Dog advice needed! Barking for attention...

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok Dopers with dog experience, I’m turning to you for help since I, as more of a cat person, am at a loss for advice or useful wisdom for my friend and her dog problem, so I promised her I’d ask the smartest people I know.
Alas, they were napping so I’m turning to you next! :smiley:

My friend has a neutered King Charles Cavalier, who is mostly a Good Boy but he’s picked up a bad habit of barking when he wants attention. When I go over to visit, at some point he’ll get tired of us talking to each other and not him, I guess, and he just stands in the middle of the floor barking. Non stop.

He’s just come in from a walk in most cases so it’s not like he needs to pee or anything. Ignoring him doesn’t seem to help (he has tenacity) but my friend figures any “No!” etc. from her would be giving him what he wants, basically, and reinforce the bad behavior further.

In her defense, my friend and her dog had to stay with her parents for an extended period and while she was still around, she could not outweigh her parents spoiling the SHIT out of that spaniel. Most of his earlier training went straight out the window and he became accustomed to being the center of attention at all times.
She’s moved into her own place but the bad habits persist, of course.

What should she do when she has guests but the dog is barking for attention?

2

http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/how_to_stop_barking.html

When my last dog wouldn’t stop barking I gave him no attention and this helped
and if I knew he was about to starting barking I would tell him “No” before he could even open his mouth . It would be funny b/c I could see that he was dying to bark and he would be mumbling under his breath at me. I found it easier to stop a dog from barking than trying to stop a barking dog. You could try putting your dog in another room as time out and see if that helps or put in another room before your company arrive . Good luck .

3

I’m not sure if this will work for your problem or not, but when our dogs would bark, and we’d tell them “No!” and then they’d scale up they’re barking, we finally figured out that their barking was generally provoked by someone or thing coming into the yard. We lived on a hill, and bikes used to ride slowly past uphill, and they got barked at a lot. There was very occasionally a pedestrian, and then their was the mailman, UPS, etc. If they recognized a friend’s car, they didn’t bark.

Anyway, it occurred to us that when we said “No!” they thought we were telling them they weren’t being good enough watch dogs, so they’d amp up the barking. We experimented with praising them for being good watchdogs when they barked at people out the window as soon as they started, and it nipped it right in the bud. They had done their job of alerting us, and gotten praised for it. They could go back to their naps.

Does the dog have a lie-down command? You may have to teach him one. And you can teach a dog to bark and stop on command, although I have never done it, but I have seen dogs with this training. I have however had a dog so well-trained at lie-down, I could walk half-way across a football field from her while she was in lie-down, while dangling her favorite toy in the air, and she would NOT get up until she got the command. Then she’d get rewarded with a game of tug-o’-war.

What you may need to do is teach the dog a lie-down command, pet him excessively as soon as he comes in from a walk, and then put him in a lie-down with a toy, like some rawhide, and let him chew so that he forgets to bother you. You can take away the toy if he barks, and return it when he settles back down. He’ll learn.

He’s probably bored after the stimulation of a walk, and needs help settling down, as well as something to do.

After a while, he’ll learn the new pattern. He’ll only bark if you forget his rawhide.

4

Basic behavioral conditioning has two parts, one of which is much more effective than the other.

Ignoring him while he barks is essential, but it borders on punishment. Along with a strict protocol of ignoring the bad behavior, you have to reward the good. Give him treats when he’s quiet, at first on a very short schedule and then longer and longer. Barking resets the clock.

And every so often, when he’s being quiet while being ignored, stop and love him up something crazy.

Discipline and consistency are the keys here… Yours.

5

My dog used to bark too much when people were visiting, not because he wanted attention but because he doesn’t like strangers.
I started tapping him on the shoulder while making a ‘psssst’ sound and that seemed to work. It might have taken 2 or 3 taps but he would settle down.
He still wasn’t happy with strangers invading his space but at least he was quiet about it.

6

My personal experience is that teaching a “Quiet” command is more effective than ignoring.

I’m familiar with several dogs that bark and yip while ignored - behavior I would not tolerate with my dogs. You can acknowledge when the dog barks in response to proper stimuli, but tell him to stop barking after alerting you. And you can train him not to bark in other situations.

I’m well aware that my long held and proven effective experience of mild physical discipline and reinforcing pack priority are currently out of favor with many. Don’t just yell at your dog, but a sharp “No!” should be effective at getting them to stop just about anything. Don’t beat your dog, but you can put your hand around the muzzle and get in his face when you growl “No!” And a controlled swat on the rump or a finger on the muzzle will hurt your hand before it ever hurts the dog.

There are likely many effective ways to train a dog to be obedient, affectionate, and happy. I’m just sharing what has worked with my past several goldens and what I’m going to continue doing. Don’t know what would work with some little yappy dogs other than a sack, some rocks, and a body of water… :wink:

7

Zap collar. It’ll fix him in a day.

8

Yep, punish 'em till they grovel and pee. That fixes everything.

9

Echoing Amateur Barbarian, you punish undesirable behavior and reward desirable behavior. The punishment involves always ignoring the dog when he barks for attention. The reward involves paying attention to the dog and interacting with him when he displays a desired behavior.

My personal reward method is to lay down a cheap accent rug. I then train the dog to go to that rug and sit on it quietly whenever he wants attention. It’s kind of a lot of effort to train initially, but it’s for my benefit. When I’m busy and distracted, I can miss more subtle dog signals. Having a dog that is sitting at a specific spot and staring at me expectantly tends to be difficult to overlook.

(0. Teach the dog the ‘sit’ command)

  1. Walk to the rug and stand next to it.
  2. Lure the dog to the rug with something he likes (treats, toys, etc…)
  3. ‘Sit’
  4. Interact with the dog, play with him, pet him, whatever he enjoys.
  5. A few times a day, whenever the dog is NOT barking for attention, repeat 1-4. Do this every day.
  6. When you see the dog begins moving towards the rug whenever you move towards the rug, you can eliminate the lure. When you see the dog moves towards the rug and sits out of habit, you can eliminate the ‘Sit’ command. If your dog responds well to pointing, you can try pointing at the rug and see if that will trigger the dog to move to the rug and sit.
  7. Over time, the dog will habitually move to the rug and sit to get your attention. When the dog begins to do this, promptly pay attention to the dog and give the attention the dog desires. You can then slowly start to make the dog wait for longer periods of time before giving attention. You want to build up the dog’s patience and persistence in waiting for your attention since you won’t always be able to drop everything immediately to give the dog attention.

This is just what I do; choose whatever behavior works for you. The keys are to always ignore the dog when he’s barking for your attention, to provide your dog with an acceptable behavior he can use to get your attention, and to build up the dog’s persistence in using the acceptable behavior so that he won’t simply give up and revert to undesirable behaviors.

10

Uh - yeah, that’s just what I advised. :rolleyes:

11

I want to think he was responding to Gatopescado

12

OK.

I simply believe a mix of positive AND negative reinforcements works best.

13

Zap collar doesn’t make them grovel and pee. It gives them a little shock, exactly when they bark, and the dog learns very quickly to not bark when it shouldn’t.

The ones we use make an audible beep the first two or three times, then give a little shock. Our dogs maybe got shocked twice before they figured out that when they hear the beep, you better shut up.

No peeing. No groveling. Just 4 well behaved dogs, free to bark their little heads off at the appropriate time.