Teaching the bark & hold - Page 2

thats kinda like saying you wouldn't want your dog playing tug with you, since you only want him to play tug with the decoy. ;)
it transfers to the decoy on practice days.
so when the weekend comes and the dog is on a poll, and the helper is getting closer and closer to your dog, and you give the command revier (or what ever you use) the light will go on at some point and your dog will know he doesn't get the bite till he is given the ok..but until the ok is given he needs to bark.  And build from there. I don't know if I would do one vs the other..i think it would work best if you have the decoy helping you on training days as well as working on it at home. but i guess we'll see :) i'd love to see some other videos on the subject too!

You should first ask "what should a hold and bark look like" and "how should the dog view the hold and bark".  If you dont have these two simlple questions answered first or understang the theory behind a hold and bark.....you are wasting you time.

Many people do not understand a hold and bark....so you will be getting BAD information.

Excellent point Jim concerning the NEVER touching the helper.....I started my bitch barking on me....with a tug...she's a loud mouth anyway:-) She came out the womb barking...my male was a different story...we started him on a pole...then graduated to the blind...we keep the dog close by having an escape hatch out the back of the blind.....

So far I have not had trouble with my dogs barking and I want my end product to be a dog that shows power and control (not just self control not being dirty but a dog that knows he's in control of the situation using his barking and his biting), I want aggression and strength not just precision and not a prey-exercise.  My younger dog is 14 months and we have to wait with H&B because he is still goofy and not bringing powerful aggression.  He will bark all day and he's not dirty and strikes VERY fast, hard, full bite so the mechanics and genetics are there but the maturity is not, I can just tell.  My 3 year old dog has always been a more serious dog even as a youngster so he started H&B much sooner because there was aggression there to work with.  I guess we just sort of ease into it once the dog is ready.  Looking back at what we did with the 3 year old dog, once the dog understood that barking gives him control and results, we did a little work where the helper would move back as the dog barked him forward, then the helper moved into the dog and the dog backed up barking, training them to respect each other but always making it so the dog won in the end.  Didn't really have problems with the dog wanting to be dirty so we transitioned from feeding the dog out towards the helper to sending the dog and giving an initial check to keep him clean and then just built from there, sending from farther away, sending from different angles, putting the helper against the outside of the blind, putting the helper in the blind, etc.

My dogs will "speak" bark nonstop at me when I command them and stop when I say stop but I don't know how much this really carries over since we are playing around with toys and I expect some aggression behind the barking when working protection.  I don't think it hurts any for the handler to reinforce that it's OK to bark nonstop when told and that barking gets results but I don't really see this as building the foundation for the H&B as a protection exercise.