| Need some direction
hello everyone,
im looking for some advice. im very new to training and am having trouble with what direction I should go in. I have a 4 yr old American Pit Bull Terrier named Steel. He is my first dog. Ive basically been doing obedience training for the last two years and just started gettting into bitework, but would like to have a little more direction of what I really want out of this. And what is best for steel.
Im on my second trainer now. My first trainer seemed to harsh, almost everything was done with correction with a prong collar. Now Im working with my second trainer who trains personal protection dogs. He was very good but I can tell steel wasnt getting enough out of it. His true drive that I know he has wasnt comming out. His training method also had corrections but it was more fair. Corrections were only made when steel knew he was disobeying a command. It worked but steel was dull most of the time, allot of that could have been me, when I picked up my energy he would pick up his but i really think he could do with a pretty much all positvie training. I just want to be able to still have a dependable dog. Also the problem with that trainer was he was pretty expensive and sometimes hard to get ahold of. I just dont feel im using the most effective technique for my dog.
I got steel when he was probly 10 or 12 weeks old. Our bond is very strong atleast in my opinion. I think I did a decent job of socializing him but I really had no clue about raising a puppy. I was younger and didnt think of the consequences. Anyways of about two years of a crappy noneventful life more him things went bad. He was uncontrolable around dogs scared of everything and very nervous/stressed. Finaly one day after being pent up in the house for 5 hours my girlfriend went to let him and her dog out of the house to go to the bathroom. She was comming out of the house with them as her friend was pulling up in her van. Steel was pulling wildly toward the van and my girlfriend let steel go thinking he would just go up and greet her. Instead steel bit her on the hand and she needed five stitches. Thats when the light turned on for me. Since then it has been a total turn around. I got into training and havent stopped since then. Steel get a couple mile run or played with every day separate from his training.
He lives with my parents now. The have a great area of land and two other dogs for him to play with. I go there everyday and work him and train him. Like i said before i dont know where to go from here. Ive been doing obedience for a bit under two years. And i just started bite work. As far as bitework im working steel on a backtie to try and get his drive up for the game. This is what my trainer has me doing. Hes doing well, i work him on back tie and he is usually very into it. ill run by and if he doesnt get the bite i run away then ill try again if he misses he doesnt get it. i really dont know where to go from here, what techniques to use and what to train for. And how to get the information to train for it. Ill reads books, ill do anything. I wish their were more clubs around here or seminars but there really is nothing near syracuse unless i wanna drive hours and hours. the one trainer i know is over 100 an hour. i cant afford that everyweek just for ONE hour. not enough for me. let me know if you guys have any ideas. thanks | 
