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 Controlled Aggression on Amazon.com

Contact Jerry:

Website: controlledaggressionpodcast.com

Email: JBradshaw@TarheelCanine.com

Tarheel Canine Training: www.tarheelcanine.com

Youtube: tarheelcanine

Twitter: @tarheelcanine

Instagram: @tarheelk9

Facebook: TarheelCanineTraining

Protection Sports Website: psak9-as.org

Patreon: patreon.com/controlledaggression

Slideshare: Tarheel Canine

Calendly: https://calendly.com/tarheelcanine

Tarheel Canine Seminars: https://streetreadyk9.com/

Tarheel Canine Student Portal: https://tcstudentportal.com/

Sponsors:

ALM K9 Equipment: almk9equipment.com

PSA & American Schutzhund: psak9-as.org

Tarheel Canine: tarheelcanine.com

The Drive Company: https://thedriveco.com/

The Drive Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedrive.co

Train Hard, Train Smart, Be Safe.

Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

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 Controlled Aggression on Amazon.com

Contact Jerry:

Website: controlledaggressionpodcast.com

Email: JBradshaw@TarheelCanine.com

Tarheel Canine Training: www.tarheelcanine.com

Youtube: tarheelcanine

Twitter: @tarheelcanine

Instagram: @tarheelk9

Facebook: TarheelCanineTraining

Protection Sports Website: psak9-as.org

Patreon: patreon.com/controlledaggression

Slideshare: Tarheel Canine

Calendly: https://calendly.com/tarheelcanine

Tarheel Canine Seminars: https://streetreadyk9.com/

Tarheel Canine Student Portal: https://tcstudentportal.com/

Sponsors:

ALM K9 Equipment: almk9equipment.com

PSA & American Schutzhund: psak9-as.org

Tarheel Canine: tarheelcanine.com

The Drive Company: https://thedriveco.com/

The Drive Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedrive.co

Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2025 at https://htlk9.com/

Train Hard, train smart, be safe.

Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

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 Controlled Aggression on Amazon.com

Contact Jerry:

Website: controlledaggressionpodcast.com

Email: JBradshaw@TarheelCanine.com

Tarheel Canine Training: www.tarheelcanine.com

Youtube: tarheelcanine

Twitter: @tarheelcanine

Instagram: @tarheelk9

Facebook: TarheelCanineTraining

Protection Sports Website: psak9-as.org

Patreon: patreon.com/controlledaggression

Slideshare: Tarheel Canine

Calendly: https://calendly.com/tarheelcanine

Tarheel Canine Seminars: https://streetreadyk9.com/

Tarheel Canine Student Portal: https://tcstudentportal.com/

Sponsors:

ALM K9 Equipment: almk9equipment.com

PSA & American Schutzhund: psak9-as.org

Tarheel Canine: tarheelcanine.com

The Drive Company: https://thedriveco.com/

The Drive Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedrive.co

Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2025 at https://htlk9.com/

Train Hard, train smart, be safe.

Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.