Ok, I think I need to re-word what I meant, I was just putting it in a nutshell when I said I have taught to target the bicept of the arm holding the weapon. As you see in these ASR trial photos my dog isn't biting the arm holding the weapon Pics of my dog in his ASR trial
I don't have the dog focus on the weapon. What I meant was I have conditioned them to not worry about attacking an arm with an object in it. I have seen many dogs if an object is in one hand, will avoid that arm when the best presented bite is the arm with the weapon, I want him to get the best bite he can and it the best target being presented is the bicept with the weapon in it he better go for it. What I did was have him backtied for targeting and present to him the bicept, but that arm was also holding the weapon, I don't do that all the time ritualistically, but enough that they are not concerned with a weapon in the hand. So I guess it can be said they are conditioned more to ignore it, As you can see my dog did what I wanted him to do he took the best bites he felt was presented and this time it happened to not be the arm holding the weapon. so basically I condition them to not care about the weapon instead of putting focus on the weapon. Sorry for the bad verbage I was trying to nutshell it the first time. I would never have the dog actually focus on the weapon, because that takes away from him focusing on the man.

Chris,
Yeah, maybe you mis-spoke in your earlier post, but those of us who know how you train understood. You train for the body part, not the weapon. You said that you train for the 'bicep of the arm holding the weapon', but we knew what you meant. You train for the bicep bite, not necessarily the bicep holding the weapon. Andres may have not understood what you meant, but since I now speak fluent Duhonese, that was the reason for my post, that one should not train a dog to 'deal' with weapons, but to IGNORE them.

In the trial Bud competed in, you saw how much fun we had with a dog that was trained for the 'weapon hand'. He didn't do so well. Bud did excellent, and will continue to do so.

As Robert said, train the dog to ignore the weapons so that they are no big deal. That's why we use so many distractions in bite work...Two guns, Two sticks, etc....The dog will drive through it's target and hammer a solid bite where it has been trained to do so. Remember that in a 'trial' situation, the good decoy is going to put the dog where the decoy wants it to be, not necessarily where the dog was trained to be. We do that for a reason. In REAL life, the well trained dog is going to bite what is available, and HOLD that bite.

Yes, Andres, a good dog will HOLD a good bite. It will not transfer around unless it feels like it is losing the fight. A well trained dog will only transfer to get a BETTER bite if it determines that the one they have is not advantageous. This is only my opinion, and the way that I train. YMMV.