Muzzle Training With Howard Young

Hey everybody, this is Jeff Meyer. I'm back. I took a couple weeks off while we were doing our Colorado Canine Conference these last couple weeks. The conference went really well, and we are planning on doing it next year. So stay tuned for more information on that. Hopefully we'll get an even bigger turnout. But the feedback was quite good for this first year. So hopefully, maybe if you hear more about it, you'll decide to make the trip

over here to Colorado for the 2025 Colorado Canine Conference. conference. Ray Allen was our main sponsor here this year at the Colorado Canine Conference. If you are a canine, you know who Ray Allen is, and they've been sponsoring the show. They sponsored the conference.

Just a really good company to work with. And today's topic is muzzle training. We're going to talk about muzzle training. And if you came to me and you wanted to know what muzzle to get, I would recommend the Ray Allen Ram Agitation Muzzle.

I think it's an excellent muzzle it it's very sleek in its design so it doesn't you don't get stuff caught on it your fingers or clothes or anything like some of the other muzzles and they're just super sturdy i've had a couple of them that i've had for more than 20 years and they're showing no signs of being towards the end of their life and i've worked several different dogs and one particular one and it muzzle just keeps getting better and better so once you buy one if you don't get a

different size dog, you'll be able to use it for a very long time. I've seen very few of them wear out. So check out rayallen.com, Ray Allen Manufacturing, for their ram muzzle and all the other equipment that they provide.

Also, I wanted to talk about Canine Services down in New Mexico. Kevin Sheldahl has the company that's Canine Services, and he provides all different types of canine training, whether it's patrol, detection, you name it. He also does canine audits. You can go to him for some classes or you could bring Kevin to you for all kinds of different classes. Very, very good instructor, has decades of teaching experience.

So check out K9services.com and it's K-9services.com or give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576. So with that, we're going to get to our muzzle show today and hopefully you enjoy it.

This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer. Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals who have experience on the street. Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street. Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day. Our goal at Police Canine Training is to make every canine team be the best they can be. Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer.

Today I'm going to do a class, I was going to do a recording just by myself on muzzle work. I've had quite a few questions on it. I did one on my old show, so I was updating this one and going to put it out. Then last week at the Colorado Canine Conference, I was watching Howard Young teach some muzzle fighting exercises. A lot of the stuff that I observed was fairly similar to what I would have talked about, but he had a few exercises that I really liked.

So I thought for today, I'd bring Howard on and he and I'll just kind of bounce ideas off each other about how we both train dogs to fight and muzzle and why we do it and stuff. So Howard, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm coming off of a great experience at the Colorado Canine Conference. It was a great week. Yeah, I'm glad you made it. It seemed like everybody had a pretty good time and we'll be back next year for sure once we get the dates.

That's exciting. Yeah. So with the conference, I know you did a class with controlling to effective engagement. You talked to some about muzzle. And then what I liked about this conference is you do some classroom and then go right out into the field and start applying it with the dogs. So you had an area set up and you had some people coming through in groups working their dogs, doing muzzle work.

And that's where I was kind of observing and realized that a lot of what you and I do is similar, a couple of little things that are different. So I guess first off, do you do a lot of muzzle work in your training? And if so, why do you like muzzle stuff? I do a good bit of muzzle work, but I think that I see it as kind of a piece of the pie. And then there are many, many pieces of the pie that need to come together to really make the dog effective on the street.

And a muzzle is certainly an extremely useful tool, but I think we also need to kind of, if I can give a little bit of a preamble, and that is that the muzzle conditioning and teaching a dog to be neutral in a muzzle is equally as important as teaching them how to fight. I think it gives it significance when we do fight or do have them fight with it. Yeah. Yeah.

They're masters of association, so it's very easy for them to form an association with simply fighting with a muzzle if that's all they ever do. We spend a good bit of time doing what we'll call the art of doing nothing, where the dog might have the muzzle on and he's just hanging out with it. Or all the dogs might be in a down while we're talking about something.

You know, if we consider how much time the dog is fighting with the muzzle, then, you know, it's, it's, it should not be a surprise when we discover that, oh, this dog thinks when the muzzle goes on, it's time to fight.

So we kind of have to give it some significance by not fighting with the muzzle. I think that's a great, great. Yeah. I think it's a great point to start on too. I always, the term I've learned and I'm still used to this day is a muzzle happy dog. So they, it's no different than a dog sees a muzzle. A lot of dogs are like seeing the bite suit. They know they're going to do something. There's no neutral behavior. And that kind of washes away all the benefits of doing muzzle work.

I would agree. I think that's something that really does. It kind of erodes the real significance of that muzzle. So before you ever start fighting with a dog, you're getting the dog used to wearing the muzzle and not doing anything?

Thing is that kind of your first step so yeah and one of the things that i talked about and with my groups individually i didn't cover it in my class is just the different ways that you can acclimate the dog to the muzzle i think most people have done the the trick where you put food in the muzzle and that's that's good that's fine and good and that that could form a good positive association with it but i was explaining to folks how i conditioned my dog to a muzzle by

basically free-shaping it, where I took a section of his kennel and I zip-tied the muzzle on the inside. And it knows height while he's standing on all four legs. And basically, I didn't use luring. I didn't take him to the muzzle. But this dog has learned at a very early age that he can manipulate this environment for reward. So it was pretty easy to shape him to go to that muzzle and begin to stick his nose in it.

And once, you know, he stuck his nose in the muzzle, then we're kind of off to the races. We're going to work on increasing the amount of time they'll keep his nose in there. And then the end goal, obviously, is that you basically hold it in your hand.

Yeah and you tell him puzzle he comes in basically with the exception of strapping it on he's he's sticking his nose in there for you just to make just make it easier and when when you're doing the the free shaping part of it are you using like a clicker or a marker of some type yeah using a clicker into the high value reward so so he already knows the game of offering some behavior so he does that and it just turns into a fun little game i put my my nose in

this weird little little thing and there's no negative to it it's just there and it's such a fun thing to do i think it it really would help handlers basically understand training to maybe another level yeah yeah and that's so i i'd never thought of doing it that way i do a lot of you know a lot of the either i'll put a little like peanut butter in the bottom the back of it let them lick that a little of that kong stuff just let them lick it without putting it on them

expose them to it quite a few times and then i do do the same thing that you do where i start from you know when the handler barely has had the dog and they're still kind of learning the dog i think it's a good exercise to get them used to putting it on him for 10 minutes putting it on for one minute putting on for 40 minutes and on and off on and off and doing absolutely nothing you know other than petting him brushing him walking him around and there's

it starts to it pretty quickly the dog looks at it as just another collar or something else and they're not they don't have any expectation expectation. What my experience has been is if I do too much of this Kong stuffing or something, that when that goes away, then they'll stick their nose in there and then pull it back out, and then you start fighting them to put them on the muzzle. Have you kind of had that experience?

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, there's some dogs that just don't particularly like it. Yeah. And some of the ways around that is that obviously you can kind of engage them in activities that will make them forget it that aren't necessarily fighting. So I like to find a small fenced-in area and get out a basketball or soccer ball and kick it around, and they can get activated like that. And they tend to forget that that's on their face, the ones that are super driven anyway.

Yeah, yeah, I like doing that. And I think at this point, the one thing that I start to stress to the handlers is I like to have the muzzle set up so the front strap should be pretty much where it needs to be and buckled in.

In and then i like to put the the back strap on the the farthest out hole so i can slide it over and then pull that strap close because it seems like when you get a dog that knows they can pull it back off as you're messing around with it then they learn to try and battle with you but if you can make it real quick so i'll actually have sometimes i'll have handlers if i think the dog is going to be a little bit tricky i'll have them practice it on a dog

that doesn't fight the muzzle just so they can practice that, slip it on the nose real quick and then get the back strap tight. And then the dog doesn't have that any hope of trying to pull it off from the very beginning because it seems like some of the dogs that they're real feral, if they know they can do that, then you have a long battle ahead of you. For sure. Yeah. And I like the basketball too. It just seems to, like you say, take their mind off it and turn it into something fun.

Do you combine like a little bit of basketball? Do you do some obedience at that point too with it? Yes, we'll do some obedience. We can actually do some protection as well. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. The more variety of things I think that we can expose them to in a muzzle, the less they'll begin to think of it as being something that's obtrusive maybe or bothersome. Yeah. And one of the things I've found in that step, because I think I do pretty much

all the same things. I do a lot of stuff before they start muzzle fighting. And I've done detection before. And I think that's fun because some people, that'll make their heads explode. Like, you know, it's like they can, they can smell through the muzzle just fine and, and show them that. And it gets that more neutral. And then it seems like, and it's anecdotal, it's not any scientific thing.

But what I've found over the years is that if I have a big bucket of water after they've played with the basketball, it seems like when I can get the dog to stick that muzzle in the bucket of water and drink with the muzzle on, it seems like that's when I know I'm way down the road of that muzzle being real, real neutral.

Neutral so i always kind of test it out there when i can see see them doing that it makes a hell of a mess but it tells me that tells me that that they're pretty neutral and then i i started incorporating that in a lot as you said of throwing it on when we're going to talk about our training day or when we're just doing different stuff and just tell them to put it on in the car when they're driving to work someday and take it back off and get it get that dog used to having it

on and off at different times and and very little happening before we start muzzle fighting yeah for sure do you have a favorite type of muzzle i'm glad that's a great question that was the next one on my list and i thought well yes the muzzle that i like the best is and they you know they sponsor my show they sponsor your shows but so it's not an infomercial but i like that ray allen ram muzzle I agree. What I like about it is it's the sleek design.

I remember years ago, and I still see them a lot, a lot of people have the basket weave muzzles. And those things have so many rivets and so many places for, you know, either it to get caught. The rivets a lot of times start wearing down. They get sharp. You can get your fingers in the little basket weave things. I just, I remember thinking that was like the pinnacle of muzzle stuff when I first started a long time ago.

Go our our department invested in a lot of these basket weave muzzles and we thought i don't know why we thought they were so cool then and then once we started using the ray allen muzzles i i've never touched that basket weave one again i think they wear out faster and uh i think the dogs acclimate better to the the ray allen brand ones or at least that style so what about you oh i agree that's definitely my favorite they it's such a good company i know i had at least

one that had a failed rivet and I just sent it back and they just fixed it. Yeah. No charge. So such a good company. And I tend to buy them a little bit oversized. And the reason why is that they still fit properly from my perspective, but it provides maybe a little less. There's some room at the end between where their nose is and where the muzzle ends.

So the dog's nose isn't constantly being smashed up against the muzzle. And so that's a good point. So when you're looking at fit, you put the muzzle on, you adjust that top strap first, and then, so you're looking for what, maybe a quarter inch or so in front of his nose, so there's a little bit of give. Yeah. And that top strap of any muzzle is how you can adjust that.

If it's too, if there's too much, then you worry about it popping off the end of their nose, and that's not going to be a good thing for the decoy. Once that top strap is set, it really doesn't need to be messed with much. No. So it's possible that it could stretch. But really, I think once the proper fit is done, most folks didn't mark it. That way they have a good idea of where it is. And, of course, we'll probably talk about checking the muzzle. Yeah. Yep.

And we'll mention that real quick. I like marking the muzzle. And that's been my experience is that, you know, I mark them on both straps where it goes. So it's really easy for the handler to see I'll use a Sharpie and it makes it real visual. My experience has been that over a fairly short period of time, a lot of times they do stretch out and we have to readjust it. You know, once they've got through that stretch period, then it'll usually be that, that mark for the rest of their life.

But I do, I do encourage them to mark it. And I also encourage them, you know, my handlers, I always, when they take the muzzle back off, it goes back in that first hole and it's basically, you know, loaded up and ready to go again.

End so they can slip it back on and it's all they have to do is pull the strap tight they're not trying to loop it back through again right so let's talk about that you get the muzzle on and then how do you check the muzzles well i like to pull from underneath kind of an upward motion yeah, because i think that's typically how they would how they would slip off i mean obviously we're giving decoys instruction you don't want to ever put the dog

in a headlock yeah because if it's It's the accident waiting to happen. Yeah. Keep your fingers out of the muzzle. That's number two. And do you have a ritual where the handler checks the muzzle and then you check it? Or is there, what's your safety? You know, I'm good with the handler checking it as long as I'm watching it.

Yeah. You know, there's some dogs that just are really difficult for a second party to, to check them, but I'm not a big fan of having to do that with the dog that's fighting me, but I'm, I'm good decoying for someone if I can visually see them check it. Yeah. Yeah. The way I like to, I like to pull on the muzzle too, but then the other thing I like to do is I like to take my, my fingers on the top of the strap, put them under the strap and then push that cartilage of the dog's ear down

and see if I can just get it over that cartilage. Cause that cartilage will push down a little bit. My thought is, is that if a decoy happens to get his hand right there, you know, when your fingers go up there, you're going to push that ear down and pull it off. And what I've found over the years doing at different seminars, when I do that, I pull off probably 50 to 60% of the muzzles pretty easily just pushing that down so that usually they'll tighten it up one more notch.

And a lot of people haven't seen that way of checking it, but I just figure it's one more safety thing because getting bit when the muzzle comes off isn't fun. I can tell you from experience, it's not a lot of fun. It's a big surprise. I've seen another safety precaution that I, I typically don't do, but I've worked with people that do this and that is taking a carabiner and they'll basically attach the carabiner to that strap goes around the neck and attach it to an additional collar.

I've seen that too. And again, I'm like you, I just, I'm not in the habit of doing that, but I really liked the idea.

So I try to promote that. I just, uh, it's something I wasn't in the the habit of doing before but i'm trying to get in the habit because i see no negative to it it just seems like no one extra piece sure so so the muzzle's on there the dog's used to it what's the time period that they're going to go through this neutralization before you're ever going to teach them how to muzzle fight well i'd like to say it's it's gonna be fairly lengthy it's not yeah Yeah, it's a real world, yeah.

Time is of the essence, so we typically get to work pretty quickly.

If the dog's being neutral to it, he's not actively fighting it, then the exercise that I think you walked in on that we were doing is that we've got a lot of names for it. We might call it the circle of death. Essentially, you want to get a team or several teams of dogs, three to four to five teams, and they essentially form a circle. And the difficult part of this is that. It's difficult to maintain the integrity of that circle because it's going to collapse.

And basically all the dogs remain neutral until the decoy gets into the center. And then at a predetermined time, everybody alerts their dog at once. And essentially the decoy will read each team and come in for a punch from each of the teams, several punches in one session.

But it creates a very very high energy exercise and one of the things that i think that it's particularly good for is it tends to elevate some of the dogs that may have initially been a little confused about the exercise because they're seeing these other dogs get very activated sure i don't seem to kind of mimic what the others are doing the other thing that can afford you the opportunity to do if you've got two dogs that are being kind of dog aggressive toward each

other You can put them on opposite sides of each other so they can't aggress from side to side, and they tend to take it out on the decoy in the middle. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of do a little neutralization. On that first iteration of that with a brand-new dog, do you want some of the other dogs to be more experienced with muzzle just to kind of teach the new dog, or do we do it with several new dogs all at once? Well, whatever we have the luxury of doing, I think it would be ideal to have some experienced dogs that are kind of leading the way. But they tend to figure it out really quickly whether they're experienced or not.

In that environment, so the decoy approaches the dog, he gets hit.

And then what is the reaction for the decoy at that point? What's his job? Sure. Yeah. You know, we heard our buddy Steve's tubes talk about being pensive. Yeah. I think that initially is what should be taking place is that you're being kind of guarded and pensive.

And once that contact is made, you're basically crumbling.

Yeah you want to give that dog a very positive that he's he's king kong and he just crushed you yeah yeah that's what i try to tell my decoys i tell them to imagine that you're you have a burn all over your body so any contact is going to make it make you react right away with just the slightest contact to start teaching the dog to do that are you are you looking for just one hit at that point or more or i i think initially i like to see just one solid hit of course i don't want

to see indifference either yeah in turn what we experienced last week was was very encouraging is that there were some dogs who were attempting to wrap the decoy up just solidly into it there's another behavior it's kind of nuanced i can't say that i'm particularly good at eliciting the behavior but there are some dogs that you can actively hear trying to bite yeah muzzle yeah i think that's ideal yeah uh yeah and that's that's a funny thing because i've noticed that over the years

too and i i wouldn't in my experience i wouldn't say those are the stronger dogs or the weaker dogs it's just some dogs do it it seems like and and i i don't know why or or how you would teach that but i i know what you're talking about mm-hmm. The one thing i do that's and what i like about that group exercise when i first introduce you know the the contact with the decoy is i like the the the forward motion for the decoy so.

The exercise i do is is is similar and i'm going to figure out a way to incorporate yours at the same time because what i like is i like to have that forward motion because what i've seen is As they're learning to fight, they'll do one hit, then maybe two hits. A lot of times people will try to make that fight too long at the beginning. They'll do three or four hits and then the dog does drop out of drive and get that indifference you're talking about.

Do you see that in the group exercise too? Yeah, I think it can go on too long. So you have to be holding that dog back while he's still in drive and let him watch a few other dogs take his prize again.

Right. Right, right. And that's kind of, like I said, the exercise I like to set up is I'll have, I'll usually use two decoys and I'll find a small building outside, you know, a four-sided building that we can run around. And I use two decoys because it's hard on the decoys.

But I like to have the dog see the decoy as we come around a corner and then, you know, agitate the dog a little bit just by his movement, not hissing or cracking a whip or anything, just by seeing him, maybe a little eye contact. And then I like him to pop around the corner and then I'll run up with the dog and we pop around the corner, the decoy is still moving away. That dog wants to catch him and they'll usually make one hit.

And then I'll have the decoy fall down and roll. And I keep moving the dog forward, forward, forward. And then that dog, the decoy pops around that corner. That decoy will go two sides down because I have a fresh decoy right there. So now the dog has seen, has hit this decoy and he's fallen and he's, you know, popped around a corner. So that dog is out of sight. As he comes around, boom, there's another decoy moving away from him.

The dog gets to do that and I'll keep. But the important part of that exercise that I like is that I tell that handler, your feet cannot stop and they can never go back.

So that dog is forward, forward, forward, just going around the building. And the decoys, when they get hit, they're falling and rolling and the dog's trying to get to them. And then they pop around the corner. They get to take a break for a second. And as the dog turns, they've got a fresh decoy for a second. And you can burn up the two decoys pretty quickly. But I'll go around the building, you know, maybe twice. And that dog is getting, you know, around eight hits.

And maybe on the last one, if the dog's ready, I'll let him hit like two times. And then when the dog pops around the corner, I'll have the car positioned to where I can just kind of go forward and, and go right back to the car praising the dog. And, and he, he believes the decoy went around that corner. corner, what it's, I think it's a similar mindset of what you're looking for is that I'm not going to let that dog fall out of drive.

He's going to, he's going to be frustrated and he's going to want to fight harder and longer each time I expose it to him.

I see a lot of guys, they'll do these steps for one or two iterations. Then they cut the dog off leash and want to go do a search. Dog finds a suspect, punches him once, doesn't know what to do out of drive. And that is a difficult problem to fix, in my opinion.

Sure. Yeah. I like that exercise. That sounds great. When you do get a dog that you've done those basic exercises with and does the behavior I just described, you're trying to do a scenario and the dog goes down and fights with the decoy for just a second and then leaves him. What we do go back to the basic exercise to build them up more. Do you have other tricks you do? Well, it kind of depends. If I'm decoying, I'm probably going to try to read that.

I might put my hands on the dog, kind of raise his suspicion. But again, I don't want him to feel defeated. But I don't necessarily mind putting my hands on him to raise his suspicion a little bit that, hey, this is a real fight.

You need to get in here. yeah yeah and you can win you can right win exactly then i might reach out and flank him but as soon as i flank him and i get the reaction i'm after again i'm gonna crumble yeah yeah just to get that dog to activate a little bit let's back up for just a second you talked about the dogs that want to start fighting the muzzle you know the dogs are trying to strip the muzzle and you're you got them on leash trying to heal and

they're two two front paws are ripping at the the muzzle. How do you deal with that?

Well, one of the things that I would do is that basically I would have my handlers put the dog in the muzzle and just in the car while he's working. Yeah. And just ignore it. Yeah. I mean, eventually it's going to stop. Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of times we feel like we need to step in and rescue, but I don't think that, you know, we can't coddle them. They're going to have to get used to it.

And I think the important, I agree with that. I think the important thing is though, is to make sure that in my mind, I want to at least be able to keep my eye on him and I want to make damn sure that he cannot get that muzzle off. Because if we try that and he gets the muzzle off somehow, I think we're in a world of hurt then because it's just going to, you know, make him try to do even harder.

But I like to do that. I like to also, if the dog has good obedience and he's, he's got a basketball, you know, I'll get him to play at the basketball. And if the dog already understands, you know, low stem with the collar, I'll just put the dog back into a heel and he cannot heal and try and strip the muzzle.

So he'll go back to a heel when he's, when he quits doing that and he gets in a heel, then he gets to go back and play at the ball and it's more fun again and kind of induce him into that without making too big of a deal of it. But I think I see that a lot where handlers have dealt with that of the dog just trying to strip the muzzle for such a long period of time. Then they come and they're like, well, he's just bad in the muzzle.

It seems to me like if you start putting up with that early, it's never going to fix itself. So it seems like that's a problem that if the dog is doing that, I will stop everything until we can get the dog to start walking around without stripping the muzzle. I won't keep moving forward. Is that kind of how you do it too? Yeah. I mean, it's counterproductive at some point. If that's the only behavior we're going to get from the dog,

then we have to address that. Yeah. And do you see that very often? No, actually I don't. You know, it's funny because I don't either, but then probably just like you, in my travels, I see it more. And I suspect it's probably just from the initial training, not, you know, either I think if a dog believes they're going to get a quick muzzle fight and then you're trying to have them search, then they get that frustration, try to rip it off or, you know, they didn't do the neutral stuff, but.

Um, I, it seems like when you do these steps that you and I are talking about that generally it, it just doesn't turn into that big of an issue. I think so too. And I think also, you know, there are handlers that just basically don't, when they see their dog struggle with it, they don't want to, they don't want to mess with it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think some of the trainers let that happen too. As a trainer, I think, I think muzzle stuff is super important, I think.

And then, and it has to be neutral muzzle behavior. Cause I think when you can get your dog to be super neutral and muzzle, then, you know, we did a lot of stuff on shift where I'd, you know, I'd go down an alley, throw a civilian coat over my uniform, hide behind a dumpster and call a handler and say, park at the other end of the alley. So the dog has no, no car around. They're used to having the muzzle on and off all night, come down and scout this alley.

Dog comes around, hits me hard, you know, right around the dumpster. And then I take off running, dog goes back to the car and it's a fun night, you know, and he quit training and, and, you know, he just found a passive suspect and hit him. So I like doing a lot of that, but, and I think muzzle is, is the key to doing a ton of that type of training. For sure, yeah. Do you do a lot of scenario stuff with muzzles too?

Yes, I mean, I think that's where it begins to really take on some real value is that obviously there's, you know, the real advantage is that there's no visible equipment, and it's a nice way to begin to teach the engaging the passive subject. So we did a little bit of that last week where we kind of bridged some things together, strung some things together for the dogs. Yeah.

So we did a kind of like a, had a door dog at the doorway, decoy was just within sight, maybe just behind an object, but the dog could see him initially. So there was a quick engagement into a small, relatively small room. And then we would bring the dog right back out and do it again. This time as he went in the room, there was no visible decoy, but the decoy was kind of curled up in a ball in the corner.

Then the dogs pick that up really quickly which is i think a great exercise that you know really hard to replicate if you don't do it in muzzle because i'm not going to do that in a concealed sleeve and it's not and a suit isn't super realistic so it's that's what i like about it and then people will you know i think the ones who want to want to argue whether it's good or not don't understand the value that you started this conversation with the value of having the dog be be neutral in muzzle.

So when you take the muzzle off, I've had a few people say, well, when I take that muzzle off on the real deal, what if my dog just muzzle punches a guy and bites him? If that happens, I don't think many people are going to sit still. And I think that's going to be enough to then kick the dog into, okay, now I can actually bite this guy because he moved. So I think it's a good way to bridge over into real life scenarios with a passive suspect. Yeah.

Um, have you ever, there's a few things I've done over the years if I get a dog that, you know, and luckily I think the quality of dogs, you know, over the last 25, 30 years has gone up so much as, you know, as you know. But when we used to have dogs that some of them would just resist the muzzle.

Did you ever have a muzzle? We had a couple that we cut the front of them off so the dog could wear the muzzle and could still do bite work with it on. Did you ever try that? I've never done that, but I've seen it done. I think it's clever. It was just a thing that we did with a couple of dogs just to get them used to having that sight picture and show them that you can still do bite work.

And also a few dogs that, you know, if they're still having trouble, I'll put a suit top on just to show them that picture that this is a decoy exercise and get them to punch the decoy. I do that a lot of my e-collar classes just because I don't know what the quality of the muzzle fight is going to be. So a lot of times I'll have a suit top on with the dogs in muzzle just to make sure they're engaging the decoy well.

And if I have a dog that that still doesn't work, then I might put a suit on, let the dog, you know, come, I'll put the muzzle on a little bit looser, let the dog come in. And when he starts to muzzle fight, I'll grab the back strap of that muzzle and pull it off and then let that dog bite me. And the, the downfall of that is I think you're creating that hope for the dog that the muzzle is going to come off.

So I don't really like that, but I've had some success with some dogs that then they decide to keep fighting, you know, at least I'll stay in the fight for a little bit longer. Right. Right. I have used a suit top before kind of as a, as a stepping stone. I think it works well. Some folks were referring to quick release muzzle and I wasn't sure.

I mean i i understand what that is but i didn't i don't as a decoy i'm not a fan yeah it gets gets a little hairy because your hands right there and everything else so i've had a few dogs get closer to my wrist than my arm when i'm doing that but it does it does seem to to kind of fire up some dogs that's kind of my yeah my method of last resort when i get a dog that's just still resisting the training but the the muzzle cut with the you know i just take an old muzzle cut the front of it off.

That's worked fairly well. But again, it seems like the quality of the dogs we're getting, especially, you know, a lot of the dogs in the last 10 years, doing some muzzle fighting really hasn't been much of a challenge for most of the dogs that I see in my travels. I don't know if you're seeing the same thing. Yeah, it's pretty much. Yeah. Are there any other tricks? I mean, it's one of those things that I think a lot of people don't do it.

And honestly, I think they don't do it because they don't know how to start and they don't know, and they, they don't have the.

The success right away. So they kind of give up on it, but I think the way you and I have explained it, in my opinion, it covers pretty easy way to get started and get to your dog where, where then you can take that dog in, you know, once he's hitting a decoy three and four times solid and showing that frustration and want to do it, then that's when I'll, I'll do a short fight with him, you know, and I might even do that on a 15 foot lead and make him search a little bit longer,

let him hit the decoy a few times have that decoy roll away you know once you get over it seems like once you get a dog that'll fight give you four or five punches and stay with it about 30 seconds you're well on your way to getting the dog that'll muzzle punch somebody for a minute or two minutes if you if you let them yeah absolutely i think we came across maybe one dog last week from my My perspective needed some more runaways where dog would make contact,

knock the decoy down, decoy pops up, runs another short distance, gets knocked down again, just to stay a little bit better engaged. And I always, when we're doing that, I always tell the handlers just to kind of think of that as like a, you know, a graph going up and I want that dog to be going higher and drive, higher and drive, higher and drive. And if you stop or you pull the dog back when you're doing that, then all of a sudden that dog's drive is going to drop way down.

And you've pretty much negated all that work you've done and all that decoy rolling around, all that. I don't want that dog dropping out of drive, you know, between when he gets out of the car and then I want him in drive when he's running back to the car after he's knocked this guy down four or five times. And it seems like a lot of times, you know, the curse of all dog handlers is one more.

So the dog is doing great and he's knocked the guy down three times then run him to the car don't think all right i'm going to get one more out of it because that's the curse the kiss of death a lot of times certainly yeah yeah any other things i mean like i said it's it's pretty straightforward when you outline it you know the way you're talking about it yeah i think you know just it's really your only limitation is your own imagination yeah you can

you know anything thing that you can think of whether it be you know you're not extracting somebody from a car but you can certainly have the dog engage somebody in a car just so many different things a short track to a passive subject laying in tall grass i mean there's just just use your imagination yeah and dogs can track in muzzle certainly have you had any bad experiences on the dogs like i said i one argument i hear a lot of times

is well i don't want my dog to only muzzle punch the guy not bite him have you had anything like that happen i can't think of a single negative. We had one dog that he did exactly that. He ran down, he hit this guy dead center in the middle of the back on one of his first, probably definitely his first runaway and probably one of his first bites and hit the guy hard right in the middle of the back.

Now, I don't know if there was an area for the dog to bite at that time, but once the guy had hit the ground and was rolling down, there was plenty of places and the dog picked whatever he wanted at that point. So to me, it was a big success. I remember there was some discussion in our group about, well, you know, why didn't he bite him? And it was like, I, to me, it seemed like a big success, but that's the common thing I hear when people don't want to do muzzle stuff is they think that their

dog won't bite. But I, I don't, I don't think that's the case. Yeah. And I would, I would venture to say that dog probably learned from that experience and probably didn't do that again. Yeah. No, we did pretty well on his other, his other engagements after that. So. Yeah. Well, Howard, I want to thank you again for coming out last week. It was a fun week and then taking the time today to go over this.

I think it's very important skills. So I appreciate that was kind of a thing when we were figuring out the different stations, I asked you to jump out and do that. I think it was great. The feedback I was getting was really good. It seemed like, what would you say? Maybe half the people had done quite a bit of muzzle work and half had done very little.

Yeah. And the other thing is that there may have been, although I didn't get this from anyone in particular, is that some folks may have avoided that if they weren't good at it. Hopefully that wasn't the case. I felt like everybody that came through was all in. Just some really good teams that I saw last week, and it was such a rewarding experience, and I can't wait to do it again. Yeah, it was a fun group, both the instructors.

I mean, it was cool that, you know, a lot of the instructors, you guys didn't actually know each other. You knew of each other, but you hadn't met in person. That gelled real well. And the handlers and the dogs, it was just a fun group. I sure hope we replicate that again next year, probably a little bit larger scale, but hopefully it's the same, you know, kind of experience for everybody. buddy. So thanks again.

And thanks for doing this today. And I'll let you know if we get some questions, we'll jump back on together and answer any questions we get together. Sure. Sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Howard. All right. Well, hopefully you enjoyed that episode. I like talking to Howard.

He's got a wealth of knowledge and just a very humble, soft-spoken guy when you meet him in person, but he's got tons of knowledge and is eager to share it with everybody and generally wants to help all the dog handlers that come to him for any type of questions, advice, or training. So again, thanks, Howard, for taking the time to come on today.

I want to wrap up the show talking about Bob Eden's canine tracking software. It's Kats Platinum, K-A-T-S, so Canine Activity Tracking Software.

The website's katsplatinum.com. Bob is the first one who came up with an online canine tracking software, and there are several other ones out there, but Bob's got the experience of doing it for a very long time and is always updating it and Bob's customer service is excellent so it's still a very small company so if you have a question and you call chances are very good you're going to talk to Bob Eden directly he'll walk you through he

knows every in and out of the whole software and knows how to work it very well and it's very customizable so check out catsplatinum.com and thanks again Bob for supporting the show and And finally, it's the heat of the summer.

I've been talking a lot about the heat, heat exhaustion, and how the importance of heat alarms are in your car. I think pretty much everybody has them. But if you have one and it's not an acecanine.com, maybe kind of take a hard look at it and see if you want to upgrade to the acecanine.com heat alarm. If you're in the market for a new one, acecanine.com heat alarm is the one I would recommend. Get the phone adapter so it'll talk to your cell phone.

It's an excellent product. It's very well built. Just like we talked about Bob Eden, the customer service with acecanine.com is outstanding. A lot of times if you have a technical question, you'll talk to John Johnston, who was the inventor of and the owner of the company directly, and he'll walk you through everything you need to know to get your product up and running correctly.

Correctly so check out acecanine.com for heat alarms they also do door poppers just a very very solid company so acecanine.com and that's going to wrap it up for this show and i'll be back next week with another show have a safe week thank you. Music.