It’s a natural behavior for dogs, but it’s also pretty annoying for a lot of humans.
Why is your dog doing this and what you can do about it?
One of the things you’re going to discover is how much emphasis we actually put on preventing the behavior.
First situation, barking at the outside world.
We want to prevent the behavior from even happening. So, once he’s got the hang of the game, they can move closer to the thing and eventually ,they can start practicing in the area where it actually happens, so at the sliding door. This does take close observation of your dog’s body language and noting how far away you have to be to create that calm reaction, not a stressed one.
One of the examples from the video is that the dog got very excited and reactive when he would hear people or construction sounds outside. There wasn’t really anything to do to block off this visually, but we do have to work on his reaction to the sound. The way we can do this is to counter-condition the sound.
Remember, your first step is to prevent the behavior from happening by avoiding situations that cause it and somehow blocking off visuals or audio triggers. Once you prevent it from happening, you can start to work on it and eventually you can take away those preventative measures and get back to normal.
Barking at the doorbell
If your dog barks at the doorbell, you’re going to want to apply the same techniques to desensitize the doorbell.
The doorbell trigger is a good one to pair with a new activity. For example, you could teach your dog to go sit on his bed when the doorbell rings. Or you might teach him to go to his crate when he hears it.
The other dogs barking and your puppy joins them
You will hear trainers say all behavior serves a function and barking is like that too. You’ll have to put on your puppy detective hat and it could take a close evaluation of the schedule, but try to drill down into what the cause of the dog’s barking is so you can better tailor your approach to work on it.
Now what about the other dogs that are barking and your puppy just wants to join in? Is that happening with your puppy? So we suggest finding a recording of your dog’s barking on YouTube, which allows you to control the volume level and keep it at a spot where your dog can hear it and not react. Then you’re going to work on sound sensitivity training to teach your dog to have more of a positive and calm reaction when he hears the barking.
Just remember, dogs are conditioned to noises.
Have you ever opened up the dog food bag and suddenly your puppy just shows up? Or maybe he knows the sound of the ice maker dispensing ice cubes. Or the cheese drawer for his cheese tacks. You can see how your dog associates these noises with good things.
Do the same for the other barking dogs causing your dog to bark. You want to reprogram that sound to something positive.
You’ll use a similar approach of working at a distance where you can see them and remain calm and slowly get closer as the training progresses. This is the threshold concept, which refers to that imaginary line behind which your dog can remain calm and quiet, but get too close and we see reactivity. The trick is to find the line and start where your dog is not reacting.
Example
The letter carrier arrives and drops off the mail. Your dog sees this person and starts barking out of excitement or stress or somewhere in between. The letter carrier keeps on moving to the next house.
In the dog’s brain, the barking worked.The dog believes that the barking made the letter carrier go away. You and I both know that’s not what’s happening, but it’s important to look at this from your dog’s brain.
That’s why we need to interrupt the habit and put some privacy film up and then make a plan to work with the dog at the time the letter carrier is at your house. You’ll want to desensitize the process of mail delivery and make the experience more positive. So you can see that each situation is slightly different, but we’re essentially changing the dog’s opinion about the things that are causing the bark.
Stopping your puppy from barking at everything requires patience, consistency, and positive reinforcement.