Why do dogs bark?
Addressing the underlying issues of lack of socialization or insufficient exercise and stimulation is crucial when determining why your dog barks. Treatment and training exercises really depend upon the reason for the barking and communication being exhibited by the dog. Listed below are the four main reasons that a dog may bark.
Watchdog Barking
This serves the dual purpose of alerting other pack members that there is an intruder or a specific change in the environment, this is a warning to the intruder that they have been noticed. Dogs bark much more than their ancestors, wolves hardly ever bark. In domesticating dogs, we have selectively bred-in barking. The intensity of a watchdog bark depends on the breed and individual dog. Although the principles are the same whether you are trying to train more bark into a sleepy Golden Retriever, or tone down the bark from a protective German Shepherd.
Treatment Training: Turn the bark on and off with commands. Such as “who’s there?” for speak, and “enough!” for quiet time. Set up pretend knocks at the door, or strange noises outside for your practice training. You may need friends and neighbors to help you.
Request Barking
This is the dog’s way of communicating to the owner that he would like something NOW! It is a behavioral experiment by dog, kind of a “let’s see what this produces…” Typical requests include door opening, petting and attention, hand-outs at the dinner table, the owners return after an absence, and the list goes on. This behavior is a problem not because the dog tries out the experiment, but because most of the time he succeeds. The owner rewards the barking by granting the request and a habit is born.
Treatment Training: There should be absolutely no reaction from the owner when the barking starts, unless the dog does something for you first! For example: obeying a command for the opening of the door instead of barking. When your dog wants to eat, he must sit first and wait until you give your release word…instead of barking. This training method is recommended, even if you are not experiencing a barking problem.
Spooky Barking
This is the third type of bark problem we regularly have complaints about. This occurs when the dog is fearful or uncomfortable about something in the environment and barks to help increase social distance. It is the dog’s way of saying, “don’t come any closer.” This is much more serious than watchdog or attention barking because the dog in question is advertising that he is under-socialized or lacking confidence in the situation, and therefore could potentially bite if approached.
Treatment Training: If your dog is fearful of any type of stranger, whether it be men, women, or people with hats and glasses it is extremely important that you begin working with the fear. Always be equipped with highly desirable food rewards for your spooky barker. You should always be prepared by bringing your rewards with you on walks, trips to the pet store and your veterinarian. You should even have them readily available for those expected and unexpected visitors at home. There is hope for this barking problem with enough patience and practice!
Boredom Barking
This can result when the dog’s daily needs for exercise and social and mental stimulation are not met. The dog barks compulsively because of boredom. If you do not have time for a dog, do not get a dog. If you have an outside dog, do the necessary training it takes to bring him inside. There is no such thing, as far as I’m concerned, as an “outside dog.”
Treatment Training: Boredom barking is a symptom of a dog’s gross under-stimulation. What is needed is an increase of training, walks and socialization.
Coming When Called
By Christine Fox
Excerpted from the Bark to the Basics Class Manual
This is the most useful command in dog training. Teaching your dog to come when called will be the most important word command he/she ever learns. This will also be the most difficult command for your dog to obey. In order to have a completely reliable response every time you call your dog you must follow these five simple rules:
- NEVER call your dog to you to be punished
- ALWAYS make coming to you an extremely rewarding experience
- DO NOT repeat the come command
- Until your dog completely understands to come when called under ANY circumstance, (which in most cases can take up to one full year) DO NOT give the command unless you are prepared to validate the command you have given with a leash on
- Practice! Practice! Practice! Be sure to practice the come command exercises in as many different places as possible, with as many distractions you can find
Fear Can Spark Aggression, Desensitize and Socialize The Scared Dog
By Pat Miller
From week 3 in the Puppy Class Manual
“Honey” looks as sweet as her name. A 1-year-old Border Collie cross, she has fluffy, caramel-colored fur and a flashy white ruff, a broad white blaze and four white stockings. She doesn’t run – she dances – and when she chases a tennis ball, she flies. Her feet barely touch the ground. She looks soft and huggable, but don’t be fooled. Underneath her strong curb appeal, “Honey” has a serious behavior problem: She is fear aggressive. She accepts only a small circle of friends, consisting of her immediate human family: Wayne and Vivian Crocker and their two adult daughters, Kimberly and Marjorie.
A dog couldn’t ask for a better home. They adopted her from the Chattanooga Humane Society when she was a pup and provided everything they thought a baby dog could need. Following the advice many well-intentioned veterinarians give their clients, they kept her safely at home until her vaccinations were completed at the age of 6 months. They enrolled her in old-style compulsion training class at a pet store but dropped out because they didn’t like the methods used and because “Honey” barked at other canine students. They went back to keeping her at home, other than weekly outings to nearby Nickajack Lake for swimming and tennis ball games.
By the time “Honey” was one year old the Crockers realized they had a problem. “Honey” was becoming extremely aroused by car rides, barking ferociously at anyone she saw through the car window. The extent of the problem became fully evident when they took her back to the vet for her booster shots. “Honey” was totally out of control and had to be muzzled and physically restrained for her exam and vaccinations. This experience did nothing to improve her opinion of humans.
“Honey” is aggressive because she is afraid. She suffers from a lack of socialization. During a critical period of her development she did not have the opportunity to have good experiences with the many things the dog is likely to encounter in life. “Honey” also probably has a genetic predisposition to fearful behavior. Some breeds – and Border Collies are one – are more prone to shyness, sensitivity or fear than others, such as the outgoing Golden or Labrador Retriever. Even within the more confident breeds, fearful individuals can be found. Each litter tends to produce a continuum of personalities from least bold to boldest. The more genetically fearful a puppy is, the more critically important it is to provide him with plenty of socialization at an early age, so his positive experiences can override his genetic programming.
Social Scene
Responsible breeders begin socializing their pups early – as young as 4 weeks. Mother Nature gives puppies a relatively small socialization window from 4 weeks to about 4 or 5 months, during which time a puppy learns about what’s good in the world. He’ll view anything he doesn’t encounter during this time with suspicion in adulthood. The less bold the dog, the more naturally suspicious of new things.
This is an important survival mechanism in the wild. Of course, if a pup is too fearful to even venture from his den, he’ll eventually starve to death, but if he’s too incautious, he becomes lunch for a lion. A domesticated dog who demonstrates the degree of caution his canine cousin needs to survive in the wild adapts poorly to human society. He lives in a constant state of fear from his exposure to the stimuli of the modern world. Fear is stressful, and stress causes aggression. Dog aggression is the human world is often a capital crime. The dog who bites people is likely to end up on the euthanasia room floor. Those who survive generally lead a difficult existence at best, as do their owners, who live in a constant state of fear someone is going to be bitten. Again.
The good news: Early socialization can prevent fear and fear-induced bites, and can significantly enhance the quality of life for dog and owner alike. With luck, your puppy’s breeder knew about the importance of socialization and had already introduced him to many different kinds of people before you took him home. Good breeders invite a wide variety people to play with pups: big, little people, young, old, light-skinned, dark-skinned, people wearing big hats and backpacks, people sitting in wheelchairs and people walking on crutches. The breeder supervises the interactions between people and pups to be sure they’re positive. Your pup should know people come in all shapes and sizes, they wear and do strange things and all come bearing irresistibly tasty puppy treat-gifts.
Continue Socializing
Once the pup is in your hands, you need to continue socialization by taking him out in public and teaching him that loud trucks – at a distance at first – motorcycles, car rides, trips to the vet, mail carriers, busy sidewalks, strangers and whatever else you can think of are all reliable predictors of Good Stuff! (yummy puppy treats).
You must also allow him to meet other dogs, so he completes his lessons in how to “talk” dog and will be able to interact properly with them as an adult. Puppies who don’t grow up playing with other puppies and gentle adult dogs frequently end up being dog aggressive because of their fear of the unknown. They may also trigger aggressive responses in other dogs when they fail to respond properly to the other dogs’ signals. They are socially inept.
Of course, you face a slight risk taking a young puppy out in public. His immune system is immature, and there is a period of time when the immunities he received from his mother’s milk are fading and his own system isn’t working at full strength. That period differs for each puppy, depending on the strength of his mother’s immunities and how quickly his own system develops. If he’s exposed to distemper or parvovirus at this time, he’s vulnerable. That’s why some veterinarians recommend wrapping a puppy in cotton wool and keeping him home until he is fully vaccinated. However, you face a greater risk in failing to socialize and ending up with serious behavioral problems.
Members of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers report the incidence of puppy-to-puppy disease transmission in their puppy classes over the past 10 years is negligible – a case or two maybe of kennel cough. In contrast, just about every trainer can tell tales of poorly socialized dogs who met untimely ends because their behavior was unacceptable in human society. Puppy socialization and training can help avoid the majority of these problems. Just be smart about it. Don’t take your pup to the public dog park where you have no control over his playmates. Go to a good puppy training class. Arrange play dates with other responsible puppy owners. Protect your puppy from unhappy encounters with unpleasant dogs or unpredictable people. Teach your puppy well and you won’t have to deal with fear related behaviors when he’s an adult dog.
Teach With the Do’s, Not With the Don’ts!
By Christine Fox
Excerpted from both Puppy and Basic class manuals
Owning a puppy is such an endless source of fun and responsibility, although sometimes a source of a mild headache! Puppies like to chew on valuables, nip and bite at your hands and legs, urinate in the house, and the list goes on. These behaviors can be very frustrating to a puppy owner, but these are all very normal behaviors for a puppy to be exhibiting. Puppies will continue to engage in these activities unless they are taught otherwise. Always remember…Puppies repeat whatever is rewarding.
When you are pleased with your puppy you must make that obvious to him. If puppy is lying quietly chewing on something that is acceptable, tell him how good he is, or offer a food reward. If puppy is being quiet in the crate, show him how pleased you are, before he barks or whines. It is so important to teach with what you want to see, instead of waiting for a nuisance behavior to occur. Your timing is critical when animal training. Constantly throughout your day you must be praising what you want to see, and avoiding and preventing what you don’t wish to experience. Every time your puppy learns how to get into trouble, it will become that much more of a learned behavior, and will be that much more difficult to “un-train.” Always remember…Any attention from the owner is rewarding.
Owners try many different methods of dealing with their puppy problems. Many times they not only fail to produce results, but accidentally create and make problems worse. Punishment methods not only create fearfulness, but many increase the undesirable behavior. Using yelling and punishment can be viewed as attention from your puppy. Some puppies will take what they can get, even if they are in trouble. He still got you to hang up the phone to pay attention to him, even if he’s being reprimanded. New behavior problems can be developed even that never appeared before when using anger and impatience when you teach. Be sure the rewards are positive rewards of reinforcement, opposed to negative reinforcement. Always remember…Teach with the Do’s not with the Don’ts!
Using a Drag Line
Keeping a leash on your puppy in the house is strongly recommended. Too much freedom may cause too much independence. Using the leash will give you the opportunity to control your puppy instead of him controlling you. This will prevent game playing such as chase under the table or keep away with the shoes. You will always be able to monitor your puppies’ actions if he is with you and on a leash.
Advice From The Experts
Jean Donaldson on Chewing and Chew Toys
There was a time when chewing in domestic dogs was viewed as either a stage that “teething” puppies went through or else a sign of a neurotic, screwed up dog. Now we know better. Chewing is a normal canine pastime which is both enjoyable for the dog and keeps the jaws and teeth in good shape. Dogs get into chew toys the way humans get into spy novels or an absorbing movie. The problem is simply one of choice of chew object: we would like the dog to discriminate between dog chew toys and all the other items in the house, indeed the universe. This is an easy discrimination for us but not all obvious to the dog. Remember, dogs have no concept of things in your house being “worth” anything apart from their obvious suitability as chew-objects. They also have no concept of right and wrong, only safe and dangerous. They also don’t particularly care what your opinion is of their actions unless there is some impact on them.
With all of this in mind, the urgency of installing a chew-toy addiction becomes clear. Under no circumstances should a dog of any age or breed be given access to anything but his chew toys unless he is actively, and I mean actively, supervised. This prevents experimentation which might result in the dog finding out he likes leather loafers or Lazy-Boy chairs. Because, once he finds out these things are mighty fine chew toys, subsequent punishments will likely teach him to wait until you are gone to employ them. This goes for regressions too. If the dog has been perfect for 3 months or 3 years but then conducts an experiment on the suitability of antique tables as chew toys, restrict his access until you’ve renewed his focus on his own toys and done a few set-ups to rule out the heirlooms.
People are often incapable of taking these obvious steps because they endlessly muddy the water with their tedious refrain of “whywhywhy…” trying to get into the depths of the dog’s psyche to discover what Big Agenda is making a dog chew a pieced of wood. They paralyze themselves against action. As so often is the case in dog training, “the reason why” is an interesting chat over coffee but the solution is the same, regardless of the coffee discussion: immediate action to: 1) stock up on suitable chew toys and get the dog hooked on them, 2) prevent the dog acquiring an addiction to any wrong objects by careful dog-proofing or confinement, especially when he’s not supervised, and 3) after these measures have been in place for a while, start giving the dog full access (i.e. out of confinement) under close supervision and redirect him to a chew toy whenever he guesses wrong. This is accomplished through sting operations: you repeatedly set the dog up to make a mistake when you are Good and Ready (i.e. spying) to catch the initiation of the act immediately redirect him to his own chewies. The preceding order of events is very important. The third step, when you do actually reprimand the dog for touching the chair or shoe would have yielded the “fine, I’ll wait till you’re gone” syndrome if implemented alone. The dog has to chew something. You must establish legal and attractive chew objects before interrupting and redirecting his chewing.
Another way to view the whole chewing issue is to consider the sheer number of things you consider wrong for the dog to chew. Virtually all matter in the universe is prohibited except for the half dozen items you have decided are dog chew toys. The chances of the dog guessing right every time are astronomical. It is neither feasible nor advisable to try and punish each and every wrong item. Each punishment makes you the bad guy and increases the likelihood that the dog will delay his entire day’s chewing for when you are gone so he can behave normally in peace. Direct the bulk of your efforts at getting the dog chewing chew toys in your presence and absence by: 1) making the chew toys really attractive and interesting, 2) giving the dog no other choices and 3) playing interactive games incorporating the toys.
Individual dogs will demonstrate individual preferences for what they like in a chew toy but most will go for things like rawhides, pigs’ ears and so on. The drawback of these items is that 1) not all dogs will go for them and 2) they don’t last very long so you are forced to constantly buy more to keep them supplied. The crème de la crème of chew objects are hollow bones, Kong toys, and buster cubes. Hollow bones are made of actual cow bones and are available in various incarnations like smoked, sterilized and pre-stuffed with marrow. The great thing about them is that they are safe, relatively indestructible and hollow. Every day you can fill the hollow inside with a new taste sensation for the dog. If you stuff the inside artfully enough, the dog will extract the stuffing near the ends with great ease but have to work harder to get out the goodies in the middle. Every minute he spends on this project is draining the chewing reservoir for that day. Yippee.
