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Memories are forever

09 Monday Jun 2025

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For those of you who stumbled upon and read this blog during my peak dog training years, thank you for taking the time to read the content. Life was different and I had much more time to dedicate to training. The end product was reflected in King Man’s ability on and off the training and competition fields.

King Man crossed the rainbow bridge toward the end of last year. He was well into his fifteenth year and had a good life, I like to think a much better life than he would have had if I had not been able to take him home that spontaneous Friday afternoon in DC rush hour.

King welcomed my wife and her own dog into my house, my stepdaughter, and later on my own daughter and son. Other than a couple of light dust-ups when toddlers were working on their walking and didn’t realize he was underfoot, they got along great. He would curl up at their feet, they’d get in the oversized dog bed with him, and so on. He and his buddy Phil were also great at cleaning up the floor for us after meals.

I am still in the DC area, though I moved a couple of years ago. With starting a new business, my dog training is currently on hold. At some point I may start selling off some of my equipment. The sleeves, wedges, and tugs have sat idle for a good while now, though they all bring back fond memories of days on the training field, no matter the weather.

I am dedicating my time to a professional handyman business and can be reached via my site at www.sleekhomeservices.com. If you are looking for professional home repair or handyman services in Northern Virginia and DC, I would be happy to speak with you about your projects. Areas served include Arlington, McLean, Falls Church, Fairfax, Alexandria, and other areas.

I still have some contacts in the dog training industry and have not yet forgotten everything I learned including in regards to marker training, bite development, and focused heeling- talking about it makes me miss it.

Keep calm and bite on, and, most importantly, relish the moments with your furry best friends.

Moving targets

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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A long overdue update, but much to discuss. Over the last couple of months, one of the biggest changes is we’ve decided to see how my dog does biting legs instead of the bicep, a.k.a. a leg dog. So far, it seems to be going well. From a functional standpoint, a leg dog makes a lot of sense. To start, there’s less chance of a dog missing a target- it’s harder for a decoy to move a leg as quickly and far than an arm. In PSA, the decoys don’t “esquive,” or escape incoming dogs, but in other sports they do. In addition, the dog itself is obviously able to change direction more quickly since he has four feet on the floor instead of being up in the air. Lastly, certain dogs can generate more power from having all their feet on the ground, much like a boxer’s punch originates all the way down at the ground and carries all the way up to his/her fist. Since my dog’s probably not going to ever win a medal for being a hard biter, at least he can affect a decoy’s mobility.

The other big news is my bite suit arrived. It took about two months, which was faster than expected. The type of suit I ordered is made to measure overseas, so there’s the actual manufacturing process plus shipping, customs, etc., to the US. I went with a Seynaeve suit that I ordered through http://www.ringsuits.com, and couldn’t have been happier with the service and help that Thad Peterson provided. He had lots of good suggestions, and is able to order “hybrid” suits like mine, which has a competition (lightest weight) body with semi-training (mid-weight) arms, plus extra cuffs on the bicep which are geared toward PSA. That way, I get some extra padding on the highest wear area, and once the cuffs are worn through, they can be removed and replaced, theoretically giving extra life to the jacket. IMG_0685IMG_0696

It’s going to take a while to break in the suit- as you can see the pants can stand up on their own right now. I’ve gotten a couple days in it so far, so eventually we’ll get there. The other news is I don’t get knocked down every time on escape bites (where the decoy is running away), which I think means I’m figuring something out. I’m including some proof…

Training update- seeing things from the other side

14 Saturday Jun 2014

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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.

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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.

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

 

Snow Day

03 Monday Mar 2014

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Snow days are becoming fairly common this year. When I first got the mutt we were already heading into spring, so it was a while before I got to see his thoughts on snow. I knew Mals were a sturdy breed; turns out when it comes to snow he barely notices and will even lie down in it when he’s on squirrel patrol. Suit yourself, I say.

We did make some progress on redirecting his attention to me on command on our walk today. The reason being is that he is fairly dog aggressive, so any thing with four legs out there catches his attention (and sometimes he walks into lamp posts because he’s not watching where he’s going). By redirecting his attention to me, he can then learn that he is rewarded for watching me when I tell him. This is a little different from attention heeling because when we’re on a walk I don’t care whether he’s right by my side, just so long as he’s not pulling me down the street. The sayings about always being able to reward your dog go a long way because sometimes you’ll need to do that when you least expect.  That’s one of our new firehose tugs from Elite K-9 that fits well into the back pocket (and King’s mouth), so it worked pretty well for taking with us on our walk.

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