After viewing Bite Training For Puppies, I notice no mention of teaching the "Out" Command. When is the proper time to teach this and why? Is there a specific reason it is not learned right away as a basic command?
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When the puppy is doing excellent grip work, when he will not drop the ball on a string when you put him as he gripos, when you cannot tease the pup to let go with a second toy while it is gripping the first toy then he is ready to learn the OUT.

The OUT is taught by giving the OUT command and giving a hard pinch on the back flank. The INSTANT the pup drops the toy it is kicked and he is put back into drive. When I say INSTANT - I mean that your goal should be to kick the toy away the second that it touches the ground so the dog goes immediatly back into drive.

The most you should train the OUT on puppies is once a day. It does not hurt to skip a day.

Training the OUT is easy, training the dog to grip requires thought. It is very easy to screw up the grip by doing the OUT too much. Your focus should be on teaching the pup to carry and grip the toy.

I am editing a tape on teaching the GRIP, CARRY, FOCUS and OUT from the Bernard Flinks seminars . It is very good. I will post it to my table of contents when it is done (which I hope will be in the next 4 weeks)

Ed,

Thank you for the reply. That answered my question! Is your new tape going to be more expansive on these subjects, then that are covered on the puppy training video? BTW, I really am enjoying the tapes I recieved, very well thought out....

If I could offer a suggestion...
The procedure Ed is describing is called flanking. I would not recomend it with very old dogs. The reason that the puppy will out is that it will frequently turn to bite the source of the pain. Make the pinch on the opposite side you are standing on, the dog will turn to towards the source of the pain and snap. It may bite you prior to it figuring out that it is you.

I have stopped using this technique. It creats 2 problems in my mind. First, it is likely to get you bit. Second, it has a tendancy to make the dog sensitive about it's rear end for fear that it will be pinched on the out.

What I do instead is to treat out as almost an obedience command from the begining. I use the command a little differently than most people do. The only way I can explain it is that out means "stop what you are doing." Stop biting, or stop getting in the trash, or stop barking, or whatever. It is confusing to the humans but the dogs seem to get it. If necessary I back it up with a NO. When I take a toy from the dog I give it an out command and shape this just like an obedience command. To start with I give the command as I take the toy then praise, until the dog understands and then command and then correct just like anything else.

If the pup has always done this it will understand when you get to the sleeve. If most of the time you continue the game the dog does not mind outing because the game just starts again. With the carry talked about in Ed's video "First Steps in Bite Training" when the dog drops the sleeve you can praise for a good out. You don't command the dog to drop the sleeve just wait until it does it on it's own. When the time comes the dog will get the idea.

Maybe I did not go into enough detail.

Flanking the dog works just fine on puppies. This is exactly how this work should be done. It is done with the pup in high drive. The key is to keep the dog in drive. There is no problem to introduce compulsion when a dog is in high drive.

The key is to get the dog in drive, use compulsion and then put the dog back into drive. If you do it in this order there is no negative problems with the work.

Flanking adult dogs in this manner can also work with many adult dogs if the handler does it properly (the key being that the dog is at the right level of drive)

On really tough dogs I would not recommend flanking - thats where an electrci collar needs to be used - but this is an entirly different sitatuion and I will not address it here. We are talking about puppies in this thread.

Hahaha,
Well both methods make sense to me, I guess everyone has their own best way.
Thank you both for the great replies! All I really wanted to know was "When" not how... but I got a bonus!

Lonny <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />