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Excessive barking when people come into the home
Does anyone have any good training techniques around excessive barking when people come into the home? I am still gathering information on this to find out if it is anyone that comes into the home or just guests. I am also gathering information around rather this is territorial, fear based, or over arousal and lack of socializing. I am also waiting to hear back with the age of the dog as I know all this does effect the training. Does anyone else have any good ideas or possible training tips?
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11 Replies
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Hi there!
What breed(s) of dog?
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Vizsla
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HI @Cory ,
It’s great that you’re in info-gathering mode as it will then guide use more accurately to provide the most useful tips to address this behavior. Looking forward to learning more when you have more info to share.
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@Cory Lots of times barking may be based in fear, frustration OR simple enthusiasm. In any of these cases, the dog needs to know s/he’s off duty when guests come over. I like the Family Dog Mediation Off Duty Hack for this. It sets the dog up for success.
It’s a good starting place. Once you find out other details, you can let us know and we can help with more ideas.
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Thank you this is very helpful
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You are very welcome! Do circle back and fill us in when you have more information – or a video from the pet parents would really help us help you too!
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I like the off duty hack idea. Dog training is getting more dog centered, what’s good for the dog rather how can we make them do what we want? I’d love to learn more about that.
I’m working with my lab who is an enthusiastic greeter. She gets over zealous and barks in an incredibly irritating way. She goes to her mat and waits quietly, but as soon as I release her the noise comes back. I send her back to her mat, release her and noise comes back. Repeat. I give her treats, but a longer lasting chew would work well.
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@Cyn , do you think your dog would benefit from a bit longer of a settle time on her mat before you release her? You might also try an entirely new way of releasing her that doesn’t already have the ‘excitement/barking baggage’ associated with it. For instance, could you instead engage her in some calm/controlled hand-targeting? After each successful hand target, calmly place the treat on her mat for her to get and then repeat a few times, until you see she’s calmer …?
Currently, if you release her and then barking resumes and then you cue her again to go to her mat (I presume, a heavily reinforced behavior), giving the cue to return to her mat can have reinforcing properties. IOW, you may accidentally be rewarding the barking by giving a cue that’s been trained with positive reinforcement. Does that make sense?
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Drat, that does make sense!???? I bet we’ve done that.
I guess I’m taking short cuts and it’s not working. I’ll try the duration on the mat and then the hand targets. Thanks,
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I hear ya, @Cyn , I’m the shortcut queen and it usually comes back to bite me!
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Hey everyone…
i just watched an amazing free webinar (2 hours long) from the Nordic Education Center for Dog Trainers, all about Excessive Barking and what to do…so much of it is the owners helping their dog through calming signals (yep, same trainer who worked with Turid Rugaas, Lisbeth Borg de Waard and school for dog training). They have so much of a wealth of information about barking. Often times, it’s not always a a that requires training, according to the webinar.
It was a webinar that I had signed up for and missed, so they sent me the recording to my email. I’m sure if you go to www,nordicdogtrainer.com and request the recording, they may be able to send it. The title was Excessive Barking free webinar.
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