Sally Mae is a terrier mix with a tendency to vocalize. That is, she barks. A lot. She barks to be let outside. She barks to come back in. She barks at the kitchen cabinet that has a box of treats in it. She barks at the pantry where her bag of dog food resides. She barks at the doorbell. She barks when a doorbell rings on the TV. She barks when her owner is talking on the phone. She barks when the garage door goes up, and she barks when it comes down.
Ginnie Mae is a lab mix recently adopted into Sally Mae’s household. It took Ginnie Mae about two weeks to size up the situation in her new home. Barking makes things happen. Barking opens doors. Barking causes the mailman to leave. Barking compels visitors to enter the house. Treats are offered when barking occurs, and meals are dished up in response to the barking. Between Ginnie Mae and Sally Mae, there was a considerable amount of barking going on. And that was just INSIDE the house.
Outside the house, there were so many reasons to bark that just opening the door to go outside became the impetus to plunge into the yard already in full barking mode. After all, there were bound to be squirrels to bark at, but no matter. Without the barking, who knows? A squirrel infestation of enormous quantities would have been the likely result. To prevent this catastrophe, there must be loud, forceful, incessant barking.
Sally Mae and Ginnie Mae have human companions, of course, who despaired of ever getting the decibel level to a manageable frequency. These people had put into place every possible tool they had to try and manage the noise. They put the dogs into a closed room when guests arrived, and also at around 2:30pm when the mailman tended to show up. They avoided TV shows where doorbells might possibly ring. They played music loudly to drown out the sound of the garage door. They made phone calls in the bathroom. And they brought the dogs inside quickly, because the police had been called once already after a neighbor complained.
How to stop the barking? Now there’s an obvious questions. And the answer is actually obvious, too.
The dogs have to be convinced that being quiet makes things happen. After all, once upon a time, barking was pretty darn effective. For the dogs, being quiet has to bring the results that barking used to.
The trick is to anticipate when barking will occur and to stop it BEFORE it happens. By setting up an inevitable barking moment – like ringing the doorbell or opening the garage door – its relatively easy to give a dog an alternative behavior to barking. Sit, for example, and getting lavish praise and treats for sitting, can convince a talkative dog to use its mouth for eating rather than for barking. After reinforcing the good behavior frequently, and under lots of different conditions (“You mean I can’t bark on Thursdays? How about Fridays? What’s today?”), the dogs learn that barking has little or no impact on the things that matter most to them.
So….doors open only when the dogs are quiet. Guests come in if there is peace and quiet. Treats are dispensed to non-barking dogs only. Meals are served to quiet dogs, or dinner doesn’t happen.
Think about what you want your dog to do, instead of wishing the barking would just stop. Help your dog understand that good things happen when good behavior happens.
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