The only difference between the two is that the alert, the signal that the dog has made the find, is different. The bark is a “positive alert” that will be given both when the dog can bet to the suspect and when he can’t.

In the case of the bite alert, it’s best if the dog will bark when he can’t get to the suspect.  Often dogs will spend quite some time trying to get to the suspect. They’ll only bark after they’ve exhausted efforts to get to the suspect.  In that case, before the dog does bark, there is no “positive alert”, the handler will have to interpret changes in the dog’s body language (read the dog).  Dogs vary in how overt this display is.  And handlers vary in their ability to see it (read it).

Often in those debates handlers who favor the bite alert will say something like, “I don’t want my dog sitting in front of a suspect and barking while he slowly retrieves a weapon.” They’ve been misled by what occurs during training and mistakenly think that is what’s done during real deployments. It’s not, at least not if the alert is being used properly.  During training, the dog is required to stay with the decoy and bark continuously, sometimes for quite some time.  So, handlers get the idea that this is what is done during real deployments. There, the dog is recalled to the handler after the first bark.  The handler now has a pretty good idea of where the suspect is located. He can now order the suspect from his hiding place to an area that has been secured while the handler and the rest of the team remains behind cover/concealment.  Once the suspect complies, he is taken into custody by the back-up team while the handler takes the dog out of the picture.

In those situations where the suspect does not comply with the orders to come out from hiding, or where his exact location cannot be determined, the dog can be redeployed to pinpoint him or to bite him or other means can be utilized once his precise location has been determined.

If he’s not available to be bitten, such as if he’s up high or behind a door, it has been my experience that a bark alert dog will notify the handler with a positive alert, the bark, sooner than the bite alert dog, who is looking for the bark. Often the handler will have to read the dog’s body language to see that he has made a find.  If the dog and/or handler are very tired, this body language change is often subtle and many handlers (especially those with less experience) will miss it.

Another common statement is that they don’t want the “dog making the decision” as to whether to bite or not. This is another misconception. The dog is not making a decision anymore than a dog who has been given an oral “sit” command is making a decision to sit. In that case, the dog is given an oral cue and he has been conditions that he has to put his butt onto the ground.

In the case of the bark alert, the dog has been conditioned to recognize the suspect’s movement as a cue that he is then permitted to bite.  There is no decision in either situation, the dog is simply responding to a conditioned cue.

When the bark alert is properly trained, the dog is usually deployed to search with a command that has him barking when he finds the strongest source of scent that he can get to.  But he can also be deployed to search with a bite command so that when he makes the find he will bite rather than bark.

Teaching and using the bark alert merely gives the handler some indication that the dog has made the find, rather than listening for the sounds of a struggle as notification that the dog has made the find.