Teaching A Dog To Growl On Command

[jacqui835]

I have a very intelligent and beautiful doberman boy, who easily learns new tricks and loves to perform them. I would very much like to be able to teach him to growl on command because he has an awesome growl, but I just don't know how to go about it. He is not a noisy dog, and typically only makes noise for a reason, and he also never barks or growls at me, so how can I get him to growl?

[Staranais]

Hmm, not sure how you'd do that. I've never seen it done.

I'm also not sure I'd want to go there, since my dog doesn't usually growl unless she's feeling worried or being possessive, and I wouldn't want to make her feel worried for the purposes of training, and don't like to encourage her to feel possessive at all.

We do have a bark on command, which was pretty easy to teach. Just wait for the dog to bark & then stick a word on it & reward. And voila! Perhaps you could do that if you haven't already taught it.

[sheena]

Hmm, not sure how you'd do that. I've never seen it done.

I'm also not sure I'd want to go there, since my dog doesn't usually growl unless she's feeling worried or being possessive, and I wouldn't want to make her feel worried for the purposes of training, and don't like to encourage her to feel possessive at all.

We do have a bark on command, which was pretty easy to teach. Just wait for the dog to bark & then stick a word on it & reward. And voila! Perhaps you could do that if you haven't already taught it.

I know a woman who has taught her kelpie to look lovenly into her eyes & in a very soft growl, says "I love you"...it is so cute. I don't know how she taught it tho.

[jacqui835]

Yeah he speaks on command - it's probably his favourite trick after shake. He has a fantastic bark too. I have tried to watch a few youtube videos on training a dog to growl, but they all involve dogs that seem to resource guard at least to some extent, whereas my dog will only even consider doing that with other dogs (not people) and even then he's pretty good about giving it up.

I asked though because there was a thread in general about dogs being used in movies, and my dog would have been perfect except that he doesn't know how to growl on command, and some of the other dog owners said their dogs could, in particular, monelite who also has dobermans.

Last night I taught him to roll over in about a minute, he learns so quickly and wants to please, but I just don't even know where to start. I was thinking perhaps I could incorporate play somehow, because if we encourage it, he will growl a bit when we're playing tug of war. It's a different kind of growl though from his scary one...

[Nekhbet]

honestly ... you have no need to encourage nor capture that type of behaviour. Teach him to speak, but to push your dog into a growl and work on capturing it is not advisable unless you are experienced in these matters (and saying that, if you were then you would not need to ask on here)

Once you encourage a dog to perform a behaviour and make it a highly rewarded behaviour the dog will want to perform it more and more. To train a dobermann to growl, you may find yourself creating a dog that just wants a reward but ends up intimidating someone instead.