Sport to LE? Who's done this? - Page 4

Koots to the post starting: Jesse - every knowledgeable tester/trainer has their own methodology to test potential dogs..."
you are telling storry fo dog being transferred from sleeve to man. i have done this "million" of " times" But the problem is that no matter how much you re-train such dog the dog under a certain level of stress will go back to hs original default and direct his attention toward the sleeve. That is the baggage I am talking about and I can show it to you in just about all dogs trained from sleeve to man.

Valk- Good read from you on top of page 3.
The predisposition can be seen almost right away when pup is still only a few weeks old. The roughness of a little biting puppy is nothing to sneeze at! LOL... Be sure to use thick leather workman’s gloves. I let my pups bite my hands to teach them the limit of how hard they are allowed to bite. Even as adults, I let them mouth my hands, they know the limits.
I have occasionally wondered if by teaching the soft mouth, I‘m actually limiting or capping defense biting down the road.

Koots- Very good story, appreciate it. Yes, that does show a possible scenario of testing and evaluating a green dog.

Prager- I realized after I asked that million dollar question that some of you may not want to answer directly or in detail....as it is each vendors „secret sauce“ as to how they test and evaluate. Thanks for your hints...I think I can picture it. Yes, we should not go into too much detail here.

Koots:"What do you say about the helper/decoy who goes after/threatens the dog, AWAY FROM THE SLEEVE, after the sleeve is on the ground? And the dog that comes after THE MAN, disregarding the sleeve altogether?"

Prager Hans : I say this. Channeling from prey to defense is ultimately all about the prey. Really it is all about prey drive where prey has many subsections and one of them is a defense of the booty/prey object.
IfI understand your question correctly then you are wondering if the dog who is lured away from the sleeve is still concerned with the sleeve that is since he is not targetting the man.
The answer is resolute yes. Think about it what is the cause of the channeling from prey to defense( from sleeve to the decoy who is trying to steal the booty)? The reason is the protection of the resource. As far as the dog is concerned in thsi setup he is trained to see the decoy as a threat to his resources. Nothng is changed in the dog's mind if the booty is here there or nowhere. More advanced the training is less important is the actual presence of the actual booty. Nothing changed. The dog hears the alert-attack command and s/he immediate thinks and is conditioned that there is a person who is after his resources. Real ones present, or potential - the ones which are not realized yet. But this training of channeling is all about the resources and guarding thereof.
In nature this is an instinct and drive and with channelling, we are tapping into these instincts an drives and are teaching the dog to kick into such instincts and drives on command.
The problem as we can see in the Albuquerque video is when the stress is to high and not worth fighting the person who is threatening the resources because the resources are right here on the ground. Such adequately stressed dog will redirect to the convenient booty. And why not? Such an instinct or drive is impossible to overcome if adequate negative stress is present. Why to go fight for the food there when the food is right here. While the decoy may put additional negative pressure on the dog if he erroneously redirects on the sleeve on the ground ( booty) and that is how such situation is handled, to the dog this fight is all about the booty regardless and that is the main baggage I am talking about. Think about it. It is fake training because while I want the dog to protect me he in his mind is protecting a booty - real or potential. That to me does not sound as sound training.
NOW IMO THIS IS IMPORTANT
That is why in my training the aggression is not generated by protecting of the resource, but it is a matter of aggression against a man who threatens the welfare of the dog, the pack and his territory and so on.
The second part of this CIVIL training is that the training is not about the booty on the ground BUT the man is the booty.
My point of all this is to make the dog understand that this is all about the targeting of the man and it does not have much if anything to do with booty which needs to be protected.

Hans
When a dog is stressed, they always revert back to their genetics. A dog with shallow grips can be trained to bite full, but put a decent amount of pressure, and he will revert. My previous dog that I did sport with, didn't care. Started all in prey, and didn't alter a thing. Hide the sleeve behind your back and he'd choose where he was going to bite. He preferred the privates. Got a few helpers that didn't respect this, and all of them, well known police trainers/handlers. Dog was what he was. Sport was never going to change him.

I'm actually surprised by your take. I would think that a guy that has been around working dogs as long as you have, would know that you can't remove genetics through training. That's a newbie dream.
When I first got into dogs it was at a little dog training place. Probably had a method close to your top secret method. We would hook the dog up to a pole or the wall. The "bad guy" agitate the hell out of the dog, flank him, hit him with a bamboo stick, etc. There was a GSD in there that exclusively trained there from the beginning. Most equipment oriented dog I've ever seen. And as you know, some dogs see the sleeve as the safest place to be.

Hans
I'm glad you said this:

"That is why in my training the aggression is not generated by protecting of the resource, but it is a matter of aggression against a man who threatens the welfare of the dog, the pack and his territory and so on. "

wow, I read so much bullshit now, dont know where to begin

1 if a dog has this equipment fixation problem,maybe it is not fit to be in LE to begin with, and that is NOT a previous training problem, but a drive/balance problem

comes in handy when one sells a dog that fails, and blame previous training/trainer for that, but in fact the dog is not up for the job

2  I call "channeling from prey to defence " BS, a dog is capable to switch, or its not, all tricks and tunes inbetween are making up for dogs that are NOT ideal prospects

 calling defense a form of prey is BS all together

3 how to test a dog is no secret, I take about 10 minutes or less to determine suitability, after that you need to work a dog to see if there are any flows, problems such as stairs,ceramic floors engines etc, but the general test for suitability is pretty short, I evaluated about 80 dogs last weekend and spend more time driving than testing

4 main problem of today, training gets smarter, dogs get weaker, as many problems are "fixed "in training these days, where they should be fixed in the whelpingbox

5 protecting prey is NOT the same as civil agression as in responding to a treath, multiple types of agression, as there are multiple forms of prey/hunt

Hans - I asked about the dog re-directing onto the MAN, disregarding the sleeve on the ground. Whether the sleeve is within 6 feet or 60 feet, a dog that looks at the man as a challenge and possible threat, and takes up that challenge, is not just 'resource guarding'. There are dogs that really couldn't care if they were presented with a sleeve, suit or muzzle.....all those things are secondary to, and in the way of, getting the man. It's a matter of the dog being conditioned to bite the sleeve, suit, etc. while in training so that training can be done safely by the decoy. When presented with such dog (s), the tester/assessor must be able to read the dog and see what the dog has genetically in response to the decoy work.

Take my present dog, as an example. He has good prey and defence, with leaning toward defence/social aggression. After my 'sport' training foundation in bite, grip and targeting since he was a pup, the first time he was confronted with the helper he wanted to go after the man (there was no bite, just a run-away by helper). The next time he saw the helper, helper was wearing a sleeve. Even though my dog was 'conditioned' to bite the tug, he wanted the helper, not the sleeve. He was conditioned to the tug/sleeve so that he would not bite the man and could be worked safely in sport scenarios. His GENETIC drives made him want the man, and no matter how much 'equipment' training we do with him, he will still target the man in the absence of visible equipment.

If all those 'sportism' dogs that are now working the streets reverted back to their sleeve training, don't you think there would be a huge crisis in the K9 units?

Koots, criminals in the Streets are not offering choice to dogs, dont have sleeve or whip, so if dog fails to engage, which happens quite a lot actually, its about the dog, not about the previous training,, multiple videos out there of suspects wearing only shorts confusing the dogs, that are clearly looking for prey/trigger

any training/shaping in that work of non genetic suitable dogs is setting your dog up for faillure when it comes in untrained situation, than what, blame sportism ?

secondly, the percentage of dogs actually having large foundation in IPO that transfer to LE is low, IPO trainers wash out their faillures real quick these days, and most LE material from europe doesnot come from IPO field or breeding 

Duke - I have said from the start of the thread, that it is about the genetics of the dog ('abilities and character' are the words I actually used), rather than the previous training. But that is what's being debated.   

I admit it's been a long while since I volunteered as decoy with the police, so I am sure that sources for propective LE dogs have changed.    It takes an 'eye' for the dog and the ability to read it accurately that make trainers like Gustav and yourself a valuable resource in the selection of potential K9 candidates.

Duke1965 you know what is damaging to your arguments? It is you calling other peoples opinions who you do not agree with nor completely understand, BS. As soon as you say that I am stopping to read.
The most damaging to today training are people who feel threatened by other ideas and approaches because they were doing something for x tens of years. They do so because they somehow feel that if they would admit into their program something new that that would mean that they have done it wrong all along before. This is a way of a insecurity. However, to me nobody is perfect and one must learn ALL THE TIME, think critically with open mind and consider other ways.To do something for a long time is not necessarily a virtue nor sign of the quality of the training which one does. Doing something wrong of decades is not a virtue which some use as an argument for the quality of their training. To get stuck on what one does for decades is not necessarily beneficial.