Essentials of Civil Aggression

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: [email protected] 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.