Sport to LE? Who's done this? - Page 8

Susie, exelent post on page 5

@ hans, LOL, I knew you would debate if rocks would sink, kind of shows my point

Valk, that is the point im making and goes for both sport and police, training gets smarter, dogs get weaker, no problem if dog/training fails in sport, only points lost, but if training/dog fail in LE there can be more lost than points alone, and yes, these smart trained dogs, do fail on the street and than you cannot call "sportism"and say its because the dog was biting a sleeve for sometime, 

if a dog fails to engage it is about bad genetics, or even bad current training, but never because of sport training in previous life, 

that is also why suitability of dog can be tested in short time and doesnot have any secret sauce to it, dog is suitable, or is not

finally dog that is civil because of, or in preydrive is BS, 

Koots @3rd post above. I have explained whach you are asking about in great detail in former posts. PLEASE read my post before you ask these questions.
but here is your answer.
here is my history of my training evolvement.
1/ at first I have used channeling as it is described by Gerard Bradshaw in the book Controlled aggression. But this training leaves us with equipment orientation as a default. baggage.
originally when I was truing to get rid of this baggage, I was as stupid and same as today trainers I was trying to cover the default which in this case is an orientation of the dog on the sleeve, the best I could. That is usually done by super agitation which commenced instantly when the dog showed any interest in the equipment. All this does is that the dog's stress tolerance threshold is heightened and such dog will show interest only at a higher level of stress,... but shows it nevertheless.
But soon I realized that such coverup "blanket" over sleeve happiness is useless because it can be penetrated by adequate stress and dog when adequately stressed goes back to what he learned originally. Which I call default. The default is a matter of survival and it is what the dog learns in a specific situation the first time he encounters it. Such default knowledge is then what he does the best, likes the most ant reverts to under stress. (The ultimate default is genetic makeup but we can not do much about changing that so we are talking here about default based on training. ) Default per se is not good or bad. The default can be baggage or virtue. Since default can be a virtue I decided that best is to >>>>
2/ establish default where the dog from the get-go targets the man. Then the default is the man and if the dog gets stressed then he does not reverts to baggage( equipment biting mode) but does what he learned first - fights the man.
3/unfortunatelly most dogs are sport started when they arrive here for resale to LE. That means that such dog has a default targeting on fabric. As described in point 1/ covering the problem is not good enough because the baggage ( undesirable default) is lurking under that cover and that cover can be penetrated by the strong enough negative stress of any kind( even by stress not related to the bitework per se. It could be stress caused by strong noise, gunfire, train, helicopter, rickety bridge, severe weather.....)
So for sport dogs who need to be retrained to be PP ot LE I have developed a system which I call parallel dog training. Which basically means that when the dog is sport dog I will start training him protection as if he would not have any training what so ever and would be totally green. In other words, I ignore his sport background. This to sport parallel training is what I have described in 2/ meaning I teach the dog to target the man without ANY EQUIPMENT PRESENT. There are special techniques to do that and not to endanger the decoy and I have touched on this in previous posts so go there and do not ask me again.

Susie, @ page 5 ...... your posts are clear as daylight, and make ultimate sense. Very well explained and truthful.

It’s funny, because I picked up from yesterday on page 5 and I immediately said to myself that Susie your post on page 5 is right onpoint. But alas, I saw I had three more pages of posts to read....and lo and behold I see that Duke and Joan saw the same things I saw that he ( Susie) wrote as pretty much onpoint.
Good post, Susie.
We all have our opinions, many are based on what we heard or saw, some on what we have done, and some on what we would like it to be.
Having worked with hundreds of successful LE dogs over the years, I know how they got there( and from different foundation work), and if the genetics are there and the training good, the dog usually works out unless the handler is inept.

Dogs always know if there is equipment involved, such as a hidden sleeve, due to their sense of smell. While some will argue that a suit is simply a giant sleeve, and to some extent I think that is true, I also believe that people who train with the big Michelin Man type suits are doing the dogs a disservice. Dogs should be trained on a competition suit so they can feel the muscle movement of the decoy and get more of a sense that the suit is an extension of the decoy and not a large sleeve/toy. I think it is more detrimental to train LE dogs on big, puffy suits than to not start them off by focusing on the man wearing no equipment.

Koots, your guess is as good as mine.  He never had any sensitivity issues  Solid as a rock and never got his feelings hurt.  In my schutzhund days we would sometime clear the feet with the stick if a dog like to grapple or push off too much on the bite.  It just helped with the out exercise later on.  I don’t recall him retracing his feet while he played the bite and return game.  It was just odd to see it.  Some dogs pushed and drove on the street bite, one always tried to maneuver so he could see the perps face.  Never worked with a bunny hopper or grab-n-drag.

Here is a link to a video of Andor playing the game.  You can see how he was with his front legs.  I should warn the viewer, there’s a short car chase scene at the beginning.  I have no idea how to edit it out.  My windows at one time had something called moviemaker, but I cant find it on this new one.  It’s nothing like needing a viewer discretion warning,   unless its for my voice.lol  I don’t always sound so weird when I speak.  The man riding and filming is a Frenchman who has flown over for the week.  He didn’t speak or understand good English so I tried to talk plainly, as if it helped.lol Anyway, working dogs is pretty universal even with a language barrier.   He has only been in the vehicle a short time when a couple units get involved in a pursuit and I am trying to catch up to it.  The perp crashes before we get there and stays in the car.  I only hear Andor barking so I know he’s already been with me for a few months.  The dog he replaced kept working until Andor was ready to be out on his own. 

You can skip to the back to watch the bitework.  It’s the only footage I have of him and had forgotten all about it till one of my grandkids located it on an old laptop.  We are in a parking deck at first, that’s why the sound is weird.  The last two guys are new officer taking their first bite.  Andor was very safe while playing his game.  As a side note, as if there’s not enough already, the last guy to give the bite was named Canon.  I never heard that as a first name, unless you include the detective show I watched back in the 70s.  Years later Canon drowned while swimming out to an island to spend time with friends.  He was a nice guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2oPMuS09SI

Emoryg,

I really enjoyed the footage of Andor - looked like a dog having a blast and could excel in both sports and real life. To me personally he is my vision of what a GSD should be. Checked all the boxes for me

@ tuckng front feet during fight....it is instinct to protect vulnerable legs...if the front leg is bitten during the fight, in nature, it can mean the death of the dog/ wolf because lamness means the dog can't keep up with pack, nor catch food to eat.

Years ago, my smooth Fox terrier male, during a fight with a six foot snake, tucked his front legs under his chest and keep them under him close to the ground under his chest, all the while holding and shaking the huge snake till the dog was near exhaustion. But in the end he was victorious. He was a snake killing machine...copper heads didn't stand a chance fighting him. I saw him do this same maneuver during fights with his brother.

Another dog I had in the seventies, an Australian Shepherd/ husky cross had abig fight with a gsd half again his size. Fighting over a stray bitch in heat..my dog tucked his front feet during the fight. He broke an upper k9 in the gsds neck, and kicked his ass. My dog had no injuries but the gsd had a gaping wound on his neck, and took off like a scalded cat.

I would take that dog hog hunting and saw him with his front legs tucked under him while he was holding a wild hog he caught, the hog squealing and kicking, and my dog holding on with his legs under his chest in the swampy muck!

 

In a real fight, Tucking the front legs is instinctive and protects the very survivability of the dog.

I can see the leg tucking as instinctual and a survival mechanism, but some dogs also use their legs to fight and possess the man, such as wrapping their legs around the person to an extent. This can be imprinted at an early age in pups that display the behavior by reinforcing the pup to wrap his feet around a prey object. I think it is more common in dogs with very high prey drive and is part of possessing the prey, which could also be a survival mechanism.

I located a picture of the guy who was doing the ATM robberies that got bit in the arm.  The story goes, this guy has been doing this for weeks.  People come to the bank at night to use the ATM, he walks up with his gun and takes their money.  The crime analysts use computer algorithms to predict where he may hit next.  One model throws out a high probability at this bank between theses dates and times.  Police sit on this bank and wait.  Behind them in a woodline is a sniper and his spotter.  Sure enough, that night he tries to pull one.  When the police challenge the guy, he runs, spins and starts to point his weapon.  POW!  The sniper who is watching things unfold has squeezed the trigger.  Now 170 grains of lead, traveling close to 2800 feet per second screams across the parking lot for its intended target.  It misses, or so they thinks.  Perp runs off and they contact my agency to assist with finding him. 

I get briefed on the scene and minutes later Andor snorts down a track.  I feed him the entire 30 feet of leather and away we go.  I have a police officer running backup with me.  50 feet into a field we come to a silt screen.  Andor jumps over, spins back around and does a belly flop with his nose pointing to a silver revolver. Good boy, lets go.  We track across the field entering into a shopping center.  He works over the parking lot to a closed down grocery store, tracks down the side of the building and can I see cash blown about.   Andor crosses a road and then heads for a woodline.  Oh yeah!  We enter the woods and start picking up speed.  No more than 100 yards in Andor slams on the breaks.  He has come to a ravine and I can see marks where someone has climbed up the other side.  We’re looking good so far.   Andor may be able to get some speed and land on the other side, but I would be pulling the Evel Kinevel Grand Canyon reenactment.  I lift up on the tracking line till he’s light on his feet, sweep them and push him over the edge and start lowering him down.  I graceful start my decent which quickly turns into an uncontrolled plunge.  Help Andor up the otherside, crawl my way up and back on the track we go.  After a few hundred yards we exit the woods and come to a field.  Its looked like a bunch of old baseball fields that were neglected for years.  Across those we go and head towards another woodline.  The little dog starts gaining speed and now hard into his harness.  As we approach the woodline I can see we’re headed for taller brush.  He’s now nose up and on the hunt.  Seconds later he goes ballistic and I can now make out the suspect.  I hold Andor short of the bite and me and the backup officers (there are two now, no idea when we picked him up) start angling to the tree line for cover. 

The suspect is on his back.  Didnt see that very often, mostly belly.  He gets the commands to show hands and at first they come up, then quickly come back down.  I release the trackng line and Andor flies into the guy.  As he comes past the legs, the perp shields himself with Andor taking a bite on his left arm, just below the deltoid and coming up from the tricept (bottom of the arm armpit area).  The guy yells and immediately turns on his left side and uses his right hand to grab the muzzle and snout of the dog.  This is pretty much a reflexive action on the hard bite and seen on most occassions.  Andor is settled in along side of the perps upper torso and has dropped his chest to the ground.  Rearend is still up in the air and he has the characteritic happy, scorpion tail.  The perp starts trying to pull his arm out of Andors mouth while he attemps to pry open the jaws with the other hand.  He can get so far, then Andor counters deeper.  Perp yells, tail wags more.  He does this a couple time until finally he starts yelling he was done.  The entire time Im giving the 'stop resisting', 'don’t fight the dog' commands.  I don’t think its as much me telling them to stop as it is they figure out they're making it worse.  Fighting a good police dog only puts you in their wheelhouse.  I call Andor back to heel, just like in the bite game, but as soon as he gets back to me I grab his harness.  His part is done. 

When looking at the picture you will see a small puncture hole mid-bicep.  That’s not from Andor, though I have to argue with some officers because they believe its from the dog bite.  I have to explain over and over the dog cant puncture because the way he bites down with the back of his jaws.  Its not until an old detective I once worked with comes up looks at the other side of the arm.  He pulls the perps shirt back and you can see a slice across the guys chest.  That puncture is a bullet entrance wound where the perp had raised his arm arm and started to point his gun.  The slice in the chest is after it left the arm, the bullet cut him as it grazed his chest.  He was that close to dropping on the spot.  If you look proximal to the entrance wound, distal to the deltoid, you can actually see the pry marks from Andor’s canines as the perp is trying to free his arm out while at the same time trying to pry the jaws open.  Each time the dog feels the perp lessen the prying motion, he counters for a better grip.  And with each counter, that little scorpion tail wags faster and faster.  K-9 Biteology 101.

Please, if anyone considers this picture inappropriate let me know and I will cancel the link and not post anymore of the actual street bites.  I can try to describe things all day and story tell till Im blue in the face, but often a visual aid will go a long way.  Feel free to PM if you want it off.  I’m not here to offend anyone and I know some may not care to see some guys injuries, I’m just trying to give a glimpse of the police dogs I had the fortune of working with. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckfrd71ect6ugts/armedrobber1.JPG?dl=0