Training for the Operational Release

In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:

Getting your dog off the bite as quickly as you can when the threat has diminished to a reasonable level.

The importance of being proficient in more than one option for your dog when you're in an engagement.

The importance of your dog being willing to accept lower value rewards in the presence of a potential bite.

Mastering verbal, mechanical, and manual release protocols.

Transitioning from negative reinforcement to positive punishment - from escape to avoidance.

Key Takeaways:

Practice your call-offs in stressful situations during training. You're practicing for real-life situations, and real life is not going to be stress-free.

Trying to pull your dog off will create more opposition and make it more difficult to release the dog. Pushing into the bite will often make it easier to release your dog via the gag reflex.

You don't want to use your handcuffs as a standard breakstick stand-in, so that you are not creating anticipation and an association with handcuffs and releasing.

Not every release protocol or piece of equipment is going to work best for every dog. You will have to try different things to see what works best for your dog.

It comes down to handlers needing to, in training, work at being proficient in the proper application of all the correct methods to get the dog to release. We have to be able to start getting them to realize, based on a training setup, what's going to be the more appropriate approach to getting a dog to release in that situation.