Re: questionable dogo protection training

[Michael D’Abruzzo]

I saw the guy’s videos. I would say the dog is actually in fight drive according to the way I interpret at least during the time of the face lunge:
http://www.selfhelpdogtraining.com/Aggression/cms/aggression.html

I was watching in slow mo and trying to see if it could have been a misjudgement by the dog mixed with some optical illusion of the camera angle – since the bite bars when held the way the agitator was holding actually run chin level on either side of face and I saw the dog hit the top front of the suit in another vid. Was tricky to tell, but the confidence of the agitator bouncing back seems to show he understands and can predict the dog pretty well. But could be true face bite attempt. Wasn’t seeing the same degree of confidence though when the pads were gone with similar agitator movements. Seeing some slight bite taboo and sliding into defense toward the end, and then the agitator ends the dog on a win before too late. I think the dog could have grabbed a hand or leg if he wanted and the agitator knew he probably wouldn’t or wouldn’t dare put that close. I could be wrong and I certainly wouldn’t test him.

If the dog was a shepherd I would say good training, handling, and agitation if the goal is police type work (as the guy claims) and NOT sport. This is very similar to the type of stuff we did with Jake (shepherd). If we were just talking about a shepherd only critique I would say is back off on the civil stuff and wait a few more months until the dog is a bit older and little more confident.

My concern which is same as yours, is do you really want to go that route with a dogo when they are a target for BSL and haven’t really been bred for that purpose. I think I might see some bite taboo within that dogo on the real man and just dont think it is right to force it on the dog if not natural. Sometimes dogs will “snap” toward the reaching hands as a learned behavior to make the agitator act like prey again – but wouldn’t know unless I knew all the steps the trainer did (We did this with Zephyr (Dobie) doing a deterrent alert). Also, from what I understand that if a dog is TOO powerful it generally isnt a good candidate for police work anyway, because of the risk for unnecessary serious injury.

I heard of an extra powerful Dutch Shepherd that shattered an ankle on its first real street bite, so the dog was immediately retired. I could imagine lawsuits, at least in the US, filed by criminals if Dogos were used to apprehend them and they were having their triceps pulled off and worse.

I don’t want to bash the guy here since it is a private forum or any trainer for that matter unless it is obvious animal cruelty (or if it is so bad we just can’t help ourselves!).

Rather use the forum to constructively relate, educate, and give support to our style for those learning about it.

Definitely, been getting some good stuff of Toro on vid working him in prey and desensitizing him to the threatening movements / hits of the agitator so he STAYS in prey and I can still get my loving from him after the drill!

I definitely prefer our choice of training direction for him :). (or any of the BSL targeted breeds).

Definitely, a good video post to study the subtle changes in drives during agitation and what it means to the agitator. You can see prey(very early), fight, and defense all at different parts. Many things so subtle it could be debated either way. The agitator is actually pretty good at targeting and knowing when to bail at the end.