Can anyone give me training pointers in how to deal with our dog barking in the garden.

[Pernickety]

I knew I should have got a staffy since everyone says they rarely bark ;-)

We've only had our dog a week. She's lovely, she's one year old, and we have a fair bit of training to do with her. We've resolved her pulling on the lead by getting a front clicking harness. We're working on her stress on walks whereby she barks at other dogs, bikes, cars, cats, random people. But now she has started to bark in the garden if she is let out there for the toilet or if she is out there for a game with one of us. It's making it difficult to let her out first thing in the morning or late at night because I am worried about the neighbours.

How do I begin to deal with this? I can't get her to come in. Does this mean I can only let her out on the lead? How and when and where do I reward her to give her the message that not barking outside is the preferred behaviour?

Pernickety I am feeling your pain, I could have written this post too so watching with interest. Sorry I don't have anything helpful to say but my 4 months old cocker cross is exactly the same. She barks randomly at strangers in the street and recently has started barking in the garden. I too am most worried about the neighbours on early morning toilet visits. We also struggle to get her to come in, only if we rattle the food bowl. She seems to ignore her name and being called completely. I am not sure when she will ever be able to be walked off lead and successfully recalled.

Looking for training tips too.

I'd try a long lead - you get them up to 20m long and it should only be a temporary measure, dog barks, pull the lead and bring it in. the first time she looks like she wants to bark but doesn't or you can distract her, reward it.

I'm not an expert, so you might get better suggestions - but that's what I'd try.

I too have the same problem, not only neighbours but kids are being woken up. Going to try the long lead idea - thanks

As long as its not too cold water pistol.

My dog has permanent access to the garden via a dog door. A cat from two doors down has taken to sitting on our shed roof and our dog goes completely nuts barking her head off at her.I have to fight my way through the undergrowth bushes to haul her in. She just has such a strong instinct to guard the property and the cat coolly plays to it. Very tedious and noisy psychodrama.

Our dog had no recall in the garden and barks at everything ! In the end we relandscaped and put an ornamental metal fence around the patio , that way he has less places to hide and we keep the garden / plants nice as he also digs like mad. Interestingly his recall is ok when he is out on walks. I now find that when I put him out for his last wee if I shine a torch at him he tends to not bark and comes straight back in , don't know why unless its because he knows I'm watching and thinks he had better behave. He also has a sandpit so that he can still dig / bury any cats he kills !

Change of subject really but be careful about the size of the dog door, Saffron - an acquaintance of ours got burgled through the dog flap and insurance company refused to pay out.

I have heard a similar burglary story too. Wise words. Have bought the long lead but not used yet.Tomorrow fingers crossed folks.

Thank you. wise words indeed. I myself have broken in through the dog door on an occasion when I lost my keys. In my work suit, crawling through with my face being enthusiastically licked by my dog on the other side.

There's a good blog post here about how to stop excessive barking, by someone who researches dog behaviour. It assumes the barking is occurring inside, but the same method would work for in the garden, so long as you are there to do the training.

To train a dog to be quiet you have to teach them to bark on command. It's easier to teach a bark on command, especially if you clicker train. I have trained one of my 3 dogs to speak and zp it with a clicker. The other two don't really bark. The basic principles are to teach the bark command, then when your re ready and confident in barking on command you wait for a 3 second silence before rewarding and saying quiet or which ever command you want to use.

How do you deal with barking outside, that only occurs if a person isn't with the dog? It's the only time he barks. If we are out there, he doesn't bark.