April 23, 2026 – Controlled Aggression Podcast

Back to the Laboratory in Bite Work

April 23, 2026 suddeth08 1:23:39

If your dog won’t counter full, won’t push into the fight, or spins away when you approach, this episode is for you. Jerry breaks down exactly why these bite work issues happen and how to rebuild the foundation so your dog bites harder, fuller, and with real confidence.

In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:

Drive channelling as a confidence builder for your dog.
Bite work problems and their solution strategies.
Inducing counter bites, getting appropriate pressure when biting, and encouraging pushing into the bite.
Reasons to train your out before your bite work and not create an association that may create an out you don’t want.
The three types of pressure you need to account for are creating desensitization to distraction objects.

Key Takeaways:

If a dog doesn’t know how to fight out of its problems, you may get displacement and avoidance creeping in.
Training bite work in young dogs may require different techniques than those used for training with older dogs.
When you train with a crutch, you will, eventually, need to wean yourself off the crutch.
Make sure your decoys aren’t bailing. Make sure they aren’t sidestepping, dropping their arms, or pulling the dogs into their chest. That is only going to make it worse.
It is very important to be able to get your dog out in many different ways. That is going to require desensitization to anything you’re going to bring near the dog’s head.
We have to work on type, intensity, and duration of pressure, and our goal is to desensitize objects early in training. The more the dog can see those things, the more he can negotiate through weird stuff that he hasn’t seen before; the more the dog will understand what he’s supposed to do and how he’s supposed to do it.

“One of the things that we know is that the grip itself is the barometer of how the dog feels when he’s biting. So if the dog doesn’t feel super confident about biting, he’s going to create a little bit of distance between himself and the perceived conflict, which could be the helper itself.” — 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

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Slideshare: Tarheel Canine