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Hey Dave,
My understanding is you want to provide the dog with an outlet behaviour you’ve identified as relevant for him. And that curtailing unspecific reactivity (not relevant to you or unwanted) with directed reactivity (relevant and wanted) could be a potential source of confidence and protection asset.
Here are some thoughts on your concerns.
C1; Its always good and relevant to re-evaluate after training, additional data can always be valuable. We do it regularly with our scent detection dogs, just because they’ve been an EDD for “….” years doesn’t mean we won’t run an intake pro forma over them for suitability, it highlights deficiencies/efficiencies in training as well as the assessment. We will have multiple handlers conduct the pro forma on the dog to see trends and to calibrate the interpretation of the assessment.
C2; Liability, I feel its not the dogs understanding you need to worry about, its the understanding the children have on what they can do to potentially trigger the dog, again very hard to but your hand on your heart and walk away and leave them to manage each other.
Have you thought about nose work for your dog? Im a member of the Australian chapter of K9 nosetime and I can say this is super fun for owners and all types of dogs.
