I always start my dogs on a sleeve (when they get to that point)....They get nice an confident on a sleeve before I move them to either a shoulder sleeve or a leg sleeve...from there, they progress to a suit.
When they are on the sleeve, they work in progression from a softer sleeve with a bite bar all the way up to a hard barrel sleeve...When the dog can compress a hard barrel sleeve they can move to suit material for leg or shoulder bites (and I start with shoulder and leg sleeves so that I can slip for the dog when they are first learning these targets)...
It's been my experience that putting the dog on the barrel sleeve creates that confident, hard and full bite that you want in sport...
It's also my opinion that any time I teach something new, I put my dogs back on a sleeve (even if they are mostly suit dogs)...so, whenever I teach the out, for example, I put them back on a backtie and a sleeve - even if they've been on the suit for a while.
Our dogs, even our high-level (i.e., Cy, Asja, and Jue) work just as well on a sleeve as they do a suit...everything they ever learned was on a sleeve so it's easy for them to go back and do it, then they're used to doing a suit...I mean, PSA uses a suit...so that's what they mostly do...but I know both Greg and I plan on trying to get our SchA on both Cy and Asja...and we could probably do it with very little training on the sleeve...
Leslie H wrote:Xanny was started on a sleeve, and later had to learn the suit. She was never as confident on the suit as the sleeve. It was a challenge for her to learn to turn her head for a leh bite. Also, there's less thinking with a sleeve, they know where exactly to grip, no decision making process.
If I was to start another dog, I'd start them on a suit (legs).
How was the decoy presenting the leg to her...I've seen quite a few dogs have a hard time learning this if the leg isn't presented the right way at first...if the leg is presented straight, the dog just can't learn to turn it's head if it's never done it before...it actually almost needs to be presented at an angle...
Also, as far as never being as confident on the suit as on a sleeve, that may have been an entirely different issue...