Renee: I see nothing wrong with the statement, and you assume wrong.

Josh:
My apologies if the comparison was off – it is a similar thing, not exactly the same. Why practice with fake? In real life, an officer on the street should prepare as he would work. That is my feeling, and belief. If it does not agree with yours, so be it. As an officer, I would think you would know there are differences in blank and live ammunition. If you don’t believe the dog doesn’t pick up on them, then we disagree, and I will leave it at that. I am not going to get into an ammunition discussion with you. I will concede that your knowledge in that area is probably greater than mine, however, that does not mean I am wrong.

As for not bringing a dog to a gunfight – you don’t necessarily know when that may happen. Your dog is with you on patrol, and things happen without your control or knowledge. I am not saying you deploy your dog each time, but your dog is with you and should be able to handle the situation without much effort from the handler, as the dog then becomes a liability.

As for smoke – it could happen. However, my statement was that smoke is a stress on a dog. Working a dog through that stress to where he will deploy through it is just part of training and learning to work and communicate with the dog. Not even through it – take a dog past a small fire or a wet smoking bundle…the dog will at some point hit his stress point and stop or try to pull away from it. By working smoke, it doesn’t have to be thick, blinding smoke to stress a dog. You’ve never done or seen this?

Do I train departments? No, I do not. I train for myself because I enjoy it. I do not see the point in sport, but that is a matter of opinion. An earlier post asked why train the way I do– to that I answer why not? Life is full of events out of your control and the world is full of abnormal people. How often do you see people assaulted, little kids abducted, women raped, etc? It could happen anywhere. If you come to my home, are you going to find a bomb shelter and a secret storage room with an arsenal? No. But I feel better having my dog, and enjoy training and working dogs in general. Chances are, I will never have any confrontation, but you just never know.

As for the weaponed hand, I am not saying the dog bites it and that is it. In earlier posts I have stated I believe a dog should retarget. How a dog fights naturally is how I am going to allow him to fight. I am not going to train that out of him. As such, I am not an advocate of the full bite either.

If a weapon is dropped, the dog can release and retarget if necessary. If someone is armed and attacks me, and I feel the need to deploy a dog, then I am not going to do so half assed. That person is going down, and I am not going to be concerned with how many holes he receives. If that action is not justified, then the dog should not have been deployed. If a person is merely threatening me, then I can put the dog on watch and put on a show with no bite.

As for cross fire caused by the person flinching, shouldn’t the officers involved see what is going on? Are you trained to fire immediately upon hearing a shot?

I have no answer for the child caught by a bullet that went astray. Unfortunately that may happen. But then so many other scenarios could as well. There will always be the “what if” scenario. What if the dog is deployed, bites the guy in his unarmed hand, the guy shoots the dog, and then fires away? Or doesn’t bother to kill the dog, but figures its over, so he just fires off rounds? People getting in that type of scenario are not all rational.

I hope this answers your questions. I’m going to work my dog. Have a good weekend.

On this topic of the difference between live fire and blanks… There are a couple of differences that I know of. The first occurs downrange. The crack of a supersonic bullet, not many handguns are supersonic but there is a noise caused by a bullet parting the air.

The other difference is more profound and it’s why it’s necessary to train live fire at least once in a dog’s career. Live rounds make the gun jump in recoil. Blanks rarely do that. I’ve seen the prey drive of some dogs invoked by the rapid movement of the gun so much that they jumped up and bit the gun. This can have dire consequences, to say the least.

Once you know that our dog does this it’s easy to train him not to. But if you don’t know, it could be an unpleasant surprise. But if you’re not military or LE, unless you have a CCW (permit to carry a concealed weapon) it’s not of much use or interest.

Bill,

Again you provide no answers to very reasonable questions. You provide no reasons for your theories except "I say so". Josh has a ton of experience in what works. I have met a lot of people that believe and train the way you do. Stress their dogs and they fold. The dogs can't stand the simple stress of an aggitator in a bite suit shaking their hand.

As for a dog attacking a weapon hand: I used to believe this one too. This was a theory that came up about 15-20 years ago. It has been repeatedly DEMONSTRATED not to work. Smoke, live fire, yea it could happen, I could be crowned King of England too, it is just that the percentages are so low as to not be worth while to even discuss.

You want to train for real, but you consistantly ignore the real world. You don't want to do "sport training". So how do you plan to proof your dog. I have seen many dogs that looked great in training and hit with a bucket of water they turned and ran.

Like you said, you don't have much experience. There are 2 ways to get experience. One is to try and fail repeatedly learning by experience. The other is to listen to people that have real experience and learn from their experience. this list provides a wonderful opportunity to learn from some of the most experienced dog handlers/trainers in the country. If you notice they will not always agree, but on a lot of this stuff they do agree emphaticly. If I have 3-4 of the top dog trainers in the country telling me I am full of crap, I think I would listen.

As I stated in a earlier post "We do live fire w/ the dogs in a down or a stay, but that's at the range or a shoothouse. Normally if there is a gun involved, it's not a dog call."..I also stated "More often then not, it is more important for the dogs to be used to their handlers shooting than badguys."...see Lou..great minds do think alike...ROFL..

Possession Drive - the instinct to keep for themselves, a toy, bone, food, person, territory, etc.
Fight Drive - the instinct to use physical prowess to claim a level of control
Prey Drive - the instinct to sight, chase and bite prey animals/prey rags, sleeves
Retrieve Drive - the instinct to sight, catch and return to handler with a given toy/stick/ball
Defense Drive - the instinct to choose flight or fight when physically threatened of harm
Fearfullness - abnormal inbalance in flight drives of defense and will either bite/flee or freeze
Hardness - ability to say "Who cares if mom just pounded my head, Duh, I want that shoe again" or "hey, those prickle bushes aren't that bad, the pain is worth the rabbit"
Softness - ability to say "what do you mean, go in there with that mad cat, he's got claws"
Sharp - fast reacter, great movements, very forceful action physically
Sharpness - bites before given good reason to, dislikes people or dogs in general, just a nasty animal all around, very unsound too
Balanced Drives - good collection of most drives and the ability to call on these drives in perspective to situation
Search Drive - ability to remain focused on search at hand and want to continue on search just to find the item/person
Hunt Drive - instinct to seek out prey/man for reasons of civil/food results

I don't think there is much need for any other drive descriptions, because all the variations fall back into a main drive anyway. Just my opinion.

Granted a dog may never encounter smoke or fire. But a bucket of water is not too realistic either. All that aside, isn't the whole point to build the dog and work through stress? I thought that was Bill's point.

Is it possible that the the demonstrations you've seen with the dog grabbing (or attempting to grab) the weaponed hand just weren't trained correctly? I'm not talking about sending a dog after someone with a gun, but someone in close quarters who has raised a knife or a club to strike you. I mention club because I see people walk around my neighborhood carrying clubs not too infrequently.

Catherine,

Bucket of water is not that unrealistic, people mop the floor all the time. I have seen leaf blowers, baby strolers being wheeled, water sprayed from a hose, going out of sight of the handler, do the same things.

The problem with trageting a weapon hand is that:

1) It is easy to move an arm to avoid a bite if you can tell where the dog is going.

2) It removes the option of making a quicker/harder hit by not having to target on something specific.

3) It slows the dog down and may force the dog to run around the bad guy to get to the weapon hand.

4) In defense of a dog comming in, most people will "present" their non-dominant hand as a target for the dog, now the dog has to give up a good bite that he can hit hard for one that is being moved away from it.

5) Josh's comment about accedental discharge of a firearm.

Anything that slows the dog down removes it's advantages, speed and momentum. The other point is if the dog misses on a pass the bad guy has a chance to prepare and has the added confidence that the dog has already missed, and has an idea how to do it again.

The dogs I saw attempting this were well trained dogs. It fits in to the catagory of sounding good, but it doesn't work.

Man, They say people are their dogs tend to act and look the same, some of you guys must have hard dogs! And they say Im abrasive.
Just a comment re stock dogs and rewards, motivational toys etc. It unheard of in this country to use anykind of rewards or toys to motivate a dog to work stock, they do it cause they love it. The problem is to stop them doing it, good dogs will sneak off and work stock on thier own if they can. usually they have to be tied up. Just a thought, maybe be irrelevent. (Renee, your a hard woman!)

Bill and Catherine,

You two never answered my question. Please describe a training session you and your dog go through. Please explain how you go about training your dog for the "real" thing in a typcial training day. Catherine I know you said you own a Dutch Shepherd, Bill what breed do you have?

vomperle:

I can not respond to your question because I never said that. Next time you quote me please cut and paste my post.

Josh:

Do you remmember anyone ever suggesting that you should use food or toys during bite work?
You or I never did.