My 12-month dog won’t bark in protection work. What should I do?

Get my video, The First Steps of Defense. It sounds like this is a dog with very high thresholds (hard to tell from a email). If it is - it does not do a good job countering but rather locks on and does not let go. If this is the case (and it is a high threshold dog its going to take a skilled helper to bring the dog out properly and even then its never going to be a great working dog because it does not receive threats and therefore does not react. This is often a genetic thing.

If it is this - the dog needs to go out and have the snot scared out of him to teach him that there can be bad guys out there. Once he realizes this he will bark. I would strongly not recommend this without studying the tape I talked about above. If its done on the wrong dog or done to much on the right dog - it will destroy what you have worked to build over this first year.

On the other hand it may just be poor work - either from the helper or the training techniques. Again - not something that can be determined from an email. Don't take offense - but it is always a possibility when I have no idea who people are or what their skill level is.