Hi guys I have a 6 year old GS Patrol dog.

He is great, the only issue I have is his noise level when he is in his drive modes.

He is quiet in the Patrol vehicle and doesn't make a sound. However when I start a building search he whines, this is bad in any tactical situations as you can imagine.

In training, I do not let him conduct his search until he is quiet. - Making him learn that he gets to work when he is quiet ONLY. I have also used his e collar on low settings and give him a verbal quiet. This works but only for that one time, the next search he is loud again. Anyone have any other training ideas to try? He also whines like this in "surveillance" so I want to put a stop to it.

The other time he is loud is when "bad guy" is taken into custody. He is extremely loud (bark) This is bad because if suspect gives and I grab the dog he will bark loud and it is harder to issue any direction.

I do not want to knock him down and lose any of his drive, but I would like to quiet him down and am just looking for ideas on what other people have tried.

I am aware this will be tougher with a 6 year old dog, who I believe was originally trained bark and hold. Just looking for ideas

Thanks everyone

I think this is a question for Will...my guess would be training with a new command...one that doesn't let him bark at all but that might not help you if you need the "alert" bark.

Hi Shawn,
This can be basically broken down into two separate commands that the dog has to learn. Out means..stop whatever you are doing, period. Whether its biting, barking, chasing something he isn't supposed to etc. The other is the alert command (I use the "Passoff" command for this as we dont realy train the "watch/Passoff" command for just watching subjects because they do it naturally).

One of our new handlers has a formerly trained Sch dog that was taught the bark and hold. This was a problem as the dog became even more vocal later on. Not only that but the dog was constantly dragging the handler around due to the handler alowing this. We were able to fix both problems at once as the training for both went hand in hand.

We started with the handler in an open field with no distractions. I would come out with no equipment and act normal so as not to have the dog fire up. While the dog is at heel and fairly relaxed I would give a movement or look at the dog to get him to break. As soon as he barked at me without command from the handler, then he was corrected by the handler by being lifted straight up by a check chain high on the neck until his front feet were off the ground. An Out command is given as is the heel command. The dog is let down and if he stays quiet then he gets a verbal praise of "Good Out". If the dog whines he either gets a knee in the shoulder or foot on the rump with another Out command. Not hard, just enough to break his concentration on me as he is loading up to bark again. Once quiet he gets the verbal praise again.

Its a fairly slow, step by step process where the level of distraction or intensity is slowly built up, to include the introduction of a sleeve or suit wherein the dog remained quiet. It took this particular dog about 15 training sessions to get to a point where I could scream and holler, pound a sleeve, make hard eye contact etc. and he still wouldn't break.

We are required to keep the dog quiet when giving a K9 warning prior to building or area searches. During this training the handler was instructed to give K9 warnings in normal tones of voice and to correct any bad behavour by the dog. Many dogs relate the K9 warning to doing bite work and it will fire them up as soon as they hear them. Each time the dog stayed quiet on the warnings we would bring the voice level up a little more. In the end, the handler was screaming at the top of his lungs the K9 warning, with me yelling and pounding a sleeve,and the dog just sits at heel waiting for specific commands by the handler.

It was a simple task to teach the alert command. When the dog was finished, the handler can fire up the dog with the watch command and then tell the dog to out/heel where he remains there quietly waiting for the handler to guide him to the next task.

This handler was ecstatic over the results and the fact that his dog is much more controllable than before. Some of the things I did with this individual dog has somewhat of a sport background. Our goal was to get the dog to stay quiet and obey under all adverse conditions. Once that was learned, the dogs' regular police tactics trainng was continued without the dog reverting back to his previous unwanted behavour.

Howard