Catherine:

Your dog ran after someone and bit them. This happens every day. Are you telling me that every dog that has bitten a person is a serious PPD? So please don’t contradict a training method because your dog bit someone. Now if you trained a dog from pup to maturity and you can demonstrate that your dog can handle full frontal combat while in intense fight drive then while you might just have a freak of nature at least you have every right to throw your two cents in. And I would defend you to the end. I owned a dog as a kid that bit the next-door neighbors kid. Do you see me telling Lou that his training methods are incorrect because he was never trained hat way?

Kevin:

No one on this board said that a dog with prey and food drive could not be trained to do anything without utilizing them. They only said that it was stupid! Give me a prong collar and I’ll train a dog to do any obedience work. It wont be pretty but I’ll can do it.

Ken:

I hope our discrepancy is due to matter of terminology. Because if you think that a dog that bites out of the classic definition of a fear biter and one that bites out of the classic definition of defensive you have some serious work ahead of you. I will asume that it is the first.

Josh.......what can I say.......you didn't answer my question. Have you ever seen it?

Richard: my comment on how you feel is in regards to the agitator – the dog can and does read body language and can tell is a person is serious or not…the point is to convince the dog you are a threat. If you can make yourself feel as if you really intend to hurt the handler, the dog will pick it up. This can and has been done without beating or even touching the dog. And no, it doesn’t mean the dogs are weak nerved.

Additionally, if a handler is bothered by the presence of the gun, so will the dog. A handler’s attitude and presence of mind is rather strong influence.

Renee: There are many differences between a blank and a live round. And yes, the dog can differentiate. As does the handler, and as I just stated above, if you can affect the handler, you can affect the dog.

Josh: Live fire will acclimate the dog to live fire…practice and train as real life. Shooting blanks may be effective for noise, but is not the same. Same as training a narcotics dog with fake drugs. Am I advocating every one go out and buy guns and train this way? Certainly not, only those needing to. I also am not saying let’s go out on the neighborhood park and start shooting. As to training with various rounds….if you can, why not?

Have you ever worked a dog in smoke? It is a natural thing for a dog to avoid it and causes a good amount of stress on a dog, a great tool to train with. Just try not to breathe too much in.

As for kids petting a dog, many people have these so-called protection dogs or police dogs that can’t be pet by anyone. I think Kevin Scott’s point is that these dogs can do all of these things and remain stable.

In times of deploying a dog, why would you not want a dog to take the weaponed hand? You say most times it is not a dog deployment…but most is not all.

To be honest Josh, you seem to be so full of yourself I’m surprised I bother to answer you. You may be well respected by this circle, but we can see that when faced with ideas or questions that are not in agreement with what you think, you become sarcastic and try to ridicule. I’m glad to see everyone is having a good time with this thread.

Originally posted by Bill Kurz-:
Richard: my comment on how you feel is in regards to the agitator – the dog can and does read body language and can tell is a person is serious or not…the point is to convince the dog you are a threat. If you can make yourself feel as if you really intend to hurt the handler, the dog will pick it up. This can and has been done without beating or even touching the dog. And no, it doesn’t mean the dogs are weak nerved.

Additionally, if a handler is bothered by the presence of the gun, so will the dog. A handler’s attitude and presence of mind is rather strong influence.

Renee: There are many differences between a blank and a live round. And yes, the dog can differentiate. As does the handler, and as I just stated above, if you can affect the handler, you can affect the dog.

Josh: Live fire will acclimate the dog to live fire…practice and train as real life. Shooting blanks may be effective for noise, but is not the same. Same as training a narcotics dog with fake drugs. Am I advocating every one go out and buy guns and train this way? Certainly not, only those needing to. I also am not saying let’s go out on the neighborhood park and start shooting. As to training with various rounds….if you can, why not?

Have you ever worked a dog in smoke? It is a natural thing for a dog to avoid it and causes a good amount of stress on a dog, a great tool to train with. Just try not to breathe too much in.

As for kids petting a dog, many people have these so-called protection dogs or police dogs that can’t be pet by anyone. I think Kevin Scott’s point is that these dogs can do all of these things and remain stable.

In times of deploying a dog, why would you not want a dog to take the weaponed hand? You say most times it is not a dog deployment…but most is not all.

To be honest Josh, you seem to be so full of yourself I’m surprised I bother to answer you. You may be well respected by this circle, but we can see that when faced with ideas or questions that are not in agreement with what you think, you become sarcastic and try to ridicule. I’m glad to see everyone is having a good time with this thread.


Bill,

How many dogs have you owned and/or trained? I seem to remember that you told the list that you were new to the dog world.

k

Bill,
If you read sarcasm, so be it. I only point out my dis-agreement with your comments. Your analogy between live fire vs. blanks and pseudo and real drugs don't stack up. Pseudo does NOT smell, age or have the same chemical components as do the real narcotics. Your argument doesn't make any sense. Time after time there are dogs who were trained on pseudo who do not hit consistently on real narcotics...hence the problem. Your comments about live fire being "real" don't stack up either...don't bring a dog to a gun fight, so how is your argument real or even based in reality? Smoke...I can't think of the last non-SWAT dog I know that has had to deploy in smoke. I've done seminars for departments across the country and not one has brought up training in smoke, but if you say it's real...yes that was sarcasm. Please show me where you are getting this information? What departments do you train with that deploy dogs into gunfights? Use smoke as a mainstay of their training? To your other comment, I honestly wouldn't care if one of my units dogs ran around the smoke as long as he engaged and stayed engaged. Perhaps he's just not that dim to dive into something that makes him choke. If he engages and stay engaged, who cares? If the smoke was the only barrier and there was NO way around it, than it is a different story. But then again, why would I send my dog into something I could not see to the other side of unless I knew what was there? What if there was a 50 ft drop beyond the smoke?
As for your weapon hand comments...don't people have two hands? Does the dog let go and re-engage if the suspect changes the weapon to the other hand? Do you now have a multiple bite situation to defend in court? Also, why on earth would you limit a PSDs target to grabbing only one specific target? Why should the dog have to think about looking for the hand that is holding something? If the guy drops the weapon, does the dog let go? If you are so worried about him only going after the weapon hand wouldn't it make sense that once he's dropped it, the dog should come off? What if during the grasp of the bite, and we actually sent the dog against a gun, wouldn't the flinch of being bit cause the gun to discharge? Couldn't this discharge provoke other officers to return fire injuring the dog, public or be caught in a crossfire? What about the suspects bullet going off and killing a 6 yr old who was playing on the swings a mile away? Lots of questions.....then again you don't have to answer them. I'm not attacking you, but if you are going to make statements, please back them up when questioned.

Josh--

If you don't mind taking the time, I'd really like to hear your overall training theory. I don't expect you to go into a lot of detail as I'm sure it would take pages, but just a general outline as to how you pick a pup, when and what kind of training do you start? When are toys/food used or not used. We seem to disagree on quite a bit but I would sincerely like to hear your views.

Also, have you ever seen a dog trained the way I asked about earlier with no food/ball etc. ?

Ken:

I am the first to admit when I made a mistake. I HAVE NEVER BRED DOBERMAN PINTCHERS SO I HAVE NO RIGHT STATING FACTS ABOUT THE BREED. Now it’s your turn. What’s the difference between fear biters and a dog with a strong defensive gene? Simple. One should be put to sleep the other evaluated for PPW, PSW or SW.

To All:

Let's have some respect for members like Josh. He is here only for us. Do you think he sits on this board to learn how to train dogs? If he has an idea he wants to run by someone he writes directly to an Ed or Lou not to us. So before we are left with a board full of newcomers. Let's have a little more courtesy. Trust me if Jack Schurmann (sp?) joins this board you will not hear me tell him he is full of crap.

Kevin,
I don't pick pups. I only start with dogs who about 15 months and up. They must past several initial test before I will train them. The first but not only test is Lou's stake out test. I don't know the link, but will try to find it for you. I only start w/ green dogs and not titled sport dogs, there is too much to un-train. Occasionally I will use a KNPV PH1, but will retrain a great deal of the work. Even the PH1s need to be taught tracking, building searches and given exposure to many things they have not seen. I do not use much food in my training, but will have a handler use it to help bond with a dog if needed. I do use toys, rewards for narcotic finds, rewards for evidence finds, and even at the end of a track from time to time. I will also use toys to de-stress a dog and give them a mental break during obedience training. I see no other way to get a dog to want to do these things. They find a gun in the woods because they want you to throw a ball, not because they have any idea it's a gun. I use ecollars for numerous things at low levels, and do all bite work on suits or in muzzle. I don't even own a sleeve. Normally if the dog passes my first inital test, stake out, floors, gunfire(blanks.LOL) dark tight spaces, open stairs, hunt drive, ball drive, I know they will make it. So far I have not had one dog not engage on it's first live street apprehension, or not pass certification. I have not had one dog returned for "washing out" or had to send any back to Europe. I have never seen a dog do all the things you speak of without using food or toys or some type of reward system. I'm sure one might exist, but I've never seen it. I also have no idea why someone would be against giving a dog a reward toy or food for finding evidence or narc? Every agency I have worked with has done so.