Controlled Aggression

In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:
Training proactive, powerful dogs in proactivity.

Preventing early queues in training to your canine.

Teaching your dog that their actions initiate activity from the target. 

Morphing reactivity into proactivity. 

Having a training progression to move away from the handler and decoy help of early foundational training. 

 
Key Takeaways:
You want your dog to be willing to initiate, even if there's no reaction or triggers from the decoy.

As humans, it is easy for us to identify that a random extremity is part of a larger human being. It takes dogs longer to look at that picture and figure out that what they are seeing is attached to the target, which is a passive human being. 

Have a plan if your dog is struggling with proactivity to go back to foundational elements. Don't get in the habit of assisting them with movement every time. 

Allow context to work for you. Avoid creating anticipation and let the training and context work by changing the picture the dog sees. 

 
"So don't be lazy. Set up your civil sessions, your scenarios, and make sure as the dog comes into the training area that we're setting up these situations that were not leaving clues on the ground in the form of equipment." —  Jerry Bradshaw
 
Episode References: 
The Working Grip Foundation: https://workinggrip.org/ 

Stewart Hilliard's Kynology: https://kynology.org/ 

 
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: thedriveco.com 
The Drive Company Instagram: instagram.com/thedrive.co 
Dog Armour: dogarmour.com 
Dog Armour Instagram: instagram.com/dogarmourpro 
Rogue Arsenal: roguearsenal.com 
Rogue Arsenal Instagram: instagram.com/rogue_arsenal_official 
Kirby K9: k9irby.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:
The importance of mandatory eye contact and how to generalize for distance work.

Moving from negative reinforcement to positive punishment to move from escape to avoidance.

Training progressions to train mandatory eye contact with your dog. 

Transitioning from lure to reward to variable reward. 

 
Key Takeaways:
To get your dog to pay attention to your face, consider putting a food reward in your mouth - like hot dogs, cheese, or chicken. 

Build duration before you build distance in your training progression. If they aren't paying attention at 2 feet, they're not going to pay attention at 20 feet. 

You have to take the training wheels off as you move between training progression levels. 

When you get to trial, you have to operate on an extinction condition - there is no reinforcement or rewards on the field, so it is better to have your dog on a very, very thin variable reward schedule by that point. That only comes through training progressions and systematic generalization. 

 
"If we never get to the point where the dog understands there's a correction for inattention, then that's not going to be a very reliable tool for us for attention at a distance. We want to generalize it. We want to continue to create a systematic desensitization to all the things that the decoy might do." —  Jerry Bradshaw
 
Episode References: 
The Working Grip Foundation: https://workinggrip.org/ 

Stewart Hilliard's Kynology: https://kynology.org/ 

 
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: thedriveco.com 
The Drive Company Instagram: instagram.com/thedrive.co 
Dog Armour: dogarmour.com 
Dog Armour Instagram: instagram.com/dogarmourpro 
Rogue Arsenal: roguearsenal.com 
Rogue Arsenal Instagram: instagram.com/rogue_arsenal_official 
Kirby K9: k9irby.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:
Different ways to deliver pressure reliably to your canine while tracking how the dog is doing while under that pressure. 

Understanding the baseline bite pressure. 

Reading your canine's body language while in a bite. 

How training under pressure is a progressive thing that never ends. 

Training emotional regulation in your dog from a young age. 

Training under the assumption that something is going to go wrong and, at some point, something will bother your dog. 

 
Key Takeaways:
When we don't bring civil aggression and pressure into the biting, we can get failures in the bite. Build in the training now, build the resiliency, give your dog something to lean into when things get stressful.

When trained to handle pressure, police canines can be used to bring suspects into custody in a way that is safer for both the suspect and the officers involved. 

Where most training gets in trouble is when an inexperienced decoy is working with an inexperienced dog, or when training progressions are rushed.

You do not have to go to the lengths of physically hurting dogs in order to create resilience. People do that when they don't actually understand what they're doing. 

Stress inoculation is an ongoing training process for the dog's whole life. It is not something that will be finished at any point. It must happen both gradually and variably. 

Not everything boils down to genetics. Environment and training are also key to getting the most out of any dog. 

 
"Conditioning is training. You have to show the dog the pictures. You have to run through the processes. You have to be aware of what you can do with this dog and where he is in the levels of training. Stress and pressure then become predictable and addressable by the dog. This is so important. If they never see stuff, it's not predictable." —  Jerry Bradshaw
 
Episode References: 
The Working Grip Foundation: https://workinggrip.org/ 

Stewart Hilliard's Kynology: https://kynology.org/ 

 
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: thedriveco.com 
The Drive Company Instagram: instagram.com/thedrive.co 
Dog Armour: dogarmour.com 
Dog Armour Instagram: instagram.com/dogarmourpro 
Rogue Arsenal: roguearsenal.com 
Rogue Arsenal Instagram: instagram.com/rogue_arsenal_official 
Kirby K9: k9irby.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:
Bringing more civil aggression into your sport or police dogs. 

Utilizing prey guarding to start training young dogs for proactive defense.

The difference between uncontrolled aggression and expressive aggression. 

What to look for in a patrol dog regarding civil aggression. 

The three ways dogs manifest a reaction to a threat. 

 
Key Takeaways:
In our training for our police dogs, we're concentrating on these civil aggression essentials and thinking about how that decoy can bring about some of that aggression, and then we can start to minimize the cues that bring out that aggression, and then it becomes much more contextual.

Don't let people make you believe that just because a dog shows expressiveness and aggression in an expressive way, the dog will become uncontrollable and incapable.

Defense is not a dirty word. There's nothing to be scared of. Defense is not a weakness. 

When promoting aggression and tapping into the defensive side of the dog, and building confidence in those reactions is ignored, oftentimes the dog cannot figure out how to bring a prey response out of a decoy, which can lead to displacement behaviors. 

 
"It's easier to cap a dog when he understands how to be expressive than to never allow him to be expressive in the beginning." —  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: thedriveco.com 
The Drive Company Instagram: instagram.com/thedrive.co 
Dog Armour: dogarmour.com 
Dog Armour Instagram: instagram.com/dogarmourpro 
Rogue Arsenal: roguearsenal.com 
Rogue Arsenal Instagram: instagram.com/rogue_arsenal_official 
 
Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2026 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 today's podcast short, Jerry Bradshaw discusses issues with muzzle attacks in the PSA Level 2, noting that many dogs and handlers struggle with this exercise. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the fundamentals of a good muzzle fight and suggests starting with unsuited muzzle work to build civil aggression. Jerry advises limiting strikes in training sessions to manage your dog's frustrations and to gradually introduce other equipment, such as bite suits and hidden sleeves. He stresses the need for decoys to provide accurate feedback and to avoid distractions in early training sessions, especially when starting out on muzzle work. 
 
"We want the dog biting through the muzzle. The muzzle is just something that's keeping him from biting that decoy." —  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: thedriveco.com 
The Drive Company Instagram: instagram.com/thedrive.co 
Dog Armour: dogarmour.com 
Dog Armour Instagram: instagram.com/dogarmourpro 
Rogue Arsenal: roguearsenal.com 
Rogue Arsenal Instagram: instagram.com/rogue_arsenal_official 
 
Find out more about Hold The Line Conference 2026 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.