Bark & Hold

[Zephir]

Curious, how do you teach the "bark" in the bark & hold. Is the bark taught as a seperate command away from the protection work? Do you teach it like an obedience command like sitz or platz? Or is it taught in conjunction with the actual protection work? The reason I am asking is my dog is injured currently, and I want to teach her as much as I can while she is recovering that is not physical. This way, when she is well, we won't be so far behind with her training (granted she gets an ok with the vet to do schutzhund). Oh, Neiko is almost 12 months old. I am not a member of a club, yet, because I will be moving out of state soon - so I don't have the opportunity to ask club members. I have never trained a schutzhund dog so please explain your replies throughly.

Thanks for your replies.

[Leader]

As I usually say, I'm no expert BUT...:)

Here in France in French ringsport we try to teach bark very early, although with our darlingsz it can take time:p ...It took leader 1 day (after almost 2 years of trying all sorts of ideas, one day I sat down in the living room and held his bowl just above his head and said Bark until he did and THEN he ate...it took him 3 hours:( )

With my little Blaze I tried something else. She's a barker anyway so every time she barked I said bark and praised her...she learned really fast and barks to go out, to open a door, to get a treat , to be fed, and to bite in ring sport when we do the seek and bark (my invention. I don't know the name in English. when she has to find the decoy in a blind....and then bark to let me know she's found him... ). She was really easy to teach, Leader still sounds like he's just clearing his throat, except in the ring!:D :D )


Hope this helps. By the way Blaze is 6 months old.



Leader

[work-n-show]

There are a BUNCH of ways to train a dog to bark properly.

Tying a young dog out to watch others work seems to do pretty good at working frustration to get a bark.

Bringing the dog out and rewarding barking with a bite on a tug or a sleeve works pretty well also. You need a helper that has great timing. Eventually, that turns into the dog calling the helper to him with his bark and being rewarded with a bite. Then, that turns into the dog correctly positioning himself in front of the helper barking for his bite. Timing has to be really good to keep the dog from EVER being dirty when you start sending the dog in for a B&H from short distances, on-lead.

Again, there are a bunch of opinions as to what works the best. Not every dog responds to the same things.

[Storm]

In the early stages of bite work you will want to build the enthusiasm and drive purely for gettining the tug, sausage etc. Then you have a scenario where the dog is driving onto the field, if taught correctly, now the dog has formed an association where he channels his drive into biting the equipment. So now we say you want it "ask" for it. Depending on the dog frustration may work, alternatively we have to open up the defense, bearing in mind the age of the dog here and various other factors. So then ultimately you will have a dog driving to get onto the field, activating once on the field and from there we can teach the hold etc. considering that grip is good. If the dog learns that by barking he activates the helper and gets what he wants it will speed up the process with more activation from the dog and less effort from the helper to get the activation from the dog and so the dog will drive the helper more and more for some "action". So the bark must be taught with those associations, drives etc. to imprint a combined picture of what all is happening.

[Zephir]

Ok, does this mean that when I tease her with bite toys (not sleeves) should I tease her so much until she barks and immediately give her the bite toy? When I reward her for her bark by giving her the toy should I be concerned about the depth of her bite or am I rewarding her just for the bark right now? I am not member of a club so working with a helper is not an option right now. My husband and I would be wroking on this together. By the way, Neiko goes absolutely crazy for her bite toys. She really wants her toys!!!!

Thanks for your help!!!!!!!!!:D

[laurlitt]

Originally posted by Zephir
When I reward her for her bark by giving her the toy should I be concerned about the depth of her bite or am I rewarding her just for the bark right now?

IF the tug toy is presented correctly to her you should be able to get a good bite at the same time (especially if she's already worked on this)... I think making sure there's a good bite along w/ the barking is teaching great habits... Eventually the barking of the bark and hold will lead to a bite, so you'd want to start teaching the bark, bark, bark, to lead to a deep bite... Keep in mind, I'm fairly new to this myself... but it makes good sense to me :)

P.S. If the bite isn't that good, there are ways to get her to re-grip for a better more full bite.

[Zephir]

Neiko is barking!!! Anytime we present her with a bite toy she barks. It took maybe 2 attempts and she started barking. My male on the other hand will not bark to save his life. I tried a bite toy, other toys, food, barking myself:D & nothing has worked so far for him. I'll just keep trying different things.