Bitesports (Ringsports and IPO)

[chelsey]

Thought I could start a thread similar to the agility thread but for sports involving bitework or protection training.

I will come back and posts pics and such tonight, but I got involved with French Ring naturally after getting my first Malinois. We have to travel 4 hours (one-way) for training with our training decoy, but we can do a lot of non bitework stuff on our own. My goal for my 2 year old male is to attempt his Brevet and possibly Ring 1 in August at a trial in Montreal. There may be another Montreal trial in late September/October but I will wait and see how the first trial goes.

Here is a link that describes the differences between FR and IPO. http://dantero.com/frschdif.php

The most obvious difference is the decoy wears a full bite suit and the dogs can target any way they want, although most ring dogs are taught legs first and upper body when they are more experienced. There is no tracking in FR and the obedience routine is very different and not graded on style, rather more objectively as pass/fail or specific deductions. The bitework is more challenging and complicated to the dog, especially at the upper levels.

French ring is exhilarating and exciting to train. Wiley lives for bitework, and he is happiest after a day with our decoy.

I also love this article on the sport: http://www.canadianringsport.com/moreau.pdf It was published in 1991, the ideas and training philosophies seem way ahead of its time.

I know some of you here do IPO or have played around in ringsport... How's training going?

 

[release the hounds]

I compete in IPO, and do decoy work for that and Mondio, though I have much more experience in IPO. I do train both with one dog that I don't compete with.

Training is going well, but slow when I'm my own helper. There are things I need someone else for to get the picture I want on trial day.

I have a sprinkling of pics and videos on here somewhere.

I like all the sports and think they all have their merits, strengths and weaknesses. I really appreciate the simplicity of IPO. Trust me, training with a bunch of ring people i hear it all the time how boring and tedious and repititious it is. But when applied correctly, I don't think anybody can really discount what it has meant to the working dog. Almost every single working dog today has it's roots in schutzhund tested dogs.

Now some have cheapened it and weakened it, no doubt about that, but there is so much you can tell about a dog with a stick and sleeve. Some people get bored with it, and that's ok.

About the only thing I'd change is to get rid of the a frame and make it a scaling wall again and bring back the attack out of the blind.

 

[adojrts]

I have nothing to add other than I love watching it. If I had a breed that would be suitable for it, I would.

Looking forward to see everyone's vids and photos

 

[FG167]

Oooo fun! I'm excited to participate. I am training in IPO. I have a 2 year old GSD that I'm aiming for his BH in August and IPO I this Fall hopefully. We also drive 4 hours to training....in another state. I ADORE my club and live training there. My fiancé also competes so we train a lot together. I have loads of pics and vids but I'm on my phone...we're on our way to Tues night training now so I'll post more tomorrow.

 

[GatorDog]

I train IPO with my two dogs. I have an almost 4 year old male who I have been training since he was about 6-7 months. He will be going for IPO3 in about 8 weeks. I also have a 6 month old female who I've been training since 9 weeks old.

I think IPO is incredibly difficult. My male does not have high drive for food/toy and is very defensive in the bitework, so training him has been a serious challenge. He is a good tracker, thankfully. My female is an absolute piece of cake to train. She loves everything.

The fact that all 3 phases are graded so intensely makes it that much more challenging. I thought it was a lot of work in the beginning, and then I participated in my first trial and was blown away. Waking up for tracking at 6am, then obedience by 10 and bitework by 2 or 3 means that you're not done trialing your dog until mid afternoon. It's exhausting and exhilirating.

I train every single day, track 4-5 times weekly and travel way more often than I ever imagined. I have met so many incredible people and dogs through the sport. I hope to finish my male this season and concentrate on my female through the winter and start trailing with her next season. She is a lot of fun to work with and I think we will do well in the sport together.

I hear people say all the time that IPO has become so watered down and so much "easier" for the dogs, but I think that if it were really all that easy, a lot more people would be out there competing. I have gotten some flack from people who have seen my male trial and were less than impressed by his performance, but I have a lot of confidence in him and in the fact that not many people title their first IPO dog to the level that we have already achieved, and many of the people lashing out at us are people who have never and probably will never go as far as we have.

We work our asses off and it pays well in the end.

Aiden

6/29/13 by Gator_Dog, on Flickr


6/29/13 by Gator_Dog, on Flickr

Carma

6/30/13 by Gator_Dog, on Flickr


6/19/13 by Gator_Dog, on Flickr

[YOUTUBE]6HLsCruyjHM[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]cd3_d6_jbYE[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]7d22d3M4NcU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[release the hounds]

Most people criticizing are doing so because they trained obedience once, so they think it's all easy, or their dog bit a sleeve once on a leash, so of course it's good at protection or they've never done any of it and think it's all easy.

It's easy to make a dog look good to a lot of people in just protection. it's fairly easy to get flashy ob for a while and impress people that don't do it, and as much as I hate tracking, it isn't terribly difficult to make a dog look ok tracking during training. But very time consuming.

But to get your dog to perform in a trial and pass all three phases takes a lot of work in dedication. I think trials are pretty boring overall if I look at it as a 3rd party person that isn't involved. But knowing all the work that goes in to those few minutes on a protection field, I can appreciate all of it. Those who don't do, miss out on a lot.

A person I do helper work with trialed a couple weeks ago. It was great watching them out there. To see all the work pay off with a 96. All the little things we did to keep the dog up but in control. it's all a balancing act and all dogs are balanced differently.

If a dog has a tough time on a track, you still have ob and protection, if you lose some control in ob, you have to get it together for protection. If you put too much control in, will the dog perform to it's potential in protection? There's a lot that has to come together on trial day. and it's a lot easier to look good on a training field than it is on a trial field. No freakin doubt about that.

 

[Red Chrome]

I train IPO, Ring and do some personal protection with my GSD. My pit bull has been started in it but due to health issues will never compete.

Judge is my first real Schutzhund dog. I titled my first pit bull to a BH. I got a dog bred for work and boy, has it been a long hard road. We ate going to try for a 1 in October. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't but he is still one helluva dog.

I should have a new puppy in October to train and compete with and I think we will reach our goals this time, cause I have a lot more experience.

 

[Maliraptor]

Both my husband and I train and compete (Regional/National/WC level) in IPO. I have trained two dogs from puppy to IPO3, and am working on my third. I have played with Ring, but it is too far of a travel for me right now with a young child and other commitments at home.

I currently have a 2 year old male Malinois that has a BH. I will do his 1 this fall.

I also have a super 12 month old female Malinois that we're working foundation on.

This is my husband's dog at the 2013 Working Dog Championships:

We train daily. In fact, it's about cool enough to go run blinds again.

 

[chelsey]

Awesome! Love all the pics.

I am at the beginning of my journey into this sport. I am lucky to have a dog who has the aptitude, drive and biddability to learn this sport with me. I really admire the versatility of the IPO program and think that kind of well-roundedness is important when comparing working pedigrees. My initial comparison was because in my experience many people know a little bit about IPO but not as many know what the ring sports are all about, or the differences between the activities. I do FR because that was the sport that initially drew me in and got me hooked.

This vid has clips of our training from Saturday on the exercises we worked on. The Brevet level has a Face Attack and Defense of Handler, FR1 has the previous with increased pressure and challenge from the decoy, plus a gun attack/guard and flee attack. Not a lot of people share their training mistakes and all (as opposed to a finished product), but Wiley is a work in progress and I am thrilled with many moments in this vid, and I know what we are working on for our next training

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht0eBkfKaD4[/YOUTUBE]

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

We train IPO. My male and my boyfriends bitch.

I have videos and photos galore that I will add as it gets easier.

I am hoping, with time, to add another dog to train IPO with. I love the ring sports, I was brought into IPO and am hooked. I wanted to try some ring with Backup, maybe nextpuppy can dapple with time.

 

[release the hounds]

the first mistake I see is nothing but a white box was posted

but the few I have on here have plenty of mistakes. I would like to get more, but we rarely take time to video anything. A few times a year I bring the camera out and try and capture some stuff. Last time I had someone using mine, they moved the telephoto and not the focus ring (dSLR so no autofocus) so there was 4 dogs worth of stuff too blurry to watch

 

[chelsey]

Guess the embedded youtube video button doesn't work too great!

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht0eBkfKaD4

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

Double post.

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

To embed a video here you only put the letters and numbers *after* the backslash in between the YouTube boxes. So instead of the whole www . YouTube . Com / blah blah blah you just put the blah blah blah. It took me a while to figure that out.

 

[chelsey]

That's good to know, thanks!!!

 

[release the hounds]

bahhhh, forget it

[YOUTUBE]/watch?v=ht0eBkfKaD4[/YOUTUBE]

 

[stardogs]

I train and compete in IPO with my 4yo male ACD mix, Kestrel, and my 2.5yo female malinois, Aerten.

Kestrel has his BH and IPO-VO and will hopefully trial for his 1 this winter if I can get off my butt and train tracking more.

(from our VO )

Aerten (Aeri) has her BH and may go for her VO or 1 this winter - we still have a way to go on control in protection, so our progress there will likely be the determining factor.

^pardon the look on my face - this was our BH and I was counting steps LOL

(old pic, but apparently I don't have many photos of Aeri doing protection stuffs yet)

Kestrel I hope to get a 3 on at our club trials, with Aeri I'd love to go further but we shall see.

 

[release the hounds]

you must remain intense while counting steps, because if you go too far or too few the judge teases you and then everybody thinks you can't count. It's embarrassing

 

[Emily]

I started working my Mal at the beginning of March with a local club that was formerly a PSA club though is no longer formally affiliated. I was vaguely familiar with the sport beforehand; I knew it was a relatively new suit sport, some variability in the scenarios, weird crazy distractions, and a relatively high amount of pressure on the dogs. I think if I had my pick I'd probably do French Ring first and foremost, but I'm really enjoying where we train and all of the weird stuff the dog (and handler) sees in PSA. I avoided IPO like the plague solely because I don't wanna track.

I've been lucky and Blossom has been a joy to train and making steady progress. She's a little firecracker, very high prey drive and quite spun up during bitework. At this point we are simply working on obedience for bites, as she runs hot enough that we needed early control, and that's going very well now that she understand the concept. We're also moving her from a sleeve to the jacket, which is also going great! And of course, introducing and desensitizing her to sticks and various weird distractions.

We train Wednesday nights and sometimes Saturdays if I can make it (depends on work schedule). We both love it!

And yes, I get regular ribbing over doing bitework with a dog named "Blossom." After she came out guns blazing in her initial evaluation, someone said to me, "So... you can change her name... really, you can." LOL

 

[chelsey]

LOL. I started in French ring with a 30 lb runt of the litter mini malinois female named Bug. Her working harness also fit a schipperke

Used to always warn a new decoy about the "monster of a dog" coming up next. Then I bring out my sweet little Bug. I'll have to dig out a pic of her when I get home tonight.

PSA seems really interesting, I read through some of the scenarios and stuff, the stuff with hidden sleeves is cool and it sounds like the dogs are pushed through some socially and physically intimidating stuff! Are there PSA trials around you? They are trying to start them around here. It'd be cool to go see I think!