I have a 2.5 year old Germ Shep that is dual purpose, narc/patrol. He has been on the road for 1 year and has been a good dog for me. He has been a pretty good all around dog. No major problems with his work at all. The reason that I am writing to you is because of a problem that has recently occurred. The problem is when he alerts to drugs, he begins to scratch then it turns to a biting at where ever the drugs are. He initially scratches, like I want him to..but then he turns to biting at the source. In the beginning, i thought this was pretty cool because I knew exactly where the drugs were. He took all the guessing out of it.
However......since August of this year, he has broke off 4 teeth and gone through 2 different mouth surgeries. It seriously concerns me. I had to take him back to the vet on Wednesday and they made me take him to a dental specialist in Baltimore Maryland who performed surgery to remove a tooth and repair another.
My concern is the dog’s health 1st and foremost. I’m concerned that he is seriously going to hurt himself. I’ve been recently tossing around the thought of changing him from aggressive alert to passive. What are your thoughts on that. Have you ever did that and how hard was it. I just can’t let him keep injuring himself. Not to mention my dept is going to start gripping about vet bills. This is beginning to get real expensive for them. Any help you all got would be greatly appreciated.

Just going to throw this out.....why not try rewarding him before he starts biting at source? Or correcting him for biting at source and encouraging the "dig" response?

A lot of times the dog will scratch once or twice and immediately start to bite. Or they wuit scratching altogether, and bite. This is a problem that was allowed to get out of control and the dog was actually rewarded for it. To change the alert would be more drastic than trying to fix the biting problem.

Do more allert building exercises that require scratching and digging only. One good way is to bury his toy in a dirt pile. Its not going to hurt him if he takes a break from actual odor work so that you can enforce the digging/scratching.

When it comes time to do actual odor work, you have to keep him from biting immediately by never letting him start again. Don't assume he'll stop just because you did the aforementioned exercises. Put him in a wire basket muzzle and do some searches to see how he'll react. In the muzzle he can't revert to the old unwanted behavior. He may try to bite but wont be able to. Encourage the scratch and pay him when he is going at it good. Use another handler to deliver the reward so you don't get busted as you'll probably be right down there with him.
Even though you are fixing a problem, you don't want to make it a negative experience. You just have to outsmart him without punishment so its still all fun.

Howard

I appreciate all your input. I have tried to correct this but when i give him a correction, i feel he wont search as good as he did before. He isnt shutting down, but he doestn search as well. I think he feels that by him searching and alerting he is getting corrected for it. I have tried using scratch boards, ive tried the burying the toy. That is how we initially tried to correct the problem. Ive tried fence drills where the you hide the toy just under a short fence and the dog has to dig the fence under to get the toy. Nothing seemed to work. I agree with Howard, I did reward the negetive aspect because once he would start to bite, out of fear of him hurting himself, i would immeidatly reward him. I guess its a double edged sword.

Hi Denny,

The easiest way to prevent biting is with the wire basket muzzle. He's able to work the odor but he can't bite a thing. To fix the problem you have to stop it 100%, and not give him the opportunity to fail or you've gained nothing.
Like I said before...everything must be positive. No corrections at all. You've already seen what happens when you give corrections during scent work. You'll basically be starting back at square one building his alert from one scratch, to two, then three etc until he's ripping it up with his paws.

Howard

Hell,
He'd be a sit response dog in two weeks if it were up to me.
It is not difficult to do, it solves the problem, and you have set the groundwork for the dog to do a great job of pinpointing.
No reason in the world to fight this behavior continually which you will do if you try to correct the bite and enhance the dig. They are too close of behaviors.

 Quote: Kevin Sheldahl

Hell,
He'd be a sit response dog in two weeks if it were up to me.

Totally agree.

DFrost

 Quote: David C.Frost

 Quote: Kevin Sheldahl

Hell,
He'd be a sit response dog in two weeks if it were up to me.

Totally agree.

DFrost

Thirded.

The OP doesn't know how to change the alert. I agree it wouldn't be that difficult but if not done right then you have a dog that does both. Everyone's seen that at one time or another.
The fact that the biting and digging are closely related escaped me when I responded. Total brain fart.

Howard

K9 training is a funny thing. You can ask 50 trainers and get 50 diffrent answers. I really appreciate all your input. Im at a point, where i just dont know what is the best way to fix the problem or ignore the problem and completly re train on detection with passive vs aggresive alert. Ive been working him for a year with aggressive and know his antics when he is in odor. I dont have any problems finding out when he is in odor or messing around. For me to change him over completly, I just dont know....