Barking puppy help !

[Didiplanthis]

I have a very vocal 7 month whippet puppy ( who has failed to read the whippets are quiet manual ) .. she shouts at everything and nothing.. currently she is lying relaxing in a sunny patch in the living room, exercised, fed, just woken up from a nap, been outside and has company in the room.. she is barking ! She can't be arsed to get up and she is comfy and is I think just chatting and making sure we know she is there. I have tried telling her no, distraction, she has toys and chews but she is still happily making ear piercing yaps. I'm at a loss, she is loud and barky when she is playing with other dogs or wants to play, she barks at the cats (wants to play), she barks at the stairgate as she wants to go up stairs but isn't allowed as she is a destructive kleptomaniac who has to be supervised every waking minute. She barjs if she thinks she has been ignored... and we dont respond to attention seeking demand barking, only please can I go out barks. She will only nap on someone or in her crate as she won't switch off otherwise and is always busy. We have recently had a bit mouthy/bitey relapse. But I can cope with everything except the barking which goes straight through me... any ideas to stop this ?

Oh you have my sympathies. I have a 9 month bedlington x whippet who also didn’t get the memo…. I find that making sure she’s had enough exercise and stimulation works quite well but my god she’s found her voice.
I have had lurchers before and find that sighthounds are VERY challenging puppies but do melllow out quite beautifully as adults so fingers crossed for us both 🙈

I feel your pain. I had a whippet for 14 years. From start to finish it was a series of dramas as you describe. So chin up! Only 13 years to go 😃
I now have a GSD who can be an asshole but his ability to learn is great. Whippets have brains the size of a peanut so good luck with training.. sorry!

The key with my gobby beddy whip was to teach ‘quiet’ which we I did by ignoring the barking but waiting till he had stopped then saying quiet and rewarding it. It didn’t take him long to get it and now I can tell him he has to be quiet when he goes in the garden and he is 90% of the time and if one sneaks out it’s a kind of half bark that stays in his mouth 😂😂

We got a Jack Russell after our staff's died. Dear lord! It's taken some getting used to.

Our staff's rarely barked, only if someone was knocking at the door.

Our little (and I mean tiny, eleven inches high) barks at birds, the sky, When she's exited to go out, when she wAnts to play, just about anything.

I've found that my signal for "no", one finger up and a stern no(not a shout cos she thinks I'm joining in) works sometimes. Not always. But she's a very.bright girl, and also super stubborn.

Good luck, I know the barks of my dog go through me, they are so shrill

@Flaunch what’s with all these gobby beddy whips eh? I was told they were the ‘stealthy’ lurchers. All lies! Thanks for the advice. I’ve definitely tried rewarding quiet but need to persist.

Whippet pups are mad as a box of frogs generally, but she does sound on constant high alert. I would work on building a calm settle (Kikopup on youtube is good for this) as it generally helps them to feel calmer and less wired all the time and will eventually mean you can cue her to just go and lie down quietly when you need her to.

Turn the situation around so Instead of thinking about telling her ‘no’ or ‘stop’, think about what you want her to do and teach her that. You want her to be quiet and for that she needs to understand the difference between barking and being quiet. She will probably pick up some of this from the fact you are rewarding her whenever you capture her behaviour during naturally calm/quiet periods and hopefully that might mean she will think about trying being quiet at other times, to see if it’s rewarding, but you can work on it more specifically as well.

Some people choose to teach ‘speak’ first, then pair it with the ‘quiet’ cue, but if your timing is good and you can capture the ‘quiet’ reward and then put it on cue, you can skip teaching her to speak first.

What might be useful is a positive interrupter, which is effectively just a little noise that gets her to shift attention and focus on you. (Again Kikopup has videos on how to do this.) When she barks you can then interrupt her with the noise and as soon as she stops and turns her focus to you, capture and reward the quiet behaviour.

[quote PearlyGirls]@Flaunch what’s with all these gobby beddy whips eh? I was told they were the ‘stealthy’ lurchers. All lies! Thanks for the advice. I’ve definitely tried rewarding quiet but need to persist.[/quote]
Mine really loves the sound of his own voice and thinks everyone else should too but he’s 14 months now and knows barking is not okay 😂 you’ll get there! Nothing worse than dogs barking!