 Today's subject, I get a lot of emails about this subject weekly and I just put up an instructional video of protection, training, barking on command while holding the body while moving. But a lot of people struggle with getting their dogs to talk on cue. So I'm going to show you here the Black German Shepherd Axel that I did a lot of the instructional video for protection training that I have for sale. He's the majority of the video in showing how to teach the base commands of these high level protection dog exercises. Now you would assume that he just barks naturally because he barks like crazy at this ball. So I'm going to use him just an example just to give you an idea of how I got him to speak on command because he did not speak at the ball in the beginning when I first started with him with this exercise. First objective, before going into the protection exercises, your dog will have to bark on command but a lot of people can't get that exercise achieved. So I'm going to show you here how I did it with him and how it was not easy in the beginning. He did not talk naturally. Now why is it that a lot of dogs will not talk naturally? And this dog I imported from Europe, he was doing his Shudson routines but this happens to a lot of people. When you play with your dogs, most people just give the dog a toy, right? They throw it, they let him go fetch it or they do something like sit and they give him the toy or food. So what happens is you get trapped in this whole thing of not, there's no stress, right? There's no emotion. You need to cause frustration to get your dogs to talk either at you or to something that they want. For example, one, they're toys or if they're obsessed with treats, it's just you choose whichever route. Using a ball here in this example because Axel absolutely loved playing with any kind of ball. So for him, this was the exercise I used. But if yours is highly treat motivated, you could do the same exact thing right here. But you must cause frustration in order to get the speaking. That is why most people have such a hard time getting their dogs to talk on cue. The dog has always been giving everything for free without much frustration or any at all. So they just throw things and let the dog go run for it. They bring it back. They throw it. They run about. The dog's not waiting and being frustrated and right holding off for a behavior. If it's a sit, the dog will sit and they get thrown the toy or given the toy or reward or tug a war. So those things are not going to help you. It actually hurts you if you do all those things first before teaching frustration to talk to you for something. That's why most people struggle. So here I'm going to show you how I did it with Axel. Here you'll see in the beginning, I take his ball, I throw it on the floor and I'm trying to get him to talk to the ball because I know he loves it so much. I thought this was going to be pretty quick and easy. But it didn't happen as easy or quick as I thought it was going to happen. But that's from preconditioning before I got him. So here you'll see I throw the ball, I'm holding him back, holding him and you see there he's trying to talk but he's just gasping air like it's a want to bark at it and he's looking at it and he has a little bit of air coming up from frustration but he will not get a bark out to it. So there's many things here to consider. One depending on the dog now. Is he too close to the object that he won't speak? So here I'm adjusting a little bit and I'm going to play with certain things to see what works for him. So I see in the beginning when he's very close and it's so close that he feels he has a shot at touching it, he can't get himself to speak. It's too close in his eyesight. He's too fixed in it thinking if he pushes hard enough into the line he'll have a chance at grabbing it. That didn't work for him too close. So then I start pulling him further back from it with distance to see. Now okay now I get one bark. I let him go to it just for at least the one for now. And then I'm holding him back and then I start to get now multiples. I let him go. Of course here in the end now it's just a given. Any time he sees the ball or I'm going to do he just talks. Now it's on autopilot. So here you see when we were doing the exercise without the leash on now and I was teaching him to hold there next to the leg and bark at the ball there might piece of cake. It was rah rah rah him jumping up and down next to me without a leash on knowing he cannot pursue it and go towards it. Right now the talk is on auto. Now sometimes you'll have to hear you see little Khaleesi when we're teaching her young. We have somebody holding her on a leash and a harness giving a little distance from the owner to cause frustration that she cannot get close to the body. That gap in separation that she can't close that gap and get to the owner's feet makes her get frustrated from that gap and hey hey you know why you so far right and we got the talking because of the gap and opening not being so close to the owner and here this was one of my subscribers on YouTube in Austria when he was teaching his doorman how to bark on command at a ball as well. He tied her to a pole with a harness and got distance and caused frustration from the distance and won the ball. So most cases distance is going to cause you the frustration that we're looking for to be able to get the dog to speak right on command at the objects. So this is really there's a little game to this of checking with your own dog but I would say that everybody start with a little distance first and try to work it from a little distance because when they're too close to you or the object they just fixate because it's so close in their face that the talking generally doesn't come out. So start that way give some distance and you'll probably get it much quicker with some gap and if anything you're trying another little form is I move the dog I move the dog I could kick the ball with my foot make movement and stimulation try to move them and keep some gap keeping the toy moving holding back and kicking it and making that prey drive but you got to hold again a little distance and see if that'll work. So as many versions and different ways to try to get a dog to talk. Now here just as a same concept I'm teaching this dog that when the owner falls to the floor to talk on cue. So the owner has a little issue that it's possible in her life that's happened or before that if she falls we want the dog to talk at her right to alert people that she has fallen. So the way to do this is we're teaching to talk at her not away from her to people because it's very difficult to teach externally but same concept of frustration. So we have her fall I bring the dog in the treats are in her hand and I keep the dog a little distance off of her hand and the dog will start talking then we open hand and let dog have treat. Okay now this is an opposite of how we usually teach things because for you guys out there teaching your dogs how to bark at something for protection purposes or whatever you always want to bring the reward to them after they speak. Okay whether it's treat toy they bark either you throw something at them where they are or you walk in and you give it to them where they are where they're speaking not to close the gap because then they're always gonna be thinking pushing forward and the talk will be delayed because they're always thinking they can push towards you for reward. So here in this particular case we do the opposite because of the behavior that we want to cause in the end. Talking at her if she ever falls and passes out and needs help. So I'm keeping her off the dog because she's so used to getting treats for free that she wants to push to the hand right and just get to the hand and open it up and eat the treat without talking. So I hold her off the hand that she can't get to it or close to it and we get the talking and in this particular case the cure for the dog is when the girl's hand opens up means she did it well and the dog is allowed to close the gap and get the treat out of the hand. So doing this opposite of how we would do it with the public with the talking okay only difference but I had to cause that little gap that the dog can't touch the hand with the nose to get the talking. Okay if the dog got too close and tried all the time it wouldn't talk it just wanted to push the owner into opening the hand to let go without any talking. So there's many different variations of how to do speaking on command depending on the exercise that you want done in the end the outlook of the exercise how it needs to be performed in the end. So till next time Richard Heinz, Miami Doggwasser.