Long Bite Opinion - Page 1

Something I had to manage with my dog during his IPO career, thought I'd throw it up here for possible discussion.

For the long bite, you have a dog who naturally goes for the center mass of the helper. Doesn't matter if he's steered right or left, he defaults to center mass, often forcing the helper to draw the sleeve inward and spin himself to the side out of the way.

1) Do you find this a fault?

2) What methods would you employ to train it out of him?

I have had dogs like this before and you don't really change the way they come in to bite but what I did was to teach the dog to commit earlier...This gives the "Helper" time to adjust and absorb the impact...

~Bob~

How did you teach the dog to commit?

My guess the launching point is further from the decoy causing a longer time of flight giving decoy time to adjust.

Depending on how much time you have and how much work you want to put into it, you can try sending the dog towards a wedge held out away from the helper’s body. If the dog is already very focused on the helper, back tie the dog and kick it back into prey and get the dog to focus heavily on the wedge by throwing it around and making misses. Send the dog from a short distance at first and gradually increase the distance as long as the helper sees the dog is clearly targeting the wedge. Make sure the wedge is always on the same side (sleeve or stick). You’ll basically go backwards and teach it the same way as you did before by slowly increasing the distance until it’s a full field long bite and the dog is clearly targeting the equipment.

If the dog at speed has four feet off the ground in a launch commitment is a no brainer.

I have found it easy to catch a dog coming center mass. I dont think it can be changed. I think your best to catch the dog by dropping your right leg back and letting the dog follow through with the stick side. Im training a couple GSD's now that come straight ahead and this method has worked for me so far. Hope this helps.

You can change it using a half sleeve. I moved my mal off center to the elbow side a bit. Just because its safer.

No decoy but I thought decoys create a tunnel and let the dog maintain a straight line of flight no matter where they target??

A dog can't change direction while in mid air but the decoy can change his body location.

We did work with the half sleeve off to the side in an attempt to lead him towards the elbow but it was never 100% proof with him and he came so hard and fast we couldn't risk something that wasn't proofed. This dog was never strong in prey, he was always more defensive, so trying to put his attention on equipment was against his natural tendencies.

Raykarli has the solution we ended up utilizing with him, which was to work with his center mass targeting and to follow through the catch towards the stick hand.

When I say the half sleeve off to the side didn't work for my dog, I don't mean to shut down the conversation. My purpose in putting this topic up was to discuss the different "tools in the tool box" to work with in a scenario like mine.

Haz you said you were able to move your Mal off center to the elbow with the half sleeve method, I know how fast Mals can come, did you feel like you needed to proof the shift? Or how in the training did you get to the point where you were comfortable the transfer had taken hold?