Accidentally Encouraging Barking
The root of nearly all behavioral issues in dogs, especially barking, is often due to the canine’s subjective feelings of isolation and/or loneliness. Dogs will often do whatever they can to get you to pay attention to them.
Dogs bark in order to get other creatures to pay attention to them, especially when they are wearing halloween costumes for dogs. They do not care if the attention is someone coming over to see what they are making noise at, someone coming to penalize them, or someone just staring at them. All they want is a reply to show that their bark has worked.
Punishment isn’t an option.
Trying to swat a dog that is barking is usually fruitless. Dogs are smart creatures and probably consider it to be a game. They may halt their barking while you are there motioning with your arms but the when you begin to ignore them they will start barking all over again just so you play their game.
Just letting a barking dog in at night may make your neighbors happy that night, but it will likely mean the dog will bark every night you put it out. The canine is getting the attention it wants since it feels that it controls your actions.
What happens after determines what happens before
If you feed your dog every time they start barking in vane that they can’t bark when their snout’s full you are just going to wind up with a fat dog who’s used to having you at their beck and call. The canine believes that anytime it wants chow all it needs to do is bark.
Rewarding a canine for barking at strangers that waltz right on up to the house may appear to be a good idea because it makes you feel a little safer but it can quickly become a neighborhood problem. You do not want your dog to get to the point where it barks at anything that moves. You want them to bark only when someone enters your yard and then they should only bark 2-3 times, just enough to let you know you have visitors and to let them know a dog lives here.
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Tags: canine behavior issues, dog barking habits, dog behavior issues, dog obedience training, dog training