My mom had the same problem with her dog, She wanted her to bark when people came up to the house, but not at everything else. She found a collar with a remote, so she could pick when she was barking and being annoying or barking when she wanted her to. It works well, but I know she goes through a lot of batteries.
The Dachshund is on a short list for the world’s most stubborn dogs.
I had one growl at me and want to attack me when I tried to crate the fool thing; I will remember a 9-pound dog thinking it could fight me until my dying day.
Shera, I was clearly joking! She didn’t know any better, she just thought it was cute and a friend of hers was giving away the pups, so she just HAD to have one.
We never bothered to flip her over when we first got her to determine her sex, she just followed my wife around as she was looking at the pups and so she thought it was picking her. Macy looked like a little boy puppy, so we named him Baxter. A few days later I flipped her over and noticed she was a she, and I was like “Uhhh, honey?”
So she got the name Macy instead.
That might work. I could just zap her with impunity from my easy chair and good times can be had by all.
maybe I could just get my Boxer to eat her. He’s already done away with our pet guinea pig. Never found a drop of blood or anything. Little Mr Fantastic just wasn’t in his cage anymore one day.
I must have had the world’s most unusual Saluki, then. Meerah never howled, and hardly ever barked. But I’ve seen Borzoi do something similar.
Don’t underestimate Doxies. They were bred to hunt badgers - some of the world’s most stubborn and obnoxious critters. They had to be determined and persistent in order to do their jobs.
I owned/bred Danes for many years, and - very occasionally - I had to break up disputes between a couple of them (alone). I never had a serious or intentional bite from any of them - and there were a couple of fear biters along the way, over 5 generations. And, of course, in a lifetime of being around dogs, there have been a few nips from other breeds and mixes. But the worst dog bite of my life was from a male Doxie. A friend of mine had recently acquired him for his wife, and was holding him. I reached out to touch the dumb dog, and he nailed my thumb. When he’d been persuaded to let go, there was this deep cavity in my thumb, and you could see the tendon, white and glistening, on one side of the hole. He just barely missed it. I had this precise round scar on my thumb for quite a few years.
Understandably, I think, from that day, Doxies are not among my favorite breeds.
Of course, I don’t know what sort of collars the kennel you worked at used, but there is not necessarily a difference between a bark collar and an electronic training collar, other than the first is set off by the dog barking and the second is set off by remote. And neither as neccessarily a shock collar, at least not the better made ones, as the setting should be the lowest needed to get the dog’s attention, not shock its pants off.
That said, OP I would get a remote collar (and if it is me, I would get a TriTronics) so you can decide when you want the dog to bark and when you don’t. Use a warning word or phrase, like Shut the Hell Up!, before correcting for the barking and it won’t take any time for the dog to figure out that she should stop barking right then, without you needing to use the transmitter. No amount of training is going to stop a mouthy dog, particularly one that is part Beagle! Most likely the dog will have to wear the collar for life, with the transmitter close at hand. The better models are rechargable.
However, you have an invisible fence, which means your dogs have already learned a certain response to pressure from an electronic collar, and from your description of your Boxer, it sounds like that is set too high (I have no experience with these systems tho). So your dog is likely to be very confused when it is first corrected by the collar for barking and you will need to spend time working thru it. Otherwise it is possible that the dog will just ricochet around the yard looking for the new boundary, barking it’s head off…
You can also have the dog debarked - which is not “breaking the voice box”. It is actually cutting a slit in the vocal chords, which makes the bark lower pitched and not as loud. BUT this needs to be done by an experienced vet that uses a laser, otherwise it is possible that scar tissue will grow back and have to be removed so the dog can breathe. The noise the dog makes after the operations sounds kind of pathetic but the dogs themselves don’t seem to notice and merrily “bark” away. I’ve had it done on dogs in the past when I’ve gotten them as adults with a bad barking habit already in place, so I don’t have to spend weeks yelling at the dog for something it really doesn’t understand.
Oh, 40 years in dogs, professional trainer, buncha awards and titles, blah blah. I use ecollars in training almost daily and swear by them - helps me to not have to swear at the dogs! They are, despite their bad press, one of the most humane ways to train a dog when used even close to correctly.
Of course you were. My brain isn’t working very well today. The sarcastic detector must be on the fritz.