Yup. Had a great day of training.

Nothing major happend but i did some joint training with the german forces here with bite work. I showed them the "guard" i tought my dog. Its pretty much my dog escorting the decoy back to me. They where pretty impressed with that and i was pretty impressed with how one of there handlers did a search so when we train together again we will show each other how to train each other.

Oh yeah and one of the German's is hooking me up with a basket muzzle so yay for saving $200-$250 :-D

Like i said nothing amazing. Just a good day.

Michael, I think that's awesome, now how about sharing
your method of guarding to the rest of us? I have my male that moves the decoy back , is it a simular exercise?
Anyways , I think it's great when you have a good productive training.

Angelique,

Sure thing but as i have said many times i am challenged when it comes to talking so forgive me if it is confusing.

First this is something i use for practical street work not a sport, but it also does look good so im sure if you do sports you can use it too :-D

(for the learning phase everything is on leash)First The normal escort is the decoy standing with me to his left side and my right hand on his shoulder, and my dog in between the decoy and my self. From here its rather simple you just take baby steps. The decoy your self and the dog walk around and then you slowly start to slow down with the decoy and the dog going the same speed. Once you are walking next to your dogs back legs the decoy will activate and let the dog attack. Do this a few times till you are confident if you step back farther the dog wont mind. Like i said its all baby steps. Just slowly very slowly increase the distance between you and your dog but always re-enforce your dog with praise and what ever command you want to use for this task. I use the command "guard". Just slowly keep on increasing the distance until you are walking behind your dog and decoy about 20 or 30 feet.

Eventually you will be able to send your dog out on a bite. After he bites and you tell him to out you can tell the decoy to walk to the sound of your voice and he will. Once he takes about 5 steps is when i give the command guard, you might have to give this command 2 or 3 times before he understands and then your dog will pretty much be heeling to the decoy coming back to you.

Now for those that are thinking, "How is this practical in the street?" Chances are i will never use it but there is a chance i will. The easiest explanation to show why this would be useful is lets say you have two suspects running away, one give up the other keeps running, you stop and detain the one who stopped and send your dog out on the one who kept running you can keep one suspect with you while your dog escorts the other.

Understood perfectly!

Very nice...

Thanks!

Thanks Micheal, I like that.
It was easy to read..

Mike,

FYI, I could have used that a couple times. Usually when your backup is left in the dust after a long track.

Howard

 Quote: Howard Knauf

Mike,

FYI, I could have used that a couple times. Usually when your backup is left in the dust after a long track.

Howard

I hate it when that happens.

DFrost

Are dogs arn't trained to track, we can search a feild but cant track a suspects movement... then again i probably should change that too :-D

When we started training with Patrick AFB about 8 years ago we found that they didn't track as well. They started tracking but I don't know if they continued to do so. They also did all their building searches on lead. The first time they saw us do it off lead they almost had a coronary when we cut the dog loose. They have since changed their policy but it took a long time and a lot of red tape.

I was going through the regs the other day and saw that we can train are dogs to track, it is permitted but i haven't seen anyone do it yet. We can search a field and locate someone but it isn't off of there trail.

As far as building searches goes i have seen it done both ways. When i get my next dog i think i am going to train him to to tactical searches by lazer. Don't think it should be to hard to train.