Are you too obsessed with grip? I have been and will continue to be guilty of this at times. We all want dogs that bite with a full grip, that is agreed upon and i would never argue that. However i do think It is very easy to hyper focus on the dogs grip and forget about many other aspects of the dogs mechanics. It is very possible for a dog to have a full grip but still be very stressed on the bite. The fullness does not automatically correlate to the dogs comfort level. Sometimes a dog is biting full because we chose the appropriate equipment for the dogs age and experience maybe its a leather pillow or a wedge or something very soft. The dog may be biting that full because the equiptment promotes it. But what are the dogs eyes doing, are they wide and bloodshot, are they looking around or are they focused? Given a dogs genetic makeup of drives the focus may be more on the decoy, or more just glazed over forward into the prey item. I do not think it is bad if a dog looks to the eyes of the decoy but i do not like when a dog shows stress and concern by looking around at the environment when on a bite. This type of behavior tells me the dog is worried about whats coming and may be planning a route of escape. This is why when you bring a dog into a tight space you cannot just look at the grip. You must look at the eyes and see if the dog is cutting eyes side to side planning its path to escape. This type of focus is not fully commited to biting even if the grip remains full.
A dog may be biting full but their body is completely stiff and fighting to get away from the decoy. Im talking about the front paws extended straight out into the decoy trying to create space. This is not to say pulling is automatically a bad thing either, some dogs were taught from a young age to pull as a way to fight back against the decoy, this is a sometimes genetic trait and sometimes reinforced in training. But a dog that creates space from the decoy with its front legs is often times uncomfortable with the physical contact and pressure that comes from being in close contact with the decoys body. This is why i love when a dog uses its front legs to wrap up the legs or body of the decoy, this shows me possession and comfort with being in close quarters with the decoy. Then comes the back legs, does the dog stand up tall with its back legs do they use them to push and generate power into the bite or do the back legs dangle or just sit as if not cooperating with the jaws. A dog that sits down with its back legs doesnt feel comfortable standing with that decoy and isnt trying to bring that fight into the decoy. This makes it harder on the dogs jaw muscles and will lead to faster fatigue and that leads to more stress. A dog that generates power off the back legs and uses the front legs to wrap or hold onto the decoy is assisting their jaw muscles and preserving energy. Which brings me back to the grip. Not every dog we work with will naturally get to a full grip so we teach the dog to counter in. We teach this with many tools and techniques, some common ones will be moving backward encouraging the dog to move with the decoy and not fight against them, we teach them to turn off pressure by regripping, or that the decoy will move backwards from a passive position when the dog pushes in. When only addressing the grip in this equation many dogs will learn to just make sloght slight adjustments with their mouth so that the decoy will make big rewards to the dog for that effort. The behavior that often gets taught here is to just pulsate on the grip and the body isnt cooperating or actually assiting the dog in any way. I am not saying these techniques are bad and not to do this but simply that we need to consider the whole body when teaching our dogs how to bite.
We all want dogs that bite full and firm but in our efforts to teach full grips did we forget about the rest of the body?
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