WHY DO THEY PET THAT DOG ON A BITE?

Understanding petting during work.

Well,... petting induces oxytocin. If done,... this should always be done by the handler and never by the decoy. Petting the dog by the helper is building a bond between the helper and the dog. OK in sports and totally not OK in working protection. JMO.Oxytocin is a bonding hormone and feel-good hormone and when induced in correlation with a specific action (here biting a fabric toy) it makes PERMANENT CHANGES in the brain. Do you see how calm the pup is? That is caused by that petting. Petting also should be done together with verbal encouragement...in sports training that is because there, for some reason, the calm bite is preferred. HOWEVER (!) I would like to add that doing this while biting into a toy is great for sport and IMO at the same time it is really bad if you teach the dog who is going to be actual protection or LE dog to bite into the toy. Most trainers do disagree with this argument. Oh well. As they say: "You can not fix st...." The reason is that by doing this equipment encouragement in the initial series of the first sessions you are establishing the default....meaning that the dog FOR the REST OF HIS LIFE will prefer to bite into fabric equipment like sleeves or suits and basically make the dog equipment oriented and not man-oriented - which is desired in working protection dog. Thus that is good for the sport and really bad for "street" protection.