Grips and Nerves - Page 2

BE,
           Absolutely primary, in breeding. A calm full grip, and good nerves. Both
go hand in hand, when building civil drive in your dog, And allowing  the dog to
reach it's genetic potential. Without these two components, you will see alot
more bad biting errors. Regardless of the training you try to put on the dog.
It is like your hunting question, not all dogs can hunt.

Depends on what the animal is doing.

When a lion hunts, its intent is to kill, it is quiet, with no threat display, and grips the animal with the intent of KEEPING the animal. Same with a canid.

When the lion is fighting for territory, or any other reason where it is not trying to kill, but only REPEL the other animal, it will be loud, lots of threat display, and the bites will be fast, shallow and anything but calm.

An animal with good nerves can (outside of training situations) engage in both behaviors.

MOST animals, including lions and canids, are cowards.  Hence, you see so much threat display and behavior.  It is a VERY hard thinig to breed an animal confident enough to take part in defensive behavior with out a threat display.  Such dogs are rare and valuable.

There was some talk about how "old time" schutzhund tests were "tougher" than todays.  Actually, I haven't seen a lot of vids, but most show dogs just grabbing the end of a marshmellow type sleeve,and looking rather stressed.  Haven't seenmuch driving in those old tapes.

Isn't the goal when working dogs to always improve the grip?  Even dogs with great grips can still use work and make them harder.  I agree strong, hard full grips are genetic.  But dogs with lesser genetic grips can be made better by good training.  Dogs can also be ruined by poor training and dogs with very god genetics can be made to have shallow grips as well.

We all will revert to our foundation training under pressure, this goes for people put into stressful situations as well.  The dog needs to be well trained and have an excellent foundation to rely upon and will revert to a conditioned response if the training is good and the stimulus is not completely overwhelming or something never experienced by the dog.  

My dog for example has genetically superior grips, I have mentioned this before about him.  They are full, calm and crushing.  Under stress they become harder and more crushing.  But, even with great genetics I still work on his bitework and am constantly monitoring his grips in training.  If a new decoy is working him I am right there to make sure the training is correct and the presentation is what I want. 

For sport dogs full  and calm grips are very important as the judge can't tell how hard the grip is.  For police dogs hard is critical.  We don't worry as much about full grips, we want hard crushing grips.  It is actually harder for a dog to hold on with a frontal or shallow grip, but it is very painful for the bad guy regardless of how full it is.  I think a frontal grip may hurt more initially than a full bite and possibly do more damage.  

I've seen dogs trained with a forced retrieve but never a forced bite.  Not quite sure how that would work.  I must be missing something?   I think I'd find a new dog before reverting to that.  I have no problem pushing a Police K9 really hard into defense and bringing out some real aggression or "rage", but I have never needed an ecollar to do this.

Jim     

Slamdunk,
                      Some times I see very good application, especially with a finger kicker
and set at low stimulation, to get the dog to focus. This may seem strange,but some
dogs have very poor focus but very high aggression. So you are not really trying to
bring up aggression or punch the dog either, but giving him a guide to fallow. This is
something that is used alot in fine tuning.  Malndobe is giving trade secrets away
bless her heart. May be she will tell us more if she is not stopped by anti e collar
folks. I am of the mind, your dog your choice, as long as it is done correctly and with
out abuse.

Differnet sports, different grips.  Ring dogs have a very difficult time getting a "full" grip on a suit, especially when the decoy is TRYING to steal points away from the dog rather than hold the sleeve out for the dog to grip.  I've personally seen young dogs started in ring that never developed "full" grips, because of the training.

NoCurs,
                  Fr Ring I think gets accused of this the most, Belgium are very much
about full calm grips.  In ring-sport the decoy and the judge are in collusion to
bring out what ever flaw the dog may have. That is  enough to make most people take
the dog home and play Frisbee.  But the full calm grip is what it is. And highly prised
in all 4 sports, schH, Fr ring, Belgium Ring and  Dutch PH work. But alot of people think
that the FR ring is more forgiving. If you say that Malndobe can put dogs up all
day that are Fr Ring with full bites.  The biggest thing is, that the decoy is not standing
or making it easy for the dog to take a good bite. Fr Ring decoys are fast and hard to
catch. But Let me show Udex. This decoy is moving away from the dog and trying to
avert the bite.

Max,
I use an E collar and am very familiar with low level Sim to gain attention or focus.   I have used it in that way in tracking, obedience and directed searches in buildings for example.  I have a fair amount of experience using an ecollar and have used it to raise and lower aggression in bite work training.  I have posted several times on my application and use of the ecollar.  

I had just never heard of a "forced bite."  It has my curiosity.

Jim 

Slamdunk,
                         I have not heard of forced bites either, it sounds like a dog
is saying he does not want to bite, and you are trying to make him.
Malndobe will have to explain.

Another Udex pic

I don't think it was meant as a dog that won't bite, but forcing a dog to stay on the bite full.