| I would certainly say that I agree with the use of both of these techniques for a PP dog, police service dog etc. Teaching a dog to take leg bites is important so that the dog can associate with biting other areas other than the arm when a sleeve is not present (the suit can do the same thing but I will talk more about this further into the post) as the arm may not be present (pulled behind the perp) as well as the dog may have to go past the legs to get to the arm etc. There are many times when a leg bite is necessary in real life. Also a good leg bite can pull the person right off their feet. Leg bites will also allow the dog to learn to fight as it can bite other parts of the body.
Muzzle fighting for me is very important to increase the fight drive of a dog and to test the strength of the dog to do this. Muzzle fighting is were the difference of a good training and an average one is really shown as it is very easy to ruin a good dog here but also were you get a far higher level of fight behavior from the dog when done correctly. Yes I always give a bite after the work to relieve frustration. It is the use of frustration (and other behaviors) in this work that lifts the intensity so far. For this reason also a trainer that isusing Muzzle must be very careful to not over load a dog and send it over the edge and into avoidance. We must never forget the avoidance is brought on by too much stimulation to the dog. The threshold to this stimulus is lowered when a muzzle is present. There is so much more to this work then putting a muzzle on a dog and letting it go.
As for the bite suit if used too often then it is exactly the same as using a sleeve as the dog recognises it as equipment and will go into drive as soon as it is present. It can be used as a proofing device if used correctly for a time but sooner or later the dog learns what it is and thus it looses the realistic aspect of it. Slipping the suit only makes this worse as the dog soon learns that suit and person are not the same same as they do with the sleeve. For this reason we test our dogs in many different equipment. Using an undercover sleeve with no other equpiment on (no scratch pant ect for the dog to recognise) with a person that the dog does not recognise in a situation the dog is not used too can test many dogs. We recently worked Kyle in a hall with very slippery flors, using the undercover sleeve (for the first time with him) and someone he did not know at all (who was 6'4"). Whilst he still came through we saw a bit if weakness and therefore an area that we had to work on. By this I do not mean we did more undercover sleeve work but worked him in other areas to improve the resonse next time. I do not mean to imply that he did really bad or anything just that it highlighted were work had to be done.
Mick.  |