Does Your Dog Bark Too Much? Use My Bark Training Tips to Help Quiet Him Down
I like dogs for the most part, but it aggravates me when the family next door leaves their German Shepherd and Husky out all night to bark and howl at everything they hear. All the noise makes it very difficult to get a good night’s sleep. I don’t understand how it doesn’t bother the owners to listen to it. Does your dog make too much noise? Is he agitating your neighbors also?
Barking dogs themselves are not the problem. The problem is where, when, and how long the dog barks. Dogs typically bark because they’ve been created this way. A baby cries, a dog barks – this is how they communicate. We humans can’t relate. We don’t understand a dog’s language, and because we don’t, we want them to shut up when we feel they’re supposed to.
There’s a reason dogs bark. They bark when they’re happy, but also when they’re scared and bored. They cry when expressing aggression or to tell us to open the door because they have to tinkle. This is a usual barking. Excessive barking usually arises from a failure to communicate with the dog correctly. For example:
We want our dogs to warn us of intruders, but hate for them to bark at strangers while on walks.
We like them to bark when showing their affection towards us when we return home, but we don’t want them to cry when guests come through that same door.
We confuse them. So how can we all get along? Through the use of three simple training tools, we can combat the mad barking a dog does. I’ll refer to these tools as Train Your Barking Dog 101.
A positive trainer doesn’t try to stop the dog barking, but figures out where, when, why and how long the dog barks. The trainer then uses one or more of the following means to combat excessive barking:
1. Remove or block the thing that causes barking from the dog’s view. This can be done with baby gates, crates, or tethers (a rope, chain, or similar restraint for holding an animal in place). Because you’re blocking the trigger, you additionally minimize the barking – out of sight, out of mind.
2. Through the use of operant conditioning (the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior), the dog is taught a substitute or different action/behavior. For instance, if your dog barks typically when your mail carrier appears, you’ll show the dog to run under his bed, grab a toy, or lie down. This also alleviates barking.
3. Somewhat different is counter conditioning. Through the use of counter conditioning, you try to change the way the dog feels about whatever is triggering the barking. Using the mail carrier example, with this type of training, you reward the dog with a treat each time the mail carrier appears. The dog stops barking because he knows he will get paid when the mail carrier arrives thus taking a liking when the mail … Read More
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