What are the benefits to doing muzzle work? - Page 5

Xeus,
I think you hit the nail on the head. 
I think I tried to read too much into it, such as the leash thing and the agitator. The agitator did not have Control of the dog and there was no significants in it other then keeping the dog there.
My only point on the dog being a bit hotter was that the agitator was using his hands to bait the dog and the dog was not responding ( at least from the video it didnt appear that way)  and so there was some confusion for me as to what the objectives were at least initially. Your evaluation makes sense of this as you put it  " you want the dog to figure some things out with as little help as possible ".  This explains the hand gestures. Not over done, the dog did not react but that was as you say the least possible stimulas, nothing lost.   Thanks

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Steve-  Very interesting piece you offered on the muzzle work.  Good post and thank you for contributing to the thread.

On a side note, I wanted to say that out of the past year or so I've been coming to this site I think this is the first thread that I really looked forward to seeing the responses and I never realized how knowledgable some of the "lurkers" actually were on this board.  You all have so much good information to offer, I'm just curious as to why you all do not participate as much as you should?  I hope that you'd consider starting other threads similiar to this one in hopes that the board can bring back a different quality of members and get back to what it was designed for.  Thank you all for some interesting insight as you taught me something new.  Weather I ever use it or try it first hand isn't as important to me as understanding how and why it's done.

Agar:  Good for you for starting this thread.  It has proven to be very educational and interesting.

Thanks Sue.  I tried.  Glad to see other's enjoyed it.

From what I understand about this video, the dog was very young (15-16 months) and had not been in a muzzle before. I think this is why the decoy was being very passive. The dog is stressed by the muzzle and fighting it. The decoy does just enough to keep the dog in it and not become fixated on fighting the muzzle.

You can see the dog start to dominate by laying on the decoy. Then the decoy reverses roles. The dog being young, allows him to do this until he is flanked and then he brigns the fight and dominates the decoy. I like the fact that once he was pissed off, he really brought the fight.

So to me it is excellent decoy work by stressing the dog while still allowing him to win. He let the dog dominate, then dominated the dog, then pissed the dog off, let the dog win by dominating the decoy. Too me this is all about social dominance. Great work in my opinion. Like I said, I have only seen this done twice in real life. Not many people do this type of work.

It´s hard to say good or bad of that video, it´seems like a rather good natured dog that he tries to get some kind of reaction from, but he only can get it to react when hanging over the dog and pinch it. You usually learn the dog to be OK with wearing a muzzle, before the actual training starts., so he isn´t so bothered by the muzzle.

Anyway, a lot of muzzlework is done in the Swedish protectionprogramm for civilian dogs, the police also has one or two muzzleexercises in their certificationprogramm for policedogs.

This has probably been mentioned but if you plan on having a PPD or Police dog he must be tested with no excuses.  The courage and fight drive must be their, a dog with no fight drive is not a PPD he is a sport dog.  A dog must like to bring the fight, he must like to get physical because that is what brings the attitude to win no matter the threat or paine.  The dog can be as gentle as a lamb with the family and kids but when it is time to work he must have it.  Too many people in this country buy these 10,000-50,000 dollar dogs that if the time really came they would not get the job done.  Muzzlework shows the heart and desire in a dog it is like a gut check for him.

Xeus I think you were very good at explaining the differences in a PPD between an sport dog in very simple terms that even the greenest handler would understand.  It doesn't necessarily mean one dog is better than the other just depends on what purpose you intend to use the dog for as to determine weather the dogs courage and fight drive is a factor.

I do understand that PP dogs can do sport as well but you need a well balanced diversed dog to successfully do both.  I was also told that most people will train a dog to do PP work first as it is easier to transition the dog to do sport rather than take a sport dog and transition to PP.  It can be done both ways, I'm just told you save yourself some time doing it the first way I described.

Great thread Agar, I did some muzzle work with Andy today.  I probably wouldn't go there with a future dog but since I was almost certain he's had this training as a PDK9 I fugured we'd have some fun with it.  I'd like to know how you guys think he did.