RE: [pyrnet] Bark bark bark woof

["Custode, Adrienne" <acustode@rational.com>]

I've tried a few things to deal with barking and some of them have worked
pretty well.

1) When Luna barks, I always go to see what she is barking at so she knows
I'm paying attention to her alert signal.  Once I acknowledge her, she has
shown me what she is barking at, she seems to calm down a bit.
2) After I check on what she is barking at, and assuming its really nothing,
I say to her in a very calm and very low voice... "Luna, its ok.
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, quiet".  Believe it or not, this actually works
REALLY well.  When I lower my voice, she lowers hers right away. When I
raise my voice and yell at her, she seems to dial up the volume.
3) At night, Luna prefers to sleep outside instead of inside because she
likes the cool air, but I just couldn't tolerate the night barking as she
ran around the property doing her thing.  Now, I put her on my large deck
with a baby gate on the entrance so she can't run the perimeter but she gets
to watch out over her domain.  It has SIGNIFICANTLY curtailed her barking.
There seems to be some odd correlation between her running around the
perimeter at night and her barking. When she is restrained to a 20x12 area
on the deck, she only barks if something is really going on, not just for
gratification.

When all else fails, I bring out the citronella barking collar, but I DON'T
put it on her.  I just bark into it, she smells the spray and doesn't let
out a peep for hours (I did put it on her just once last year and she
figured out barking wasn't a pleasurable experience).  I have heard a lot of
dogs just bark right through these citronella collars and it doesn't do
anything so I think this is really an individual experience.

I know these guys are supposed to bark and in general I'm OK with barking to
alert me to something amiss, but the pleasure barking was a real problem and
the above steps seem to be working very well.

-adrienne

PS. A number of you gave good feedback on the invisible fence I was
considering for my acreage a couple months ago. I wanted to give everyone an
update.  I LOVE THIS FENCE and Luna has never breeched the perimeter.  I
invested heavily in training time with her before we actually turned the
fence on so she knew the "beep" when she approached the boundary meant she
should back off.  She did receive one correction the first day, but she
loves being able to run around all over instead of being restrained to a
kennel.  I went with the professional variety, I think the do it yourself
kits are probably not a good idea because the training help and guidance I
rec'd from Invisible Fence Company was the ticket to success.  Its ALL in
the training. She loves it and I love it too. Interestingly, all the people
who responded to me message who were using the fence, loved it, and all the
people who didn't have the fence said they didn't think it would work on
Pyrs.  The folks at Invisible Fence said they have several Pyrs in Colorado
on the fence and haven't had any problems.  They said the problem dogs were
beagles and huskies.  www.invisiblefence.com