Canine competitors bare teeth

[DoozyDog]

Eager decoys help dogs prove their skills

By PATRICK GIBLIN
BEE STAFF WRITER

Last Updated: January 30, 2006, 07:01:19 AM PST


Sunday was the first day of Chinese new year, The Year of the Dog. Tim Bartlett found a unique way to celebrate it: He was attacked repeatedly by dogs.

Bartlett, 30, wasn't sought by the police or caught burglarizing a house. He volunteered to have dogs hunt him down and bite his arms and legs. It was part of a two-day competition at the Big Basin Dog Training School in Modesto by the California Alliance of Mondioringers.

Mondioring is a competitive sport where owners command their dogs to run through obstacle courses, fetch, sit and stand on command, stay perfectly still while their owners walk away, and hunt down and attack people. They then are scored according to how well they follow commands and complete the actions.

Bartlett was one of two decoys at the show who acted as a human target for the dogs.

"I love dogs," Bartlett said. "I've been training dogs for about eight years and was certified as a dog decoy last year."

As a decoy, he has to dress in about 30 to 40 pounds of protective gear. That includes tights, a large leather protective piece that fits over his groin, extra-thick pants, a thick jacket and special shoes that protect his ankles.

"It's not too heavy," Bartlett said about the clothing. "It's actually pretty flexible, so I can move pretty fast when I need to."

Bartlett lives in San Antonio, where he works as a dog trainer at Lackland Air Force Base. He started competing with his dog in a mondioring club in Texas about two years ago. It was through that club that he was invited to be a decoy at the Saturday and Sunday competition in Modesto.

Mondioring is a new sport to the United States, said Patterson resident Augusta Farley, who operates Best Friends Pet Resort in Patterson. She had two dogs that competed over the weekend.

"The sport is about five years old in the United States and has been in California for about four years," she said. "Because it's so new, we don't have any American judges yet. We had to fly in a judge from France this weekend."

About seven dog owners competed Sunday.

Many of the participants previously competed in another dog sport called Schutzhund, German for protection dog. In that competition, the dogs have been trained as police or security dogs and have learned to attack on command and hunt and chase decoys such as Bartlett.

Lisa Maze of San Diego said she switched from Schutzhund to mondioring about a year ago. It was a good move, she said. Her dog, a Belgian Malinois named Feist, not only earned the highest score during the weekend competition, but earned the highest score ever in a U.S. mondioring competition, Farley said.

Because of that, Maze will compete in a mondioring competition in Portugal in October, she said.

Though she was pleased with how well her dog did, she said the real heroes of the show are the decoys such as Bartlett.

"The decoys usually end up with a lot of bruises on them, yet they don't complain about it," Maze said. "They really love dogs."

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/11...12469692c.html