Dog Training to stop Barking
All dogs bark, it’s their way to communicate with the world around them. Dog barks for many reasons: to greet, to alert, out of boredom, to attract attention or when they are excited.
Although some barking from the dog is acceptable, too much is certainly very annoying, especially for your neighbours and eventually this will lead to complaints. The easiest way to stop excessive barking is to control his barking while you are at home:
1. Set up a situation where your dog will always bark. You may ask a friend to ring your doorbell or knock on your door.
2. When your dog charges to the door and start to bark loudly, approach your dog, grab his collar and give the command “quiet” – no shouting please, it doesn’t help.
3. If at this point he stops barking, praise and treat. He’s marvellous and deserves it.
4. When he continues to bark, gently close his mouth with your hand, wrap your fingers around his muzzle – use both hands if needed, and give the command for him to keep quiet. Praise if he stops.
Most dogs would be able to learn the “quiet” command with repeated training like this. Set up similar situations to “lure” your dog to bark and repeat training whenever possible. Give your dog something more interesting than barking -play a game, give a treat.
If you happen to own a hard-core persistent barker, use this method:
1. You can buy a spray which is attached to the collar, citronella collars, and you have a control that activates the spray when the dog barks.
2. Timing is important or your dog will miss the point and continue barking. The surprise will take his attention and stop him barking. He may even sneeze a few times. It’s harmless so you need not worry.
3. As always, praise him when he stops barking.
If this does not seem to work a more extreme thing to try is throwing a cup of water at the dog when it barks excessively. When you approach the dog might stop barking, don’t be fooled, keep going and throw the water at your dog. You are trying to get the message through to your dog that too much barking and here comes the water. If he thinks he can bark and then just stop when he sees the water he’s learning the wrong message. Don’t just threaten the water – you must use it.
It might be that your dog might still be barking noisily and disrupting your neighbours when you are not at home. In this case, you’ll need try other methods and finding toys such as Kongs which are stuffed with food and can occupy your dog for quite a while trying to get the food out. Freezing food inside the Kong is a good way to make it last a long time. There are towers, now, that have a time release mechanism so that you can give your dog a new Kong at various times during the day.
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