BarkingI was asked a few weeks back by a subscriber how to stop her dog barking so much. My apologies for not having replied in person - I'm afraid I seem constantly so busy at the moment it's very difficult for me to find the time to reply to individual questions about dog training. There are a couple of ways of potentially tackling this. The first one probably sounds a bit back to front initially. But you could try actually getting the dog to bark on command. So next time the dog barks (for whatever reason) you give it a command ('speak'? - the actual word you use is completely unimportant) and immediately praise it, but only verbally, not with a treat. As soon as the dog stops barking of its own accord (this is important - at this stage you must not tell the dog to be quiet because you haven't yet taught it to do so, so all you'll achieve is to reinforce the idea that the dog can ignore a request to be quiet) you immediately give a command to be quiet and instantly reward it with a treat. Make sure this command to be quiet is a brand new word that the dog has never heard before. Also make sure that you are very obvious about the fact you're giving a treat. By this I mean you don't want to surreptitiously have the treat secreted about your person and then magically produce it out of thin air. Rather you want to have several already prepared in a little bag for instance and you want to make a big deal about the fact you're getting one out of the bag - the dog needs to be in no doubt whatsoever that you're getting a treat out because you do it so blatantly right in front of it. Continue repeating this process for several days, making no attempt whatsoever during this time to tell the dog to be quiet at any point. All you're doing is giving the (brand new) command for quiet *after* the dog has stopped barking of its own accord. But make sure you're on the ball so you always give - and reward - the 'quiet' as soon as the dog stops. After you've been doing this for several days if you think the dog has shown some sort of recoognition of what you're doing the next stage is to try and get it to bark on command. So at a time when it's quiet try giving the 'speak' command. Hopefully the dog will start to bark, in which case verbally reward it. If it stops of its own accord immediately give the quiet command plus plenty of praise and a treat. If it shows no sign of stopping on its own try giving the quiet command and see what happens. But before you give the command get the bag of treats out and *then* give the command. Hopefully the dog will realise that a blatant bribe is in the offing and will be only too pleased to oblige. If the dog doesn't begin to bark as soon as you give the command or your command to be quiet makes absolutely no impression, the dog is obviously not yet fully conditioned to the new behaviour you're trying to teach it. In this case go back to making no attempt to initiate either barking or silence. Instead you merely carry on issuing - and rewarding - the spoken command immediately after the dog has started to do it on its own accord. Keep this up for another week or two and then try again to see if the dog will react to the command. If you still get nowhere it may be that this technique is not going to work for you. If that's the case you may want to look into option two. Where option one, above, was more of a carrot approach, option two is much more of the stick approach. I must say upfront that I have no personal experience of what I'm about to suggest so cannot recommend it directly. However I do know people who have used it and vouch for its success. You can buy special collars that release a quick spray of citronella every time the dog barks. The dog finds it a very unpleasant smell and quickly learns to associate barking with a very unpleasant smell. Because dogs' sense of smell is so much more acute than ours this makes a far more effective deterrent than something similar would for people for instance. If you can't get hold of one in your local pet shop, try googling 'citronella' or 'citronella collar' and I'm pretty sure you ought to find it ok. Hope this helps! Recommended reading - "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".
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