Driving Me Nuts!

[Sighthounds4me]

Cooper is making me crazy. When we had Indigo here, she taught him to bark. He had never barked much before, but now he does. Neighbors out in the yard, squirrel in a tree, leaf blowing in the wind. I think he likes to hear his voice.

 

Now, he does this when he is outside during the day, and we live in an area where everyone has at least an acre. So we are not "on top of each other," and I'm betting the neighbors don't even care (if they even hear it). But it bothers me, and I don't want him to think it's okay.

 

The trouble is, I can't seem to get him to understand that barking is not allowed. I have tried praising him when he's quiet, yelling at him when he barks (counter-productive, I know), etc. These days, I bring him in when he barks, but as soon as he goes back out, he's at it again.

 

With Indigo, I "accidentally" trained her to stop. She *wanted* to be outside, especially in winter, so to bring her in was a punishment of sorts. Before long, she learned that when I'd give her one warning, she'd better shut it, or she'd have to come in the house.

 

This is not working with Cooper. He *wants* to be in the house, rather than playing outside with Henley (and me, when I go out to throw around toys or something).

 

Realizing he's not a Greyhound, he is still a sighthound, and has that gentle temperament. So does anyone have thoughts on how to solve this?

Edited May 30, 2011 by Sighthounds4me

[Guest RichardUK]

Interesting

 

I have the same problem for the first time ever with greyhounds. I always have three greyhounds. Usually they used to rush out the dog door bark at the invading cat once or twice and come back in. My new dog Blackie (had him 7 months)has been obsessed with invading cats or barking dogs and initially would bark constantly - at all hours day or night - encouraging the other two to join in - I haven't an acre!!

 

Basically I had to call him in - ostentatiously block off the dog door for the night - tell him off - glare at him for half an hour.

 

The other two got the message very quickly - Blackie took six months to get to the stage where he will rush out - bark once or twice - come back in ridiculously happy that he has done his duty!

 

I'm sure a bark activated collar could have worked - but I didn't like the idea of him possibly getting trapped somehow.

[GeorgeofNE]

You could try teaching him "speak," and then of course "no speak" might make sense! It's what worked on my last dog.

 

I even taught him a hand signal for "speak" so that when we were walking at night (I lived in the city at the time) if anyone seemed creepy, I gave him my secret hand signal and he started to bark like crazy.

[Guest PhillyPups]

There will come a time when the sounds of silence are a killer. My DonJuan was a tad verbal. I know, it is no help, and I did tell him a couple of times to shut up, but he didn't listen anyway.

[Sighthounds4me]

I should mention, too, that while I love him, and he is the sweetest dog on four legs, and I would not trade him for anything, Cooper is not the brightest crayon in the box! I have tried basic obedience training with him, and he tries VERY hard to please, but he just does not get it. So I think that's why he can't figure out that to be brought into the house is actually a negative consequence to his barking.

 

He's just a little dumb! But that's part of what makes him lovable!

[greysmom]

Is he treat motivated at all? If he is, you can train him by distraction, which is what I've done with Toni. She LOVES to bark and to hear the sound of her own voice. She's very verbal anyway. I did what Susan suggested first and trained her with a "bark" command. The "no bark" one still hasn't taken! but she will do "watch me" for a treat as she LOVES treats more. This will usually distract her enough for me to calm her down and shut her up for a while.

 

My bigger problem now is that she's tought the barking thing to Cash. With Cash being pretty spooky, though she's getting better and better, I try and not punish her from taking initiative for a behavior. But Cash is NOT distractable once she gets going! And she gets so wound up I actually think she's going to explode! Twirling and spinning and jumping and BARKING! OMG! Yeah, it's cute and I love seeing her being a "normal" dog, but - really! On the plus side, Cash is the only one of mine that will bark at strangers!

[Anne]

I have used a citronella collar with good results on several dogs, greyhounds and a poodle. It isn't harmful, but they don't much care for the spritz of citronella in their face area when they bark, so they learn not to bark. It's not terribly expensive. Though I have used both and prefer the one with that can either be put on auto or you can put it on manual and use a remote to stop the behavior you don't like, the auto spritz's when the dog barks. So if it's only outside, you wouldn't want to keep it on auto in the house if you like him to bark at the door when someone knocks...etc.

[Guest RichardUK]

On the plus side, Cash is the only one of mine that will bark at strangers!

 

Reminds me of my old Ben a large (33") black greyhound - he loved all animals and humans except mice, rats and squirrels. He was a non barker until one night I was woken with furious barking downstairs - Went down found nothing told him to shut up and go to go back to sleep which he did.

 

Next morning my neighbours on either side came to thank me! Apparently a burglar had tried to break into their houses and was scared away by the very loud barking! He was their favourite dog from then on!

 

On a side note when someone rang the doorbell he would thrust his head around my side as I opened the door and grin at the caller - His big black face and gleaming teeth caused most to disappear rapidly. After Ben - door bells caused my other greyhounds to assault the door so vigorously that it shook - making cold callers to run to the other side of the yard gate!

[Guest avadogner]

I should mention, too, that while I love him, and he is the sweetest dog on four legs, and I would not trade him for anything, Cooper is not the brightest crayon in the box! I have tried basic obedience training with him, and he tries VERY hard to please, but he just does not get it. So I think that's why he can't figure out that to be brought into the house is actually a negative consequence to his barking.

 

He's just a little dumb! But that's part of what makes him lovable!

 

I think my Augie is from the samme box of crayons! I adore every sweet, tenderhearted 90 lbs of him. I wouldn't trade his fun, goofy bum for anything but he is beyond verbal. We were forewarned he is a talker and he never stops. He whines when he wantsto play, get a treat, Ava stole his bed, jealous of Ava getting attention and just about anything else. Our 11yr old Ava never barked until she started having bladder urgency issues. She barks once at the door to be let out. Now Augie barks for an hour atnight when go to bed. We tried door open to lessen his SA but just made it worse. I give him a kong or bully stickto distract him and close the door. We have a dog door now so they can go as needed. He barks for a few minutes then settles down. I would training him but he still can'tshake after 6 months. Ava learned it in one sitting. I love his goofy bum but wish he would be quiet! He tattles on Ava all the time. He is 90lbs to her 54 so tattling on her is just funny. She is alpha and runs the house. He is the perfect minion for her. Let me know if you find a solution, please!

[cleptogrey]

water gun or plant spray- no bark and squirt. after the first no bark, then just squirt. i haven't changed the water in the plant spray in eons, i just hold the bottle up and there is dead silence. it's short, sweet and works.

[Guest RichardUK]

I've adopted 16 greyhounds over the years and had a flap style dog door before that. Blackie my cat barker is the only one that ever persisted more than the first few days - All others got the idea quickly within a week. He did learn the dog door in two days (though he was a return - the others "straight off the track") whereas two others took around a month.

 

Strangely though he was a mediocre racer - 185 races 4 wins - just cat obsessed - though he ignores the foxes like the other greyhounds.

[kudzu]

Susan & Greysmom gave excellent advice. I will mention that I prefer to teach Silence or Hush before teaching them to Speak. Even if you cannot manage the Speak & Hush commands you can still use the distraction technique. With both suggestions you are in essence rewarding quiet or less barking which successively becomes less. Here are some other ways that have worked for me.

 

One Woof Policy - Barking is a natural, sometimes quite useful behavior. So rather than training them never to bark I trained them that a One Woof alert was fine but then the situation was mine to deal with. No need for them to keep barking. When a new dog started barking I quickly but calmly, in a matter-of-fact tone acknowledged him. "OK, I'm coming." I'd calmly, silently go to where he was & investigate, acting as if I might actually care about what interested him. Said, "Yes, I see it," if something really needed my attention. Otherwise I would say, "It's nothing," as if bored. In either case I would then say, "Thank you," in an almost hushed tone. Immediately after that I turned & walked away going back to what I'd been doing or to rectify whatever situation of note he'd alerted me. He'd appointed himself as sentry. I'd acknowledged his alert, duly investigated & given my pronouncement. Our fosters almost all learned quickly to stop barking after that. For those that were slow on the uptake I would put a short, tab leash on them, using it to lead them away with me. Soon their initial barks became less & less until we had only a one woof alert. This approach worked quite well. Hurray! I'm the best trainer in the world. I know the secret. Why doesn't everyone do this? Then we got some fosters in who were not livestock guard dogs & were not barking to alert us. That's when the plan fell to pieces.

 

Actually, I still train this with my dogs but personally doubt what my success would be in a case like yours. Many would stop barking when I acknowledged. Some dogs would learn to bark once then come looking for me. Others though would learn to bark once but if I did not respond would eventually return to barking. I wouldn't want to have to run outside to 'acknowledge' every car, bike, squirrel, blowing leaf, imagined Goodyear blimps, etc. However, your guy was once a silent observer so it's possible that by training him to hush for at least a while after one bark may help the behavior fade into a significant reduction if not entirely. Its even more likely if you are a more consistent trainer than I.

 

Another approach would be a version of training an incompatible behavior. Think of what you want him to be doing instead of barking. One idea is for him to go to a dog cot in the yard & lay down quietly. So you train the different behavioral components that make up the total remembering. Should probably start indoors to reduce distractions. Remember to work on distance, duration & distractions but each in separate sessions building up only at his own pace before trying to combine them. That means each is taught separately again when you move the training outdoors & those first sessions should be done when his triggers are not around. (I'm sure the squirrels will understand & cooperate, righ? In the meantime you will also have to work to reduce his ability to practice barking even if that means doing things like staying outside with him, putting him out less often, for shorter periods or with some screening to limit his view. So ultimately the idea is to train him that instead of barking at things they are a cue to run & lay on his bed.

 

I tried that idea with one dog & it worked. He learned to automatically run to his mat on the porch instead of bark & thus earned a reward. (Eventually the rewards were rare.) In the long run he quit running to his cot so often but did not resume barking. Instead he just learned to ignore some things or silently watch others. Had he learned to resist the urge to bark just to avoid having to run to his cot? Who knows? It was all done through reward, no punishments involved. I think maybe it served as something like time out.

 

You could also try an idea from Pat Miller. My explanation will sound strange, wrong & counterproductive but its worked for me & quite a few others. You would have to ask Pat or another knowledgeable trainer who has trained this way for the correct explanation of the technique, principles behind its success & any necessary troubleshooting for individual canine quirks. You could do that by joining a fantastic Yahoo Group called PositiveSolutions. It has quite a few very good trainers including Pat Miller & Yolanta Benel, 'The Dog Trainer' for the podcast Quick & Dirty Tips for Teaching & Caring for Your Pet. They are very active and extremely helpful. Anyway, here goes my attempt to explain...

 

When the dog barks reward him.

 

That's it. No really, that's the method. Honest. I know it sounds crazy, almost like you are rewarding him for barking & in a way you are but it is that duration you are rewarding. You've got to start somewhere so just take the plunge. Be observant of how long he was barking before you could get out there reward him. (This is where staying outside with him would make a huge difference.) You can then begin rewarding sooner & sooner when he barks. So barking for shorter durations gets rewarded while barking longer does not. And yes, you could then also add cues for Speak & Hush. That's handy & a good thing to do but for barking outside I much prefer the dog learn to do it of his own volition rather than me having to go out often to tell him to Hush.

 

I am so thankful I do not have to tackle this problem often, even less since my pack has become all sighthounds. The occasional mouthpeice now seems like such an aberration.

 

Hope you find a method that works well for you. Good luck!

[Guest FastDogsOwnMe]

I seriously, honest to god, did not know Borzoi actually COULD bark! I have never heard a Borzoi bark before. Can you just not leave him out- if he barks, he has to come in immediately?

[Sighthounds4me]

I seriously, honest to god, did not know Borzoi actually COULD bark! I have never heard a Borzoi bark before. Can you just not leave him out- if he barks, he has to come in immediately?

 

That's kind of what I have been doing. The trouble is, he wants to be inside, not playing outside like he should be. So, if I bring him in, he gets his reward, even if I then crate him and ignore him.

[Guest KennelMom]

I don't understand making him be outside if he doesn't want to be. Many dogs won't just "entertain themselves" in a yard...instead, they get bored and one symptom of boredom is.....barking! Or maybe he's learned that barking = getting to go inside where he wants to be anyway. We have a few yard loungers, but for the most part, if my dog are outside it's because we're doing something together. Most of them don't want to be outside if I'm inside. Our dogs really only play in the yard if I'm out there playing with them.

[Sighthounds4me]

I don't understand making him be outside if he doesn't want to be. Many dogs won't just "entertain themselves" in a yard...instead, they get bored and one symptom of boredom is.....barking! Or maybe he's learned that barking = getting to go inside where he wants to be anyway. We have a few yard loungers, but for the most part, if my dog are outside it's because we're doing something together. Most of them don't want to be outside if I'm inside. Our dogs really only play in the yard if I'm out there playing with them.

 

Excercise. he's not out there alone - his brother and nephew are there too, along with lots of toys, and me on a regular basis. Free-moving exercise is better than walks, so that's what I provide him, as well as the mental stimulation of interacting with the other two, and the great outdoors.

 

And, it's not as though he truly hates being outside. It's just that he'd rather be in the house, being lazy. Most of the time when he's outside, he's fine. But there are time he starts barking, and that's what I am trying to stop. This is not an every day thing, nor is it constant.

Edited June 1, 2011 by Sighthounds4me

[kudzu]

The Deerhound/Staghound LOVES being outside. My boy Greys enjoys joining her for a while but nearly so long. My girl Grey is the one who wants to be out in the yard for 2-10 mins max only a few times a day. Doesn't really care much about walks in our neighborhood. Offer her an outing though, any outing but especially hiking & she's all for it. She's also the only one that actually barks when out in the yard. It is occasional, for a few very specific reasons, brief & stops on command. Away from the house she is mute.

 

I've been known to toss the Greys out in the yard with the admonition to "Go be dogs!" Both will stand at the door, whine & let out an intermittent woof when ready to come back inside. However, if the weather's nice & they've been inside all day I sometimes ignore them. Fresh air & sunshine is good for dogs. They sometimes seem to forget they too are dogs but I have not.

Edited June 1, 2011 by kudzu

[greytlucy]

We're going through this with our adolescent standard poodle. We have view fencing in the back and none of neighbors think they need to walk their dogs on leash so he's learned to bark at dogs through the fence and has gotten into the habit of watching over the fence for dogs. Additionally, he's hypervigilant and always scanning the environment even when in the house. A car door closing several houses away can set him off.

 

We're using a number of methods to work on this. First we're working on overall relaxation using Karen Overall Relaxation Protocols...hopefully this will help build him to where he won't need to scan the environment much. That's more a long-term overall fix.

 

He's prone to getting overstimulated once he starts barking and when this happens doesn't have an "off" button. I prefer not to use a lot of aversive techniques with him because he is very sensitive and additionally a lot of his behavior is anxiety driven. I use the barking at hte back wall to work on recall with him. We've gotten to where no matter how worked up he is at something he WILL come immediately when I call "COOKIE!!" from the house(we screwed up the "come" command and had to start over with "cookie"). I'll call him to me, reward him, then have him quickly go through a short series of command and eye contact exercises before releasing him. HE'll inevitably go right back to the wall and I call him abck and we do it again...we'll do this a few times and by the end, the stimulus has passed, he's calmed down and when I release him the last time he's quiet in the yard or focused back on me and follows me in the house to see what i'm up to.

 

He's prone to barking fits out the windows in the evening too. When this happens we work on down stays with him and reward him for relaxing. THis is working pretty well too.

 

The last week or two he's taken to explosive barking in the middle of the night when he hears something outside(the windows have been open). In this case, we did take to using a shake can to shut him up at 3AM. Not my favorite technique to be honest but it immediately shut him (he hates the noise) and he quickly learned to be quiet in the middle of the night. Now we can tell him to "leave it" and "lay down" when he starts up and he's been good about responding. The last two nights he hasn't been up at all after lights out so we're hoping this phase has passed.

 

Like others have mentioned I'm not trying to train the bark out of him. He typically gives quiet "woofs" and "clucks" first as an alert and I'm happy to allow him to do this and teach him to settle when asked to while giving these alerts. I also am trying to teaching him three "real" barks are OK when he does start with a full bark and then he needs to quiet. As we work on the overstimulation issues I think this will come pretty well to him as he responds really well when settled and focused.

[Guest SteveO]

Just a thought...is there something going on outside of human hearing, smelling, seeing that you don't or are unable to discern? Overhead aircraft? Far away fire trucks, ambulances, police cars? These really set off the neighborhood dogs and I sometimes go out in the back yard and "Howoool!" with them just to keep the dogs going. They're four- half acre lots away and hear me fine. Or maybe your dog is REALLY smarter than you think and is playing an extended prank on you .....my two pence worth.

 

 

SteveO

[Guest Ashleigh]

I have 3 dogs, and my hound wants to be where i am at all times. I can put them all out and after maybe 5 minutes, just the greyhound is at the door barking to come back in. If I go out, he'll stay out. If I go back in, he's right behind me. You may just have a velcro dog on your hands! Stop being so wonderful in his world!

Edited June 3, 2011 by Ashleigh