I haven’t put anything up in a while due to being out of town. The good news is my dog didn’t forget everything he learned while I was gone. We’ve had a couple training sessions since I got back, continuing with adding more distractions into the obedience routine- such as another dog being trained nearby and a passive decoy out on the field at times- and are still working bite development as well bicep targeting. King’s bites continue to get fuller, which is important since grip is scored in PSA and since he had little to no bitework for a portion of his life.

A couple significant things happened last week in regards to bitework. During King’s bitework, our decoy/trainer Greg accidentally tripped over him and he still managed to hang on to the sleeve (which was still on Greg’s arm).  That was significant in that it was unintentionally driving the dog pretty hard, and it didn’t faze him off the bite.

The other thing that happened is I got on the other side of things and put a bite suit on, finally starting to learn the basic mechanics of catching a dog and being a decoy.

I worked one dog last week and two dogs this week, all just short distance sends and one escape bite which managed to knock me down as I expected it would. It was a lot of fun and something I’d been interested in for a while, and something I will continue to work on. As you might expect, having a heavy suit on is already changing how you move, even just when walking, and add a 70lb. animal onto your arm and it’s unlike anything else.

Unfortunately we didn’t get any good video of my first day at this, but I will hopefully have some in the future.