Want to learn about K9 obedience, police dog training, learning theory and more? Jerry Bradshaw has been a sports competitor and police dog trainer for 25 years, and as the executive director of the Protection Sports Association he's been around the world competing and training K9s. Welcome to the Controlled Aggression podcast.
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Moving through the phases of behavior acquisition for maximum training potential and skill retention and generalization.
Developing Mark, Move, and Reward as your protocol.
Using markers, such as try-again markers, to teach your dog variations of learned behaviors.
Making place a valuable and a safe place to be for your canine.
Using the place command to train perimeter neutrality.
Key Takeaways:
Dogs say “no” all the time - we have to have a way to make them want to go to a place and compel them to go to a place when we’re developing this command.
Depending on your dog, the place command can be used in different ways and with different rewarding protocols to improve the utility of the command.
Place allows us to work the dog away from us.
Don’t be married to only training one way. As you train more dogs, you will learn that different dogs train better in different ways. You, as a handler, will also evolve in your training.
This is the boring side of great training. Sometimes the greatest training starts with training the place command and neutrality.
Make use of your downtime and dead time. Work on neutrality and train that using place commands instead of just doom scrolling.
"This is a really simple behavior that's really hard to mess up, and it allows the handlers to get tons and tons of practice at using marker systems, at using both direct and indirect rewarding protocols. If there are mistakes, there's much going to be much less fallout than if we were in the context of detection or article indication or anything like that." — Jerry Bradshaw
Problem Solving: Countering, Grip, Outs, and Neutrality
Season 1 · Episode 137
Friday, June 28, 2024 • Duration 01:20:38
In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:
More content you can get on the Controlled Aggression Patreon or in the Street Readiness Seminars to to help you problem solve with your dog.
Luring and trading in training to build skills.
Staying in control and not allowing your dog to self-reward.
Leveraging every interaction with your dog.
Key Takeaways:
If you’re having troubles with countering - consider training outs. It may be that your dog doesn’t want to open their mouth once they get a bite.
Don’t get too stuck in your quadrants - sometimes you have to use different aspects of negative and positive reward and punishment combined to get the behavior you’re looking for.
Start training outs with mechanical outs. Leashes and lines are a great place to start - you don’t need to jump right in with ecollars.
You need to be able to have handler presence for both punishments and rewards. Make sure you are the one controlling your dogs eyes.
"Use the piece of equipment that’s going to get you the best results…When thinking about which tool to use, the property way to look at it is to experiment. Try one and see how it goes, then try the other and see if it is any better." — Jerry Bradshaw
Identifying early signs of avoidance in your defensive dog.
Tips for working the dog in defense properly.
Key Takeaways:
Once the dog’s foundation work is where you want it, then you can start adding in skills. Don’t rush the foundation work.
All drives have intensity. The intensity will be completely dependent on your experience. Working with and seeing more dogs will give you a better understanding of what is high, medium, and low.
The avoidance threshold does not come out of nowhere. You want to watch carefully for where the defense is breaking down into avoidance.
The younger the dog, the touchier the training will be. The thinner the margin between defense and avoidance, the more difficult it is to train the dog.
"You’d be surprised by what you can get out of defensive dogs when you really understand how to work them." — Jerry Bradshaw
Today, Jerry answers your burning questions about the available police and civilian dogs and their training at Tarheel Canine. Tarheel provides trained, duel purpose, explosive, and narcotics dogs of various breeds. They also provide green dogs ready to be trained by your officers. Jerry also explains the different options for handler courses, selecting dogs, your personalized experiences, and the guarantees at Tarheel Canine.
Mistakes made that lead to suppression, avoidance behavior, anxiety, or hesitancy in your canine.
Building thoughtful release behavior into the pressure.
Training your dog how to sit when in drive.
Rewarding the capping with something expressive, even if not a bite.
Tips for training drive capping properly.
Key Takeaways:
Excitement, expressiveness, and forward movement aren’t wrong. But you want the dog to learn how to hold that excitement in until released, not turn it off.
Suppression happens when you do not allow the release at the end of the wait.
You want to help the dog learn to find the advantage both in the quiet behavior and in the alert or expressive behavior.
You want to balance the capping and the expression. The dog needs to understand his advantage at every stage of the drive, including when capped.
When you’re learning capping skills, having a really good decoy who understands capping, who can read the dog, and understands every aspect of the situation is invaluable.
"It is so important to have your dog in the right frame of mind when they go into a building search or an area search when their job is going to be to make an apprehension. And we want to make sure we preserve that state of mind in the process of getting the correctness and the quality of the behaviors that we want." — Jerry Bradshaw
The positive impact PSA and American Schutzhund have had on pet training.
Creativity and innovation in training your dog.
The objective standards of canine sports to create better dogs of all ages.
Getting involved in the culture of canine sport.
How sport can change the way you think about dogs.
Key Takeaways:
Being part of a canine sport club will allow you to have conversations with other dog owners who are also training their dogs and can make training your pet feel less isolating.
It is the application of ideas that matters. You want to be a trainer that can do, not just talk about doing.
Behind the rules and standards of evaluation, canine sport shows the breeding of the dogs who participate and compete.
The tighter the training, both in pet training and in sport, the better it will be over the long term. The looser the training, the looser it will get over time.
"Part of the culture is you get a sense of place where you have belonging, you’ve got some safety, there’s some humility that has to be shown, you get to share success - nobody does this alone." — Jerry Bradshaw
Bringing out the traits in your dog that are (or are not) genetically in them already.
The difference between countering, pushing/pulling, and pulsing bite grips.
Working with the dog and not creating an unstable grip through overwork.
Actively teaching your dog when and how to counter, and how and when to fight out of a pressure trap using the different grips.
Key Takeaways:
Countering happens when dogs do not get the ideal strike and an ideal grip in the initial bite. You want the dog to be biting all the way back to their molars whenever possible (which can be difficult when the dog is coming in full speed on a decoy).
Biting with the back teeth allows for more leverage power in the jaw which can help with pain compliance even through layers of clothing on a pushing grip in a police dog situation.
The decoy and trainer both need to understand what you trying to get out of each training session with dogs at all stages of development. Training with a puppy is very different from training with an older, veteran dog.
A lot of decoys and trainers are neglecting to teach the dog to counter off of the transition.
"Countering is a very important technique in training a protection dog, but we may go too far in focusing only on that." — Jerry Bradshaw
Teaching your dog lessons through action, feedback, and prevention.
Understanding the queues that you are creating in your dog.
Planning your training sessions in advance and understanding the variables.
Preparing with the correct equipment and rewards for the training session you are heading into.
The importance of evaluating your training sessions, and getting a second pair of eyes on the training and evaluation when possible.
Key Takeaways:
Your training session begins as soon as the dog comes out of the kennel, both what is and is not happening matter from that moment on.
You should have reasons for doing everything that you are doing in training. You do not want to create associations with equipment or locations
Know the sub-skills that you want to work and the variables inherent in those when you are planning what skills and subskills you are planning on training in each session. Do the research if needed to understand how to support that training and make it better.
You must know what you are doing before you even put your hands on the dog. There is a lot happening and if you don't have a plan things will get chaotic and not go how you want them to go.
"I plan out before I work my dog exactly what I'm going to work on before the session starts so I know what I want to do on the field. Setting up for success is about figuring out what you're going to do before you go and try to do it instead of just going out and doing what other people are doing and mimicking them." — Jerry Bradshaw
The secrets to success in both the training field and trial field.
Why consistency matters.
Benefits of having an engagement ritual and how it can help provide a reset for your canine.
Variable reward systems and proper reward frequencies.
Advocating for your dog and understanding what is supposed to happen on trial day.
Key Takeaways:
You want to have rituals for both you and your dog. If you do it correctly, the trial day is just another training day.
Don’t underestimate the importance of building your dog’s bathroom habits into your rituals. You don’t want them to be relieving themselves on the practice or trail fields.
If your training is going well, you should be getting away from micromanaging their behavior. They need to be able to function without a lot of feedback during trial.
You need to know your dog. Each dog will have a different strategy for parking, getting out of the car, coming on and off the field, etc.
Practice what you will do during the critique. Practice your transitions between exercises. There is more to trial than just the trained activity.
"It is what we develop in training that becomes a habit for trialing." — Jerry Bradshaw
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