What can you actually do to reduce barking?

[BitOfFun]

My patterdale/border cross terrier barks really annoyingly when she sees postmen/window-cleaners/strangers passing the house. She goes crazy for cats she sees out of the back windows.

I think she is annoying the neighbours, as next door's baby points at her at shouts "Buddy dog, buddy dog!"

I like her being a good little guard dog, and alerting me to the front door, as my bell needs fixing, but it is starting to grate on my nerves, especially if we are trying to get a lie-in.

Any suggestions?

LOL at buddy dog.

No idea. My dog barks at passing dogs and cyclist.

I was wondering if they do collars which electrocute emit a noise or something?

A lot depends on how you react to the barking. What do you do?

If you react in a human, knee jerk way, by yelling NO you may be being considered by your dog to be approving of the barking and joining in. She's making a "go away" noise or an excited noise and in her opinion that may mean that mum agrees!

It will help to remove her from sight/earshot of the stimulus when you can. So, keep her away from the room overlooking the street when you can and especially when you go out. Leave a radio on to both mute outside noise (I was going to say "drown out" but that insinuates that you should play Led Zep at 100 decibels... I'm sure you get what I mean though!).

You can also teach her to bark... don't laugh, but teaching her to do so by holding a treat in front of her and making a bark noise yourself, rewarding her with the treat and praise when she copies you, can then enable you to teach her not to bark unless on command. I've taught my lab x to bark on command in just this way and know others who have done so, it does work.

Also, distract, distract, distract and praise effusively. Dogs, it is thought, react to reward... in her case her "reward" for barking is to see the postman/passers by go away. You know they were going to do so anyway, but she doesn't! In her mind she has barked and been rewarded by seeing the interlopers take notice of her and disappear.

If she's barking when you are trying to lie in, she may need her sleeping quarters moved, even if that means bringing her into the bedroom (in a crate if you wish, though introduce this gradually, never as a punishment and with the door open and toys/chews in there if she is unused to being crated).

A great source of advice for this may be your dog warden. He'd far rather you consulted him for help than came to you because a neighbour had complained. If you still struggle though, consult a behaviouralist (see the net for registered ones near you or better still get personal recommendations but check them out for membership of an appropriate organisation, the titles of which escape me atm!).

When is it okay to use a loud noise to make them think their barking caused the noise?

When I took my previous pup to classes, I was advised to bang something if he went near my post as he kept eating it. The idea was to make him think by touching the post, he was causing the noise. It didn't actually work for us as he always knew I had made the noise, even though I was hiding upstairs!

I have used that method successfully on my sisters dog when he kept barking at a dog outside. I banged a plate on 2 occassions and since then, he has not barked once at that dog and its been months!

Certainly that can work Kid, especially with undesirable behaviour other than barking. I've seen it used successsfully quite a lot. The difference is that it's a nasty noise rather than a human shout, is disassociated from you and thus not considered to be someone joining in and backing up the dog's theory that there is good reason to bark.

As you have gathered, it works best when the noise is totally unconnected with the person, at least as far as the dog can work out!

It does depend on the dog though. A nervous dog may well freak out and it could make him worse or skittish and scared of you. Unfortunately the owner of the rescue I help at and where Fish my foster GSD came from made that mistake (a rare one for this man, he's a genius with dogs and weaves magic normally, I'm humbled by his skill and affinity with them). Fish had the habit of running past the boss in doorways as he (Fish, not the boss!) was nervous to start with. Shortly after he arrived in rescue he nearly sent the boss ass over elbow and so naturally boss ROARED! Big mistake, whereas the boss has done so with countless other dogs and they have thought "Oh-oh, he's not happy with me doing that, best I stop!", Fish was scared and this added to his already fearful nature.

To be fair to the boss, Fish was scared of him because he associated boss with taking him away from his home and into this bug scary place called rescue. When Fish got there he panicked so much that when he got out of the boss's partner's car in the rescue grounds he broke his extendable lead by running around the car and snapping it. Not boss's fault at all, but of course Fish didn't understand that.

On the whole, it is always worth a try, but I'd seriously advise that you consider the dog's nature first.

I appreciate the advice- especially from Valhalla. Unfortunately our house is arranged in a two-deep sort of way, so the dog can either look out of the front windows or the back.

I completely take your point that I tend to yell "No", if anything, though. Hmm

I knew the dog trainer advised us not to just use that method but to check with her first. But she advised a few of us to use it. But I figure she knew our dogs and felt they could cope with it.

Teddy is a cheeky sausage. He will sit there and bark at us for no reason. He would have been fed, walked, let out for a wee, have a drink yet he will bark. Usually when there is something we want to watch on TV. I won't do anything about it until the dog trainer meets him and advises what we should do.

He is so sweet but has a few annoying habits that I hope to sort out! On the whole, he is a wonderful dog!

Hope Fish has settled really well with you now. He is really cute and cuddly.

Bit of Fun, thankfully electric shock collars are now illegal in Wales, and no decent owner should have anything to do with them or anything similar. The simplest solution is to close the curtains/blinds - if your dog can't see the hazard, they are not so likely to bark at it/them. Alternatively, if possible, keep the dog in a part of the house where they can't see or hear the particular stimuli.

Terriers are lively and feisty, and are usually into everything, so are you making sure yours gets enough exercise and stimulation? If it is bored/energetic, then that's a recipe for trouble. There's a saying that a tired dog is a happy dog, and there's a lot of truth in that. Plenty of long walks, Kong toys will help to keep the little chap busy/too tired to make mischief.

We had a post-muncher - so we adopted the simple but effective solution of a post box on the outside wall of the house. Our postie is happy, dog is happy and now we can read our letters/bills (mixed blessing!!)

I would also recommend working with a behaviourist who will assist you in minimising this behaviour.

I really do value your input though- it amazes me that I can ask for advice here about just about anything and get such quality well-thought-out responses. I salute you!

BOF
One of our neighbours has a shock-collar thingy and it is horrible. The dog obeys him really well but I saw him use it once when she walked away from him and the poor wee doggy yelped in pain. Horrible.

Oh goodness, please avoid those bloody collars like the plague! Horrid things!

I said this on here recently but it's worth saying again - the rescue I volunteer for have recently had to take back a lovely, sweet dog, who is pictured on their website being cuddled by my DD2. He'd gone to a family with a very sensible 8yo lad, homecheck was super and so are they. All was well until Dad went to use a mobile phone and the dog flipped and cornered him.

It turned out that the dog acted in the same way when someone lifted a TV remote. He'd originally entered rescue from a family home but had before then been pretty badly treated. The rescue owner, a very experienced and savvy man, is 99% sure that the dog had been trained using a remote operated shock collar, hence his aversion to and aggression towards, seeing anything like it being held.

Even in professional, experienced hands, I would want to shove the things up the users bum never recommend the idea.

Erk, I thought I had invented them in my warped imagination- I didn't realize they actually existed