Sandy,...Ptlm=Patrolman

H

 Quote: Sandy Moore

Carol, no fair, how come you know them?

Rob Hickman is the Vice President of NAPWDA (North American Police Work Dog Association) and is a great guy and full of knowledge about dogs.

I worked with him in August at the Montana workshop with my little Mali girl and my Dutch. They evaluated her and then Rob would go and hide cadaver for her and the others would hide for Rock for Air Scent/Area Search work in between the aggression work.

He gave me some great insight and it has really helped me and my dogs as a whole.

Some of the other guys in the pictures are guys that I work with as well at workshops from Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

Thank you Howard, that of course makes total sense (another embarrassing duh moment on my part).

Carol, hopefully I'll get to go see a decoy seminar in Vegas, at Angelique's invitation. Not too far from here...it will add to my "gettin out more"

Man you all suck. I need to hurry up and get back to the states!!!!

And i do love those dogs doing the back bite.

Matt, Do you get a chance to train there very often? I heard they have a training group every other week. I'm going to have to find out when that is and make a trip over there.

Kevin... They generally train there on Tuesdays. Unfortunately that’s the same day my training group and another I work with get together. It also takes me about 1.5 hours to get there so I don’t get up as often as I would like to.

Give John Brannon a call.. not only does he own the Kennel, but he is also a NAPWDA Master Trainer as well. John has some really progressive training philosophies when it comes to aggression work and how it relates to dog behavior.

Well good video but at the begining all I could think about was WAY too much sleeve work for police dogs. At this years IPWDA workshop I got to watch the guys from Four Winds Police Dog center in Holland. Thier dogs never see a sleeve at all. Glad to see the suit made a apperance near the end. With the muzzle I don't agree that the decoy should not go down at least at the end. I did not see that part. The dog still needs that win even in a substained fight. They can lose interest. I am no expert, but I feel the dog needs the win! I hope they advanced the dogs to the point that the decoy did not wear any sleeve at all or what is the point. The dog still focuses on the sleeve not the man. Like I said I was not there and did not see all of the training just my thoughts on the video.

David,
Good evening, just to clarify a few things about the video of the Decoy Seminar. The video was made for the participants of the seminar and by no means was a training video. The class consisted of 3 days, the first day being classroom discussing drives, instincts and characteristics of the PSD. Along with equipment selection and the necessity for the PSD to be based out of fight drive, so the PSD will engage and stay in a sustained encounter.
The second two days were fieldwork, consisting of sleeve presentation,footwork, drive and drags, etc. As the video progresses you will see diffrent pieces of equipment being utilized. In a nutshell, this seminar was a decoy seminar,not a K-9 seminar. The seminar's purpose was to educate handlers on how to properly read, introduce new equipment and decoy PSD's.If you have any questions,please don't hesitate to hollar.

PS. The black,stubby tailed dog is a Malinois named "Loki"

John Brannon
Prey drive gets them there, Fight drive keeps them there!

David,

As John replied, it was a decoy school, which involved every piece of equipment utilized for training the police service dog. Too often we only observe teams training with an exposed sleeve or equipment, which only results in targeting issues and equipment fixations. In my opinion, every piece of equipment has its purpose and pit-fall! However, we don't regularly expose our partners to all the equipment or do a poor job of this creating our own fixation problems...

As for falling to the ground on muzzle hits, again in my opinion, we are working on the "drives" genetically based in our partners. If we fall to the ground, without the dog putting us there, we are enhancing "prey" and not "fight" drive. If we fall to the ground and let the dog punch us while we roll back and forth, we are only enhancing “prey” drive. In our theory, we only go to the ground if the dog puts us there and then quickly get back on our feet and fight the dog. If the muzzle is introduced correctly, the dog is winning by driving into the man and continually punching through the muzzle. The handler's job is to grab the dog's collar once the decoy cradles the dog and push the decoy away from dog followed up by a short runaway (chase off) of the decoy.

The biggest thing to remember in training is that “the dog must always win"!!!

Stay safe,
Rob

dawgem@cros.net