Barking can be one of the most frustrating behaviours we have to deal with, we know that the best way to get rid of unwanted barking is to extinguish the behaviour but what if you live in a condo, or have neighbours who are complaining?  What if the barking has become self rewarding?  Then what?  Don’t give up the dog yet, there are some things to try...

Before you can solve the barking problem, you need to determine why the dog is barking.  Is it alarm barking (intruder alert!), anxiety barking (you’ve left me alone, come back!), guard barking (go away, me and my pack will get you if you don’t get out of here!)... it’s up to you to figure out the why, then you can start solving the problem.

Starting at the top of the list, alarm barking.  Alarm barking is your subordinate pack member telling you that there’s something in the home territory that needs to be addressed.  It’s your dog’s job to tell you about it.  Good dog.  Now, we just need to let the dog know what is and is not something you want to hear about!  The guy in the dark sweat-suit coming in the kitchen window... yep, want to know about that one!  Squirrel in the tree in the front yard?  Don’t care, really, don’t care.  I’ve found the most effective way to deal with the squirrel, pedestrian, cyclist, whatever is to go see what the dog is barking at, then walk away, calmly getting the dog to come with me.  No big deal, we don’t care about that.  A few weeks of that (some dogs are quicker to pick it up than others) and the dog doesn’t care either.  Don’t get excited, don’t yell at the dog, you’ll just confirm that there is something to be excited about.  Calmly walk away.  Calmly.  If you don’t have time to do this, manage the situation and keep the dog away from windows or out of the yard – we don’t want them to practice bad behaviour.

Anxiety barking: this is usually separation anxiety, but it could be stress of having too many strangers in the house, or some other trigger that “gets” your dog. (If you pay attention, you’ll hear the difference in the bark – it’s not the same as alarm barking at all.)  Your best bet here is to distract the dog, keep her busy with something else.  If you punish a dog that is stressing, you will make the problem worse – I promise.  So if you have to leave your stressing dog home alone, crate her with a kongsicle (a kong toy stuffed with really amazing things – bits of meat, canned pumpkin, fruit and vegetables, then freeze it to make it last longer), or a raw bone, a bully-stick... something that will take a while to deal with.  By the time she’s done her treat, she’ll probably be tired and just want to sleep.  If the problem is strangers in the house, letting her hang out in her crate with a chewy until the people are in and settled quietly is often enough to solve the problem.

Guard barking can be hard to get rid of.  Unfortunately, it’s often self rewarding.  Stranger (person, car, bike, skate-boarder) is coming down the lane, dog barks ferociously, stranger leaves quickly, dog wins.  That was fun!  Click to calm works best for this one.  First, if you don’t have time to work it, don’t leave the dog out in the yard to practice.  When you do have time to work with it, your goal is to change the dog’s emotional response to the stimulus.  Take the dog (on leash) to the back fence, when you see someone coming, get ready.  As soon as the dog LOOKS at it, click and treat.  When the dog looks again, click and treat.  The key is in the timing.  You need to click when the dog looks, but before they have a chance to bark.  After a few sessions of this, your dog will look at the stimulus, then look at you (Are you going to click?  There’s a person out there!  Come on, click it!)  Then you start working it a little away from the fence (maybe put the dog on a long line so you still have control), let the dog be at the fence – we’re hoping the dog will see someone coming and come to you for the click and treat.  You may need to click just for looking again (the dog will come for the treat when you click), but our end goal is to have the dog look at a stranger and come to find you for a reward.

Now, reality check.  Sometimes nothing we can do makes the dog stop barking.  Some are just too tightly wound and some just have too much bad history behind them.  Last resort is a citronella collar.  It’s an electronic collar, but rather than shocking the dog, it sprays a squirt of citronella near the dog’s face.  Very few dogs like the smell of citronella and most will stop barking to avoid it.  I always prefer to try training the correct behaviour first, a bark collar is an aversive that can add to the dog’s stress.  If the dog is stress barking and you add to their stress, the end result can be some other pretty bad behaviours that you’ll have to deal with.  For example, the dog doesn’t bark at strangers in your house, just goes straight to biting – not a happy solution.

See what you can do about solving the root of the problem rather than just bandaging the symptoms – it’s a lot of work, but worth it in the end!