Controlled Aggression

Want to learn about K9 obedience, police dog training, learning theory and more? Jerry Bradshaw has been a sports competitor and police dog trainer for 25 years, and as the executive director of the Protection Sports Association he's been around the world competing and training K9s. Welcome to the Controlled Aggression podcast.

Creating Independence: The Hunting Game 08/21/2025

Creating Independence: The Hunting Game In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Canine independence - identifying the problem and how to solve it. Why you might need to be doing less obedience training. Training independence behaviors. Creating hunting games with progression for puppies of all ages. Working with your dog near and away from you so they are comfortable in both positions. Key Takeaways: Balance the inward and outward focus in your puppy training. Wind plays a very important role in the hunting games. The windier it is, the narrower the scent cone; the less wind, the wider it is. Watch your dog’s intensity and speed and adjust the game accordingly. You don’t want to push too fast, but you don’t want them to get bored either. Progressive complexity should be done in a variable way. Some hunts should be easier and some should be harder. Do not step in and solve problems for your dog; work on independent work. That stops it from being independent work. "We're trying to create independence. So it's very important that when we start initiating these predatory sequences, the dog will start to, on his own, realize he and only he is going to be the one that can solve this problem, and you are irrelevant in this situation. And that's exactly what we're trying to teach, that there are going to be times where the dog has to work and you are going to be irrelevant." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: YouTube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2026 at Train hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/37890020

Learning to Adapt with K9s Talking Scents, Cameron Ford 07/31/2025

Learning to Adapt with K9s Talking Scents, Cameron Ford In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw and Cameron Ford discuss: The creation of PSA and evolution of dog sport. How the rigidity in traditional dog sports has led to innovation and creativity. Being open to adaptation not fighting against it. Increasing complexity in training detection. The responsibility of having an online platform for your dog training. Training based on experience and on research. Key Takeaways: PSA exploded in popularity the last decade due to the prevalence of younger trainers and social media. A lot of traditional dog sport is built around breeding programs and registering your dogs. PSA allows for dogs of any breed and age as long as they can handle the training. If you’re interested in your dogs learning detection, teach your puppies to track and hunt. It is key for police work. Training detection dogs is about more than odor, no matter what changes have occurred over the years. Adjusting to what the dog is doing during training when they aren’t following your progressions is where the fun and intrigue comes in. Training is not a race. Do it right from the beginning and it will create a stronger, better dog than if you try and do it all in just a few weeks. "Unfortunately, a lot of dog trainers get married to doing something because it's the way they've always done and they feel comfortable with it. But I think you have to be smart enough to jettison what's not working or is less efficient." — Jerry Bradshaw Contact Cameron: Website: Website: K9s Talking Scents: YouTube: Facebook: Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2026 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/37614790

Brad Gillespie - Signaled Punishment 07/23/2025

Brad Gillespie - Signaled Punishment In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw and Brad Gillespie discuss: Positive and negative punishment in police dog training. Pros, cons, and balancing the use of punishment markers. Intentional and unintentional markers. The importance of consistency in punishment. Marking for clearer communication. Biting through the muzzle. Changing one variable at a time and reducing the number of variables in training. Key Takeaways: In some cases, marking punishment may be more important than marking with positive reinforcement. Following the punishment marker with the punishment allows the dogs to understand what is happening. Be careful about the overuse of those punishment markers. They can oftentimes create a drift where the marker itself becomes the signal for the dog to rectify the behavior, rather than when you give that command. You need to be consistent in your timing and ready with the punishment. Dogs are great at recognizing when things are consistent or not. Communication is the problem with most issues we have with dogs. Marking punishment is a way that can help us to have clearer communication. Train the dog (and the handler) in a way that makes it look and feel real. "I really think that using a marker can allow us, both on negative reinforcement and on positive punishment, to use much higher levels of stimulation, and the dogs are able to better process what's happening. We have a system, or at least a way of communicating with the dog. And I think that the marker helps them understand that a little bit better on both ends of the spectrum." — Brad Gillespie Contact Brad: Website: Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: YouTube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/37509980

The Evolution of Police Dog Training with Dr. Stewart Hilliard 07/16/2025

The Evolution of Police Dog Training with Dr. Stewart Hilliard In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw and Dr. Stewart Hilliard discuss: The influence of European sport dogs in early North American working dog training. Benefits and challenges of introducing KNPV-trained dogs to the American market. Evolution of Eastern European working dog trade. Sourcing and importing working dogs. Institutional breeding programs, increased costs, and decreased quality. The future of dog training with kynology. Key Takeaways: KNPV (Royal Dutch Police Dog Association) dogs were the gold standard for transitioning sport dogs to dual-purpose police dog prospects. KNPV dogs were not trained to distinguish between equipment and humans, which gave those early Malinois dogs a bad reputation. Dogs that come from a deprived background with limited experiences often need to be deprogrammed before they can be taught to forget, then taught to learn what they need to know. Don’t kill your dog by playing with it. The dog’s reward is not a toy; it’s a reward. Toy implies play, and these are working dogs. Malinois and German Shepherd dogs are not fully adult dogs until 2.5-3. Younger dogs are more vulnerable to mistakes and stress, leaving you, as the trainer, with the technical burden of not making many mistakes. "I think the future is going to be agency-based breeding, heavily informed by scientific practice, but also with strong participation of practitioners - practical dog people who know how to produce results. Those are the agencies that are going to do really well." — Dr. Stewart Hilliard Contact Stewart: Website: Book: Schutzhund, Theory and Training Methods - A Book by Susan Barwig and Stewart Hilliard, Ph.D. - Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: YouTube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/37420740

Engagement 05/06/2025

Engagement In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Why engagement is important, what it means, and how it differs between puppies and older dogs. The importance of rituals in engagement, no matter the location. Developing engagement and engagement rituals. Creating and maintaining an emotional connection with your dog, no matter your emotional state that day. Key Takeaways: If your dog is not in the right state of mind, you’re not going to achieve your training goals in a particular session. If it happens too many times, you won’t be moving forward in achieving your training goals. You should be creating an emotional connection with your dog when you’re training and working with your dog. Whether you are training at a club or in your backyard, you want the ritual to be consistent so your dog knows that it is game time. Engagement does not just happen at the beginning of your training session - it should go through the entire session to keep the dog’s attention and keep them engaged no matter how many repetitions. Stop training when you’re at the peak of it. Leave the dog wanting more for next time. "Developing good rituals for engagement means you're going to be training better, right? You're going to be ready ahead of time. You're going to be creating expectations in your dog. When one repetition is over, we want that dog to have the expectation that they're going to get to do it again." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Train hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/36436915

Back to the Laboratory in Detection 03/07/2025

Back to the Laboratory in Detection In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: The practical differences between direct reward conditioning and indirect reward conditioning. Primacy of learning and conditioning hunting as a means of locating odor. Understanding the foundations built into your dog’s early training. Utilize the quality of hunting as the barometer to show your dog’s interest. Giving varied and unique hiding places for the odor to your dog in training. Creating sticky behavior in your dog when searching. Building variability to maintain behavior over time. Key Takeaways: In the direct reward methodology, we are pairing hunting and odor recognition. It teaches an olfactory queue to get an obedience behavior. In the indirect methodology, we pair the final response and the odor recognition. Variation in hunting volume and variable reward in finding the target order are extremely important. Remove handler dependency as much as possible. You don’t want your canine to be obsessed with you, your reward delivery, and presentations. You want them to have enough independence to do their work without influence from you. Mimic what you see in deployment in your training and in-services. Those pictures should be aligned, your dog doesn’t know the difference. Clearing blanks is something your dog needs to know how to do because that is what they’re going to see often in deployment. "Variable reward is the thing that's going to really keep your dog at a high level of engagement in the hunting process over longer periods of time and more area that we're asking them to cover, and it's very important to master variation in how you do detection." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Train Hard, Train Smart, Be Safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/35572960

Back to the Laboratory in Tracking 01/13/2025

Back to the Laboratory in Tracking In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Hard surface training for the most successful tracking. Creating an independent problem solver in your dog. Common issues in tracking. Drills and approaches to shore up your tracking foundation and the problems you are facing. Why laying a good track is a critical skill. Key Takeaways: Returning to foundational drills is not a bad thing - it is returning to basics to keep your tracking training progressing forward. One of the first things to train in tracking is pace—this will be different from dog to dog, but our job in training is to create a nice, even pace given the dogs temperament, characteristics, etc. Get rid of the large rewards at the end of the track - value the track itself. You need a variable reward system on the track. Don’t get lazy when laying your tracks. If you’re always doing large articles, the dog will start to look for those instead of the potentially higher-value, small articles. Your dog is not too slow. Deliberate is a good pace. "This is going to be the life cycle of your tracking - tighten them up, they're going to get looser. Tighten them up again, they're going to get looser. You have to have these go-to's to always reel that dog back in and make him tighter." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2025 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/34805360

Battling Equipment Fixation 11/08/2024

Battling Equipment Fixation In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Using the right equipment for the right stage and type of training for your canine. What equipment fixation looks like and how you can overcome it. Equipment orientation drills and the peeling the onion drill. Training your dog to alert on human odors and with man primacy. Key Takeaways: Equipment fixation leads to street failures. Focus on the human form instead of biting equipment. Proper, methodical transitions from hard sleeves to hidden sleeves help to build confidence and create focus on the human decoy. You never want to go from a satisfying bite to a less satisfying bite. You want to be using the lowest profile hidden sleeves that you can, such as the ALM hidden sleeves. Train dogs to focus on human odor, not equipment odors. Your dog does not need to get the bite every single time. Especially when doing muzzle work, taking it off to get the bite every time might just introduce a different type of equipment to fixate on. "Dogs are great economists because they're going to want to trade for something of equal or greater value. If it's equal value, it usually means that you're giving them something and adding something in by your behavior so you're creating a reward event." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2025 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/33846132

Foundations of Targeting - Triceps 10/14/2024

Police K9 Utility of The Place Command 08/06/2024

Police K9 Utility of The Place Command In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Moving through the phases of behavior acquisition for maximum training potential and skill retention and generalization. Developing Mark, Move, and Reward as your protocol. Using markers, such as try-again markers, to teach your dog variations of learned behaviors. Making place a valuable and a safe place to be for your canine. Using the place command to train perimeter neutrality. Key Takeaways: Dogs say “no” all the time - we have to have a way to make them want to go to a place and compel them to go to a place when we’re developing this command. Depending on your dog, the place command can be used in different ways and with different rewarding protocols to improve the utility of the command. Place allows us to work the dog away from us. Don’t be married to only training one way. As you train more dogs, you will learn that different dogs train better in different ways. You, as a handler, will also evolve in your training. This is the boring side of great training. Sometimes the greatest training starts with training the place command and neutrality. Make use of your downtime and dead time. Work on neutrality and train that using place commands instead of just doom scrolling. "This is a really simple behavior that's really hard to mess up, and it allows the handlers to get tons and tons of practice at using marker systems, at using both direct and indirect rewarding protocols. If there are mistakes, there's much going to be much less fallout than if we were in the context of detection or article indication or anything like that." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/32455062

Problem Solving: Countering, Grip, Outs, and Neutrality 06/28/2024

Problem Solving: Countering, Grip, Outs, and Neutrality In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: More content you can get on the Controlled Aggression Patreon or in the Street Readiness Seminars to to help you problem solve with your dog. Luring and trading in training to build skills. Staying in control and not allowing your dog to self-reward. Leveraging every interaction with your dog. Key Takeaways: If you’re having troubles with countering - consider training outs. It may be that your dog doesn’t want to open their mouth once they get a bite. Don’t get too stuck in your quadrants - sometimes you have to use different aspects of negative and positive reward and punishment combined to get the behavior you’re looking for. Start training outs with mechanical outs. Leashes and lines are a great place to start - you don’t need to jump right in with ecollars. You need to be able to have handler presence for both punishments and rewards. Make sure you are the one controlling your dogs eyes. "Use the piece of equipment that’s going to get you the best results…When thinking about which tool to use, the property way to look at it is to experiment. Try one and see how it goes, then try the other and see if it is any better." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/31927167

Directionals and Casting 04/25/2024

Directionals and Casting In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Send the dog where you want them to go in upper-level control. Training young (and not so young) dogs away from you, not just near you. Using attention as a reset. Utilizing unconventional equipment when training your dog. Key Takeaways: Consider training different commands for different attention and directionals to make it clear to your dog what you want from them exactly. You need to be able to give your dog clear feedback when they are focusing on the wrong thing. That is where the discipline comes into this process. Eventually, you have to generalize commands to various obstacles and decoys. Directionals are key in upper-level PSA and in scenarios, as they can allow you to, among other things, stop hunting behavior or send your dog in a specific direction, even if it's not the one they initially want. "Don't be in a hurry with puppies to do a lot of this directional stuff until you have all the tools to where you can actually make the dog understand what you want them to look at so we can make sure our targeting system is clean." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/30965953

Ten Common Outing Mistakes 02/29/2024

Ten Common Outing Mistakes In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Drills to teach your dog to give up something to get something. Utilizing multiple types of reinforcement to increase positive behaviors. Adjusting e-collar settings to change the type of pressure on the dog. Differences in different models of e-collars and how your dog may react to them. Pre-empting the mistakes that you can. Key Takeaways: A lot of common outing mistakes have to do with e-collars and the misuse of certain functions for outing behaviors. Consider going lower on stimulation and longer on the taps of the e-collar rather than a high stimulation with an extremely short duration. This will change the type of pressure on the dog. Avoid habituating your dog to the higher levels of stimulation. These dogs are bred to fight through adversity, you don’t want to stress innoculate the dog to the e-collar pressure. Try a few different types of e-collars on and see which one they respond better to based on their temperament and the sharpness or bluntness of the e-collar. Experiment and see what works best with the minimum force rule. "Outs must be rewarded. No behavior will be maintained without some form of reinforcement." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/30149278

The Role of a Departmental Canine Trainer with John Kirk 01/04/2024

The Role of a Departmental Canine Trainer with John Kirk In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw and John Kirk discuss: The benefits of being both a handler and a trainer. Societal and departmental expectations of a canine unit in a large department. Creating good training files for handlers and canines. Utilizing all of your tools appropriately. Procedures, protocols, and manuals. Key Takeaways: As a trainer, if your hand is off the leash for too long, it does make a difference and both the dog and your trainees will know it. It is equally as important for handlers and department heads to understand what a dog is capable of and what they are not capable of doing. As a trainer, you need to be able to speak with both the canine and the handler. Set up for real-world training, not just for certification training. Create challenging training that will prepare your dog for the street. Policing is changing, standards are becoming more stringent, and all of that needs to be communicated and supervised closely to ensure everyone stays safe. "As a trainer, I need to focus on the dog, I need to focus on any improvement that the dog needs. When it comes to training a handler, our goal is to make sure that this handler has the confidence that he needs." — John Kirk Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: The Drive Company: The Drive Company Instagram: Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2024 at Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/29322593

Upcoming Events in 2024! 01/03/2024

Mechanics and Applications of Drive Capping 12/07/2023

Preparing for PSA 1 Nationals 2023 10/19/2023

Notes on K9 Certification - Patrol 09/14/2023

Notes on K9 Certification - Patrol In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Understanding the flow channel to make your dog (and you as a trainer) better. How handlers and trainers decide the skills to prevent to the dogs at different skill levels. Exceeding the requirements of certification and organizational policy in your training. Training tools to make for a stronger dog in operational settings. Setting up building searches for different scenarios, not just bite situations. Key Takeaways: As the skill levels grow, it is important to have a challenge that fits with that skill to keep your dog engaged and involved with the training. Obedience for the sake of obedience is not practice. Obedience is the framework that provides boundaries to a dog’s behavior. Hands-on removal in policy doesn’t mean you don’t want to practice other releases. If you do a chokehold removal every time, it will create frustration. You need to train a call off with your dog. It is more than just something that is used in certification, it is a safety skill. "As your dog’s skill levels increase, you can challenge them more - you can challenge them more with scenarios, you can challenge them more with training." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: That Scent Dog Box: That Scent Dog Box Facebook: That Scent Dog Box Instagram: That Scent Dog Box TikTok: Hold the Line Conference: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/28029564

Notes on K9 Certifications - Scentwork 09/07/2023

Scientific Approach to Off-Leash Control 07/28/2023

Defensive Dogs in Protection 07/27/2023

Tarheel Canine Police Dog Info 07/15/2023

Drive Suppression v Drive Capping 07/13/2023

Drive Suppression v Drive Capping In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Mistakes made that lead to suppression, avoidance behavior, anxiety, or hesitancy in your canine. Building thoughtful release behavior into the pressure. Training your dog how to sit when in drive. Rewarding the capping with something expressive, even if not a bite. Tips for training drive capping properly. Key Takeaways: Excitement, expressiveness, and forward movement aren’t wrong. But you want the dog to learn how to hold that excitement in until released, not turn it off. Suppression happens when you do not allow the release at the end of the wait. You want to help the dog learn to find the advantage both in the quiet behavior and in the alert or expressive behavior. You want to balance the capping and the expression. The dog needs to understand his advantage at every stage of the drive, including when capped. When you’re learning capping skills, having a really good decoy who understands capping, who can read the dog, and understands every aspect of the situation is invaluable. "It is so important to have your dog in the right frame of mind when they go into a building search or an area search when their job is going to be to make an apprehension. And we want to make sure we preserve that state of mind in the process of getting the correctness and the quality of the behaviors that we want." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/27453309

Sport Culture for Pet Trainers 07/05/2023

Countering, Pushing & Pulsing Grips 06/30/2023

Countering, Pushing & Pulsing Grips In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Bringing out the traits in your dog that are (or are not) genetically in them already. The difference between countering, pushing/pulling, and pulsing bite grips. Working with the dog and not creating an unstable grip through overwork. Actively teaching your dog when and how to counter, and how and when to fight out of a pressure trap using the different grips. Key Takeaways: Countering happens when dogs do not get the ideal strike and an ideal grip in the initial bite. You want the dog to be biting all the way back to their molars whenever possible (which can be difficult when the dog is coming in full speed on a decoy). Biting with the back teeth allows for more leverage power in the jaw which can help with pain compliance even through layers of clothing on a pushing grip in a police dog situation. The decoy and trainer both need to understand what you trying to get out of each training session with dogs at all stages of development. Training with a puppy is very different from training with an older, veteran dog. A lot of decoys and trainers are neglecting to teach the dog to counter off of the transition. "Countering is a very important technique in training a protection dog, but we may go too far in focusing only on that." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/27332334

Setting Up Successful Training Sessions 04/27/2023

Setting Up Successful Training Sessions In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: Teaching your dog lessons through action, feedback, and prevention. Understanding the queues that you are creating in your dog. Planning your training sessions in advance and understanding the variables. Preparing with the correct equipment and rewards for the training session you are heading into. The importance of evaluating your training sessions, and getting a second pair of eyes on the training and evaluation when possible. Key Takeaways: Your training session begins as soon as the dog comes out of the kennel, both what is and is not happening matter from that moment on. You should have reasons for doing everything that you are doing in training. You do not want to create associations with equipment or locations Know the sub-skills that you want to work and the variables inherent in those when you are planning what skills and subskills you are planning on training in each session. Do the research if needed to understand how to support that training and make it better. You must know what you are doing before you even put your hands on the dog. There is a lot happening and if you don't have a plan things will get chaotic and not go how you want them to go. "I plan out before I work my dog exactly what I'm going to work on before the session starts so I know what I want to do on the field. Setting up for success is about figuring out what you're going to do before you go and try to do it instead of just going out and doing what other people are doing and mimicking them." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Tarheel Canine Student Portal: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/26677422

PSA Rituals and Field Awareness 03/09/2023

Building a Relationship with Communication & Emotion with Derek Beckelman 02/23/2023

Building a Relationship with Communication & Emotion with Derek Beckelman In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw and Derek Beckelman discuss: Building a relationship of trust with your new dog, both pet and working. Being consistent with the rules with your dog. The emotional nature of dogs and handlers. The clash between attention and anticipation. Increasing the effectiveness of your communication with your dog. Key Takeaways: Using food, treats, or toys to motivate, especially in the early stages of building the relationship is not a bad thing. But you want to avoid becoming a treat dispensing robot. There are two sides to training - classical and operant. You do not want to focus only on operant conditioning and forget about the aspects of classical conditioning that can help with your training. Dogs will try to anticipate everything. We, as humans, fall into routines. These can clash and create conflict within the training. Training can be frustrating. But the dog just wants to do dog things. You can’t get mad at them for being a dog. You have to pay attention to where your dog’s head is at in any given moment. Sometimes they aren’t listening, not because they don’t want to, but because they cannot due to other circumstances. "It's not up to me how quickly a dog makes progress. It's up to the dog. But as long as we're paying attention, and we're reading what the dog is trying to tell us is going on, we can make jumps and progress when they're ready. But you have to see it. You have to feel it, and that just takes experience." — Derek Beckelman Get Jerry's book Episode References: Dog Language: An Encyclopedia of Canine Behavior by Roger Abrantes - Excel-erated Learning by Pamela Reid - How Dogs Learn by Mary Burch - Info Every Dog Trainer Should Know by Will Garrido - The Decoy Book by Will Garrido - On Talking Terms with Dogs by Turid Rugaas - Mia Skogster - Contact Derek: Instagram: Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/26014695

Notes on Neutrality 02/09/2023

Feedback, Confidence, & Corrections 01/05/2023

Feedback, Confidence, & Corrections In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses: The impact of the e-collar and social media on dog training. Making and molding behaviors. Variable reward schedules and recourse for non-compliance. Changing the problem to clarify the problem when there is a lack of understanding. Key Takeaways: You’re looking for about an 80-20 rule - with 80% compliance - you can look to start moving to the next training session and work on a different type of system to clean up the final 20%. You want the dog to understand the behavior in a number of contexts before saying it is learned. Many handlers are staying too long in the guiding correction, negative reinforcement phase of training. You need to understand what frame of mind your dog is in when you are training. If he is not in the right frame of mind to make a good decision, it needs a different correction than willful disobedience. "I’ve found that in a lot of these discrimination exercises, what I'm battling more than anything else is stimulation and lack of clarity because of that stimulation the dog is trying to deal with. And sometimes pressure or pain, however you want to term it, can increase that stimulation that the dog is feeling in that moment and create an even more stimulated animal." — Jerry Bradshaw Get Jerry's book Contact Jerry: Website: Email: Tarheel Canine Training: Youtube: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: Protection Sports Website: Patreon: Slideshare: Calendly: Tarheel Canine Seminars: Sponsors: ALM K9 Equipment: PSA & American Schutzhund: Tarheel Canine: Superior Canine Website: Aaron’s Superior Canine Email: Superior Canine Facebook: Superior Canine Instagram: Train Hard, train smart, be safe. Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie Audio production by You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. /episode/index/show/controlledaggressionposcast/id/25512261

Controlled Aggression

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