Dog won't bark - Page 2

She'd make a deadly sentry dog.....

Try working her with other dogs who are barkers... put her in the middle between two and work up and down the line.  She may pick up the behavior of the other dogs, and begin barking.  Be sure to encourage even the smallest noises, whines and such... good luck

Silent but deadly is great, and I personally find IRL the silent dogs more intimidating, but I'd rather my dog bark and keep someone away in the first place rather than bite some disgusting would-be robber and get his germs (and a lawsuit for me).   Besides, the purpose of the hold & bark is a Searching dog whose job is to find the bad guy on his own and alert his handler, who may certainly be out of sight, as to exactly where he is while making sure he stays there. 

There are many different reasons why dogs don't bark. And many different things to do to get the dog to bark. Just recently we had two situations. One was the dog wouldn't bark. So we had the handler put his dog behind a fence and frustrate him with the dogs toy. After a little bit the dog started to bark and then he rewarded the dog with the toy. Then he incorperated the command to bark. That carried over to the bite work.   Then we had one that wouldn't bite. We tried everything. How we got him to bite was, the dog has a lot of pack drive. He works through obedience pretty much to please the handler/owner. So we beat up the handler with a towel. After a few wacks with the towel on the handler the dog came and bit the towel.

     Mark

www.ultimatekanine.com

I taught my girl to bark on command when she was about 10 wks old.  I wanted her to let me know when she was needing to go outside to potty.  I used food as a reward and teased her with my vocals making all kinds of wierd noises with the command "speak" thrown in.  I coupled this with a hand signal bringing the treat up next to my right eye each time I said speak.  Eventually she whined in confusion and I gave her a treat saying "good speak".  It didn't take long for her to vocalize with me, getting treated each time.  Finally she did bark and we made a big deal of that and she put it all together in about 30 minutes.  It took a little longer for her to figure out I wanted her to bark when she wanted out but she did.  Now my husband is wishing I never got her talking but I love it.  Now we know if she needs to go out, if supper is late, if the dog down the street is barking, if she is bored, etc.  It is a change of pace since our old girl didn't bark until I got her to bark at the doorbell.  She sounded so fierce but all she knew was when the doorbell rang, someone on the other side of the door was coming just to love on her.  She was just telling us to open that door! 

You might try going out when the heron is in the creek and encourage the dog to bark and treat her when she does.  Give the command while she is barking and praise her.  Then try it away from the bird and under different circumstances to see if you reinforced it.

Good luck!

Deb  

Wow...lots of answers....thanks y'all! Really good ones too.
She was a fustrating little bitch sometimes. She's got great prey and a good balance of defense. She's almost 4 years old now and "was" going to be my next schutzhund dog. You're right OkieAmazon....not much of a hold and bark without the bark. LOL! You can't pass much that way. The "silent bounce in place" is funny though. I've often thought maybe she would get "locked in prey" and that was a part of the problem. But even as a pup, she was very quiet. Matter of fact, she's the easiest pup I ever raised.

We've tried just about everything with her including most of what everyone's suggested. Fire her up, fustrate her, no noise. Kenny's trick, no noise, just bored tail wagging. No noise on the line, we tried. We got one growl when we tried the "helper sneak up in the dark" similar to what Okie described. But only one. We tried the crate trick once. No bark...but a huge growl. The quick end result was a damaged crate, laughing helper on the ground, and a happy tail wagging dog shaking the sleeve.

I retired her from real training at two and a half from a broken leg and torn ACL. We still train some for fun to keep her spirits up and she's a happy girl. But I couldn't see crippling her or her killing herself over a bark that won't happen just for a title. Every now and then though, I wonder if she'll find her voice someday.

Windwalker...she IS a deadly sentry dog. Herons, cats and intruders don't stand a chance.

Bark or no bark, I couldn't ask for a better dog.

My 2 year old male is like that, he can bark but choses not too,he lets the female do all the warning while he just quitely sneeks up. His bark will send chills up your neck and he is on you. He gives no warning but is just there. She is in your face and has your attention, you turn around and there is this 110 lb dark faced dog at alert. Why he does that quite stalking I dont know. Good question but I would enjoy the quite when you can get it HA 

 We tried the crate trick once. No bark...but a huge growl.

See, I think it worked: you had a silent dog who the FIRST TIME let out a "huge growl."   So you immediately got a huge vocalization out of this silent dog.  That would give you something to work on and build from.  With a sturdier crate next time (LOL).  With such an extremely silent dog it's not surprising that she didn't magically turn on the barking with a new method.  But absolutely agree with you: no bark and an injury yes, better off to retire this particular dog and let her excel at what she DOES do.  That's the best of all.

Tess I thought we were on to something too at the time. Ruined my spare crate. Huge growl, and BAM she's out. That quick. Cheers! Finally! After months of trying we got a noise! We never got much chance to try again. A month later we were at the ortho vet over a misstep in the yard.

When she snapped that leg it was heartbreaking. And not over some titles I'd never cared much about anyway. No, I was done when that dog fell and couldn't walk, but still drug herself after the ball and tried to bring it back before I could run over and stop her. When I brought her home from surgery and put her down in the yard, the first thing she did was creep over to a stick, pick it up and give me her "play with me?" look. No title, no nothing is worth a dog like that.

"better off to retire this particular dog and let her excel at what she DOES do". Yes, I believe so too. She is happy and I have no regrets. Just had that nagging why won't the dog whine/scream/bark question.

I dont know if this has been mentioned but i taught my dogs to bark using what they bark at naturally.

1st I put my dogs in a crate and had my wife sneak outside and ring the door bell.

when she did i would say speak as i new they would bark anyway. The moment they bark instant treat. I repeated this many times until they did it on command before they bell would ring.nbsp

2nd I then would let the bell ring and say quiet but when they would bark i would verbally correct them and say no quiet. Then treat for quiet.nbsp

after a while they would look at me for the command to bark or be quiet.nbsp

hope that helps.