E-Collar for the out?

I am very new to the whole dog training thing but just wanted to throw this out there. I spend time with our Police K9 unit and the trainer was having the same problem with his dog. He was very hard to out on the sleeve. His dog was trained using the Kong so he would take two Kongs, give one to the dog. He would give the out command and throw second Kong to the ground. The dog would out his Kong and retrieve the second one. He would retrieve the first and repeat the excercise several times. I believe it is along the same lines as Lisa mentioned. That the dog learns when he outs, he still gets a reward. He would play this game a few times a day for a few minutes. He did say that he was starting to notice a difference, however, shortly after the dog died suddenly so I can't tell you how it turned out in the long run.
He has started training a new dog and used this from the beginning. He has had no problems whatsoever with the new dog.

I think what novarobin is referring to is outing the dog when playing two-ball or two-tug at home. Not throwing a ball to try to get the dog off the man.

We use tugs and balls for obedience training and do use the out/reward method there. Lock up the toy, out the dog, dog lets go, toy comes alive again. The dog quickly learns that letting go is the way to restart the fun and this helps get the dog into the habit of happily outing on command.

While this habit forming can help in bitework it certainly doesn't transfer directly. The drives and levels of drive a dog is in during bitework are on a whole different level than when playing ball. A strong dog who is working in fight/aggression when on the man isn't going to let go for a ball, and just because he'll out his ball when in prey drive playing doesn't mean he's going to out right away when fighting a person. It's just apples and oranges. And likely a degree of compulsion is going to be needed when it comes to the out in the bitework.

When I am working on out, I will give a random re-bite.(when I am holding the sleeve). When she holds a "suspect" in a bite suit, she gets her kong when she "outs" and returns to the heel position. She occassionally will not release on the first command, maybe she is just too wound up maybe she is ignoring me. The e collar is a fairly good way to grab her attention. My department has a mali that will not recall at least half the time durring training. After the first failed recall, his handler will put on the e collar and the dog is a totally different animal. With consistent training, the dog should "out" on the first command....SHOULD being the key word. The K-9 unit supervisor litterally has to pull his shepherd off of the sleeve/suit/suspect. He says that it leaves the dog wanting more. Personally, I will take a good "out" or recall any day of the week.

First off thanks to lhczth for the recommendation and to David Frost for the kind words. Second, I know this thread is a couple of months old but I just found this board. I'm wondering if the OP found a solution to his problem?

My specialty these days is problem solving and the most common one facing police dog handlers is getting a clean-verbal out. This is essential not only for the safety of the public but other police officers and the suspects that we bite as well. The law as well as common decency requires that while making an apprehension, we use the minimum for necessary to effect the arrest.

Leaving out the philosophy for the moment. The longest it's ever taken me to get a verbal out is about 45 minutes. That was with a dog that was fighting through an immensely high level of pain that had been applied to him in efforts to get him to out. They hadn't worked and might have even made the problem worse. Usually the solution is achieved in less than 20 minutes and this is done without affecting the rest of the dog's work. In fact, if people can buy into the theory and philosophy, overall, the dog's work improves greatly! Of course this does not fix the problem for the rest of the dog's life, but once the out has been obtained, it's easy to maintain.