. And, I've got a question...

About a month ago, I made a decision (which I regret) to have my dog spend a day with a trainer with whom we've done several obedience classes. At the time, my thought was that a day with a trusted and known person in a place where we have had fun would be a good confidence builder.

My dog did great working with the trainer and was fine interacting with some other dogs out by the pond. Then she was left in a crate in an office while the trainer left the property for an hour to take one of her dogs to the vet. She was "screaming" in the crate when the trainer returned. My dog is crate trained and at ease in her crate at home and in my truck. She sleeps in her crate at night and is crated when we're not home (or when we don't want to supervise her) and is crated in the truck when we're out in the world (or at SAR training and she's not working).

This is what I heard about the incident: The trainer brought two dogs (or more? I don't really know) into the office which is a small closed space. She released my frenzied dog from the crate. My dog slammed into the dog just back from the vet who turned on her and growled, my dog growled back, the trainer grabbed my dog by the scruff from behind (she was wearing no collars) and she bit - one hard full bite and hold on the hand which resulted in deep puncture wounds.

My dog has never shown aggression to people before or after this incident -- and she has been out in the world quite a bit. We also regularly have visitors at the house. The trainer never felt that the dog was trying to get her but she didn't release quickly. The trainer didn't blame the dog and thought she was completely panicked. My dog was somewhat dog aggressive during a false pregnancy in May and June of this year. But otherwise she is OK with other dogs -- we are still working toward neutrality to other dogs. She is not a dominant dog and we consistently enforce the pack hierarchy.

I have told members of my search unit about the incident and some feel that this incident makes my dog inappropriate for the unpredictable world of wilderness search. Of course, I would never want to field an unsafe dog and am willing to do everything possible to make her dependable. We have about a year of search training until we're ready to certify. So I have some time to work on this and, of course, she will mature during that time as well.

What do you think? Is this type of incident a sign of bad things to come or a perfect storm of bad decisions on the part of the trainer and a mistake by the dog? What kind of training should I do to make sure this never happens again?

I have obtained and watched your DVD on dominant and aggressive dogs. I am doing training to help her become more responsive when aroused (we've recently done some herding). We're making her work a little harder for everything (in her 'nothing in life is free' program).

Any words of advice welcome and thanks again for the great products and information.

Morgan