[Bruce MacPherson]

I posted before that I was going through some force fetch issues with my 11 month old Billy. We seem to have gotten over the hump with that and we have moved on. Yesterday shooting some BB marks the first bumper was brought back properly and held, on the second mark we run he goes back to grabbing the bumper, in this case a standard BB bumper, by the cord. Now he made a concious effort to grab it there. I thought here we go again but on closer inspection saw that he had blood on the bumper and his tounge. He did this once before and I took him to the Vet to see if we had a tooth or gum issue but while the Vet said she didn't see any problems he was also moving around quite a bit and I'm not realy sure she got as good a look as she should have had. He's to old to be teething so I'm wondering if anyone else may have experienced this and if so what was it or what was the cause? This seems to happen with hard bumpers the issue dosen't seem to present itself with softer bumpers.
Any thoughts?

Mac

 

[Chris Miller]

My 16 month old dog bites is tongue all the time, in fact he did it again this morning. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Guest]

I will bet this...

9/10 a bitten tongue is the result of a panting dog - and if a young dog is panting, it's not a good time to reinforce FF (regardless of the tongue, they're trying to cool their bodies off and it's hard to hold and concentrate when panting).

I don't know if this is the case with your's or not.

But, as a training example, two days ago we were doing water marks with some of my young dogs coming out of FF. They did three singles. It was REALLY hot out. It was supposed to have been cloudy. Of the ones in FF, I was planning to reinforce hold -- just really basic. But after the first mark, they were panting quite heavily and it just wasn't fair to reinforce it. Temps have just gotten really hot here, we were out in full sun, we had long land runs down to the water and then a reasonable swim.

However, some dogs just bite their tongue. Just make sure it's not because he's too hot. If he is panting, save your FF lessons and field reinforcement for cooler temps or a less hot dog.

-K

 

[Zack]

I have a dog that cant pickup a bumper without bleeding from the mouth. He is a 'sccoper' and never slows down to pick up the bumper, bird, whatever. With him, bleeding from the mouth is just a fact of life. Doesnt seem to bother him.

I have several other dogs that do the same thing, just not on as consistant basis. They generally at least check up some when picking up the object.