[Patrick Murray]

Have any of you worked on two dogs attacking the decoy together?

I ask this because I know some people own more than one PPD dog and my concern would be that the dogs, if not trained/conditioned to fight the decoy together, might very well end up fighting each other while the bad guy goes in and whacks the good guy.

 

[Jose Alberto Reanto]

You mean like this?

 

[Mike Schoonbrood]

Yes exactly like that LOL. Cool photo.

So is there a specific way you introduce this type of training to a dog? Is this a natural thing to dogs who live together? or is there something you can do to minimize the problem of one dog biting the other dog?

I know my parents used to have 2 dobermans who hunted iguanas together, I've seen video of this, was very cool to watch how they both work as a team. I would think that if 2 dogs are raised together that they have a pack protective instinct that kicks in for them to fight together.

 

[Kristina Senter]

Definitely pretty automatic for two dogs that know and live together. Once you have that, play tug with both and build up. We do this with Turk and Gator and for instance, can send one at a time, both at once or call one off at a time. Dogs are naturally pack animals and pretty well know how to figure it out.
Most importantly is the danger to the decoy. It can be VERY hard to read 2 dogs and if something were to happen, it can be harder to call them off together than it would be if they were biting solo.
Likewise, most of us have heard some horror stories about two dogs that DON\"T know eachother going for the same bite. Heard about two K-9 units being dispatched to the same call, not realizing eachother were there. Both released their dogs into a building from opposite sides and the dogs met in the middle, with the bad guy going out the back door. Dogs get loose during club sessions, etc. It happens. Its one of the reasons I prefer reasonably dog-social dogs.

 

[Jose Alberto Reanto]

We know that even with some dogs living together, you still get issues of dog-aggression. Dogs may come from different owners and not live together at all but the handlers can pile them all up without them fighting. It all depends on the handler, who puts discipline and stability on his dog. Thru training with varied exposures, dogs are made calm and stable and totally handler-driven. Thus you may even send up four different dogs from diferent handlers to go againts a single decoy, do grid searches, or do rescue work with other dog/man teams hanging closely nearby without them hurting each other. Calmness, stability and absolutely no unnecessary aggression must be well-instilled in a dog before it can be put to real serious work.

In my opinion, unleashing multiple dogs may be ideal for home intrusions where several bad guys may intrude in your property to steal, among others. It's made part of civilian training. Dogs are trained to search and engage bad guys when they see them.

My 0.02$ worth...