[Dafydd]

I have a 10 month old Malinois who is high drive and absolutely loves to fetch balls and do bite work with a tug. When I first taught him to fetch, return and drop the ball at my feet, I used the command “aus” while holding a small piece of tasty food. It didn’t take long for him to learn how to drop the ball at my feet. Then when I started bite work with him, I would make him sit and wait until I said “ok” then he jumps at the tug and pulls like crazy.

I let him win and run around a little with the tug, then I tell him “bring it” and he comes.

I then tell him “aus”. At first he didn’t want to drop the tug. Since tug work is his favorite thing to do, if I turn away from him and say “No…. Aus” he knows I won’t play until he drops. He now drops all the time. Lastly I tell him to sit and we start the game all over again. Since I am trying to instill confidence in him I don’t think an e-collar is appropriate with simple tug work and I wouldn’t use it for a fun game of fetch. It may also help that I fed him by hand 3 times a day for the first 6 months of his life, so if he has something in his mouth I can reach for it, hold onto it, and he will let go of it without any thought of biting my hand.

[Bogdan]

@Dafydd thank you for your tips. I’ll try both methods you describe, I’ll see how it goes. Mine she’s also 10 months but in terms of bite work, mine bites like crazy, I dont have a problem with her biting. When she bites she doesnt play. Yesterday, the guy which is helping me doing bite work changed to a much thicker protection after she bit the first time. It seems that her bite has gotten much stronger

The OUT/AUS command he’s something my wife can help me work with since we plan to get Mondioring 1 with her next year, that’s why I would like to teach it in the near future.

[oldSAP-Charlie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPu61nIiWRg

[Chris]

I’ve been learning from some of Balabanov’s stuff recently, and the out is a core component of his work. If you’re looking to take this dog to compete I would at least look at the first of Balabanov’s Obedience Without Conflict series. He solves a good number of problems, such as this sort of posession, crabbing on a heel etc etc, with the way he communicates and values the tug as a reward.

In short, he works to devalue the object itself, making play the reward and the tug worthless outside of the context of play. This helps the dog out because the tug is not really worth having if it’s ‘dead’. This is the same as you can see in RC’s videos, but with a lot more depth (no offence to RC, he has to cover a lot of ground and doesn’t really have the luxury of super-focussing on one element like this).

You can access the first of the series on CTS for around 50 bucks. I thought it was worth it to sample Balabanov even for just pet training, the philosophy of reduction of ambiguity in communication was a big piece of the puzzle for me and made me realise where I could improve. It was also immediately applicable and my dog understood it quickly. The lessons RC has provided worked better once I realised my own ambiguity in communication using Balabanov’s insight.

[Bogdan]

@chrism

I do like Balabanov but it’s pretty expensive for me. 160 $ just for the OUT command. In my country the average salary is 600$ per month so 160$ just for one command is a bit expensive. The same amount of money I can pay 5 lessons to the guy which is helping me with the training and he’s not a bad trainer (he got some results at mondioring world championship).

I’ll look at the Balabanov’s content, perhaps it will help me the same way it helped you. I know after watching RC videos and doing the lessons with my local trainer I get a better understanding of things we are doing.

Thks again.

[melvin]

– Train in low arousal states, if you tug hard this only dials the dog more into the tug

– Tug for 3 seconds, then pause and completely immobilize the toy, once the dog outs (which he will eventually), mark and give the toy back immediately

– once you immobilize the tug and the dog outs by himself, you are ready to put the out voice command

– once your dog understands the out command well, you can use corrections at that stage for non-compliance

IMPORTANT: never out and get the toy away quickly (stealing the tug), this only makes him want the toy even more.

You can also try to out him at a distance from you and alternate between outing in your hand and further from you.

Depending on how much history of non-outing the dog had, this may require some patience.