Cattle Prods and Pain as "Motivation"

[airwalk]

Woohoo Mick deserves ice cream for not eating the toddler...or better yet the idiot parent.

[DemoDick]

Lastly and this is for you Michelle! Choking a dog off the grip in my opinion only works for dogs that will let go without letting themselves pass out first. Mainly younger dogs and pups. No struggle and no damage done. When you have a tenacious dog such as a APBT or adult bite trained dog and you attempt to choke them off the grip you are ineveitably teaching them to fight the out.

Interesting story about this. Cheryl Carlson helped to work on Rigg's out two years ago. She saw that he definitely had a problem outing. So after the session she asked everyone that was there, "When is the right time to teach the out?" We all offered up our opinions, one by one. A few people thought it was a trick question. Cheryl then gave us her thoughts. She said, "Teach the out as soon as the dog is biting WELL." In other words, if the dog is showing you the bite you want to see, he is ready to learn to out. Where a lot of trainers will spend months developing the bite and postpone teaching the out, she likes to teach it much sooner. I think that her approach helps to avoid problems like Rigg's. Once a dog has learned to lock into the fight that tightly, no amount of force is going to work, as you are doing exactly what you described, teaching the dog to "fight the out." Also, using reinforcement for that type of dog isn't a viable solution either, as the dog already has the strongest reinforcer possible in his mouth.

Because I didn't know the "right" way to develop a bitework dog I taught Connor the out exactly as Cheryl described, as soon as I saw the bite I wanted. It just seemed to make sense, I don't know why. This was before I met Cheryl, or you for that matter. I wasn't aware that so many bitework trainers think that this is the "wrong" way to do it and that it would ruin his bite to teach him the out "too early".

Then it becomes a battle against you and the dog. A side from dog fighting, think about what pitties were bred for hundreds of years for. Holding on! So it stands to reason that Riggs wants to hang in there and you choking him off just made him want it that much more. didn't we work on the out with one of your dogs when you and Demo come to CCK9 to train?

Nope, the only bitework dog we had then was Connor. Despite a high level of fight drive, his outs have never been a problem, which I believe is due to the fact that it's the second thing I taught him, the first of course being to bite. While at CCK9 we worked OB for bites and gunfire. Incidentally, he's made major improvements in that area. He still misses your 3D deer target, too.

Demo Dick