What you need to know about buying a bite sleeve.
This page is designed to help you select the proper bite sleeve for your dog, and training needs. With the amount of sport and working dog training increasing, so is the number of equipment suppliers trying to sell sub-standard sleeves. It is very important to match your sleeve with the experience of your dog, and decoy. Remember your dog is only going to excel in training to the level of your decoy. A good decoy can work wonders with an average dog. An average decoy can ruin a good dog. Our suggestions are based on an experienced decoy.
The first thing to consider is what application, and type of training you will be conducting. If you are competing in sport, the sleeve needs to be regulation specification. We are going to discuss Police or Personal Protection style training and equipment.
The main component in bite work is building drive, grip, and focus. The drives you will develop are prey drive and defense drive. Prey drive is the drive to catch a moving object of a lesser threat. Defense drive is the drive to challenge and dominate an object of equal or greater threat. Young dogs and new dogs need to be started in prey drive. Once the dog is working well in prey, and has matured, it can be working in defense. This level of maturity is usually around 24 months in a Malinois, and 18 months in a GSD.
The first step is to get the pup or adult dog on a tug, such as a stob or a 2 handle long tug. With this, you can "make prey". I like to attach the handle on the tug to the clip on the leash, and make a chase toy with it. Once the dog learns he can pounce on it and capture it, it will stimulate their prey drive. Think of prey drive as the "catch the bunny theory". The dog will catch it and win. Next the dog will catch it, have a small fight (tug session) and always win. As the tug sessions or fight increase, it enhances the drives, and builds the dog up. Over time, the dog will learn to recognize the movement, target the movement, engage, and bite with a full mouth and firm grip.
After the focus and grip are developed, as well as the drives, you can move to a grip surface with a little more of a challenge. We then present a bite pillow. This is thicker, and causes the dog to build grip on a larger target. It is also easy for the dog to carry around. When you are playing tug, and your dog really gets into it, he/she will probably growl and get excited. At that point, let him have the tug or pillow and carry it around. I call this the victory carry. As soon as they drop it however, the object disappears. This teaches them grip. If they drop it, the reward is gone. Think of the reward as their paycheck. The paycheck needs to be proportionate to the work performed. Medium work gets medium reward. Save the big rewards for the big accomplishments. It never hurts to over-reward, but not rewarding enough will limit the level your dog reaches.
After the bite pillow, your dog is ready for a sleeve. Now this is where it is important to choose the proper sleeve. Up to this point, every dog, adult or young is going to use the same tugs and bite pillow, however at this point you need to match the dog to the sleeve. A pup, up to about 8 months needs a soft sleeve that they can get their mouth on, bite down, and be confident. Our puppy sleeve is made of a soft twill material, and has soft padding. This will help build the dogs confidence and grip.
If your dog is young, between 6 and 14 months, or if it is an adult dog you are starting to train, you need a young dog / intermediate sleeve. This is a jute cover sleeve, but with soft padding, and slightly more firm than a puppy sleeve. This sleeve will also be shaped more like a wedge, rather than the flat puppy sleeve. This sleeve will also be slipped to the dog by the decoy, allowing the drive building to continue. The intermediate sleeve needs to be lite enough to carry.
After the intermediate sleeve, you can move to a harder sleeve designed towards your training discipline. For Schutzhund you would move to a trial sleeve. For police we move to the suit, and hidden sleeve.
Remember that it never hurts to back up a step in training. If your dog is not gripping a trial sleeve well, back up to the intermediate to develop the grip again. All training is only as good as the foundation that it was built upon.
Written by Jeff Turner, owner of K9 Solutions Center
Jeff Turner of K9 Solutions Center ( dopedog.com ) has been training dogs since 1996. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We would be glad to take the time to hlep you make a decision about the equipment you need.
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