TRAINING YOUR DOG NOT TO BARK

Before you get into the training of this behavior, one of the first questions you are going to want to ask yourself is. "is this barking aggression?" If you do not know, my suggestion would be to bring in someone who knows a little about dog aggression that will help you answer that question. The reason is that if this is an aggressive behavior, the way you will correct the dog might be different from the way you would correct the animal if he was simply barking out of excitement.

With this problem, I want to make it clear that we are dealing with a “barking” problem, and not an aggression or resource guarding problem. If you feel that this is some sort of aggression problem, my suggestion would read the information on resource guarding later in the chapter, or bring in a professional that deals specifically with aggression.

Here are some of the barking problems people will have with their dog:

How your correct your dog and what kind of tool you use will depend upon your dog’s personality, where this has been occurring, and how long this has been happening.  

The first thing that I want you to do is take note of how many dogs you have. If you have more than one dog, see if you can identify if there is a specific dog that is the instigator. Chances are if there is one dog that gets the other dogs going, all you might have to do is train him not to bark instead of teaching all of them.

The next thing you aer going to want to do is dentify the place your dog is barking, and that will be the area you will be training your dog in. What you are going to want to do is set up a scenario to where the dog is going to want bark. Remember that, like a child, your dog does not know something is wrong unless you teach him. What we are going to do is get the dog to bark, and correct him for that. Once that happens, the dog begins to understand what he is being corrected for.

If your dog is barking at people out the window, remember that the closer the person is to the window the more energetic the dog will become. One of the biggest mistakes people make in dealing with a behavior like this is starting with the person standing next to the window. If we know that the person is what agitates the dog, the closer the dog is to the house, the more the dog will become agitated. If we go to correct the dog when the dog is in this zone, the corrections are going to be more severe for the dog, and more complex for the owner.

Using a Physical Correction

Let’s use the dog barking out the window as an example. It is essential that we make the correction we give the animal as easy on the dog and you as possible. So instead of putting the person next to the window, try putting the person closer to the street. If the dog is not barking as much, you will find that the physical correction you will be using will be a lot more minimal.

Here are some choices in tools you will be using to correct your dog with: chain collar, pinch collar, alternative training collar, head harness collar

The idea in using any of these training tools is to pair the correction with the word "no" each time the dog barks. Every time you correct the animal you are going to want to say the word "no". Over the course of time, your dog will understand that no means something because it has been associated with that correction.

DOG TRAINING TOOL INDEX

HOUSEBREAKING

TEACHING YOUR DOG NOT RUN OUT THE DOOR