Help I'm starting to hate my dog

[jessiepinkman]

He's a Yorkie, 3 years old. Gorgeous, cute, well trained, listens to me etc barks a bit at the doorbell but stops straight away.
We're terraced with quiet neighbours but 8 months ago ndn grandson moved in. He's 15 & not as quiet as his gps, bangs doors, walks about really loudly, music etc, normal things I suppose but we were spoilt I think with both ndn's being very quiet.
Anyway the noises set the dog off barking & to say it upsets me is an understatement, it's affecting my relationship with him because when he starts (usually after mine in bed) I jump out my skin. It sets my heart racing and I feel really angry.
I've tried talking to the neighbours I've taken him in there I've tried that pheromone stuff.
Please help I'm losing my love for him

The dog isn't the problem, the ndn's are! Can you have a word with them again? If not is moving an option?

What?? Joking right? We are terraced, it's normal noise he's just not had it for the first two years of his life

You need to train him out of barking, which is a learned behavior for most dogs. It will take a bit of perseverance from your part, but if his training up to now has been good, then it shouldn't be too hard.

It's not your dog's fault. He's experiencing lots of new noises and he feels he needs to protect his home from what he perceives as a possible threat. A dog that is reacting to every noise is not a happy calm dog. He's not doing it to be difficult, he's probably just as fed up with it as you are.

Before I moved house my dog was fantastic, stopped barking when told, was generally calm and happy and pretty quiet most of the time; then we moved house about five months ago.

Suddenly she was barking at everything. We are in a new build and there is still building going on across the road from us so lots of coming and going, people outside all the time, a new dog moved in next door a couple of months after we moved in and so it went on.

I went back to basic with the same training I used before to stop her barking, and calm her down. Now she's back to her old self; stops barking when told, can now go into the garden without losing the plot if a neighbour is in their garden etc etc and is completely calm and happy again.

I would have another word with your neighbours if the gs is being noisy, that's not acceptable, but you can train your dog out of the reaction to the noise.

Have you tried clicker training him out of the barking? We've got a noisy papillon who loved to bark at the neighbours and we were dreading him teaching the puppy to do the same.

A week of consistent clicker training (distract with chicken, click when quiet and giving the "hush" command) has meant we can stop the barking with a simple command.

Yorkies are generally bright so it shouldn't take too long to train him out of it, especially as it's such newly learnt behaviour.