Re: [pyrnet] Barking

["sandy white" <swhite2@houston.rr.com>]

Knock on wood.  My two pyrs do not often bark many times in a row.  They can
usually quiet themselves down, much like a baby learns to settle itself back
to sleep.

Before I got my dogs, my next door neighbor's adult intact male German
Shepard and the back yard neighbor's adult male Akita, barked at each other
constantly, for hours on end, day and night, through the fence.  It was so
bad, so often, that another back yard neighbor told each owner, that he
would shoot the next dog that bothered him.

Needless to say, when I got my puppies, training them not to bark
excessively had to be a priority.  I read Dogs for Dummies and the Idiots
Dog Book.  Here are a couple of useful things.  Talk to the dog. Identify
the noise, describe it to him, act matter of fact. (It is a little dog, it
is the garbage truck, it is the neighbor, it is an airplane with a whistle.)
Thank him for his good alarm bark.  Check the windows, look outside. Let the
dog know that you take the dog's alarm bark seriously. Then walk in-between
the dog and the noise and tell him its OK, you will take over now. (You are
alpha, competent to do this.)

In the house when the dog is barking, say No in a staccato voice.  Bounce
that No right back at him. (You are alpha, strong.)

Learn which bark is which.  Common ones at our house are I'm hungry (most
barks), I have to go out, alarm, puppy play, a noise hurts my ears or is
weird, I'm the biggest dog in the neighborhood.  Deal with each type bark
differently.

The dogs always stay in the house at night.  Having lots of light at night
for outside trips, virtually eliminated night barking.

The dogs have such big voices that in the house it echoes off the vaulted
ceilings. In the house, they have learned to use a smaller voice to talk to
me or say they are hungry and they say a quiet  "woof" to go out.

The threatening neighbor says that I have good dogs.  He says he never hears
them bark.  I have had no trouble with him.  The Akita owners returned their
dog to the breeder.  The German Shepard owners gave their dog to a family
they knew in their old neighborhood.  Unfortunately, the dog ran away or got
lost from the new family.

But training does not always work.  When I baby sat my neighbors adult,
intact lab one day, both of my dogs barked nonstop from 8 am to noon.  From
noon until he went home at 5 pm, they went to sleep and ignored him.  It
seemed that absolutely nothing would stop them from barking that morning.
It was horrible, frustrating.

Regards,
Sandy