I know how to teach a dog to sit, stay, come, get off the furniture, and all the standard stuff. But how do you teach a dog to SHUT THE HECK UP?
We have a hound-dog mix that’s extremely vocal. She has a very expressive (and very loud) drawn out bark-howl vocalization that she uses all the time. I have no problem whatsoever with a dog barking when she wants to go out and pee, or when there’s somebody at the door, but she goes into extended vocalizations…
[ul]
[li]when the first person on the morning wakes up and enters the living room[/li][li]whenever my wife stands up, after being seated in the living room[/li][li]whenever she hears another animal outside (this is a problem, since we have horses)[/li][li]whenever she hears her name[/li][/ul]
It’s not like she’s asking for something. She’s just “talking.” Loudly. And my wife and I are at our wits’ ends trying to figure out how to shut her up.
One way is to train a behavior that is inconsistent with barking. Most dogs won’t vocalize like that when they are laying down. Does she have a “down” command?
One technique I’ve heard of that’s supposed to work well with a talkative dog is first to teach her to “Speak” on command. (This should be easy with a dog that already likes to bark.) Once you’ve got her barking on command, you can work on “Enough” to tell her that it’s time to shut up. (Not “No,” which is reserved for things that are never allowed.)
We used it with some success with our Phyllis, though she’s not quite as noisy as your dog, from the (heh) sound of it. But you could give it a try.
I had some success with my first dog (who wasn’t an excessive barker, but had a tendency to whine loudly in the car-- I think it was the doggish equivalent of “Are we there yet?”). When he whined, I would tell him “quiet!”, repeated for as long as he kept whining. Eventually, he’d stop (if only for a few moments), at which point I’d be quick to praise “Good dog!”.
Of course, this sometimes required a long time, waiting for him to stop on his own, but as I was a kid at the time, I had nothing better to do than to sit in the back with the dog while Mom drove, anyway.
Those anti-barking collars work great. I prefer to use plain water rather than citronella. It’s just as effective, it doesn’t smell, and I think it’s kinder to the dog.
I have both kinds of collars - the automatic one and the one you control with a remote. The one you control with a remote has a beeper on it. You can use the beeper as a warning so you don’t always have to spray water in the dog’s face.
There are also collars that shock dogs when they bark. This seems cruel to me and I would not use one of those.
Yeah, I just say something like “ok, very good, thank you. Good work.” and my golden quiets down. She’s not much of a barker, tho. But, like any dog, she can get into it.
My brother’s dog is a barker. When I come in his door and she is barking like nuts, I say “ok thank you, I’m here. Good girl. Hi Gwenny! Good girl, let’s be quiet.” It doesn’t work right away because she then runs upstairs to announce my arrival, but she does quiet down.
Well, we tried a little experiment tonight based on some of these suggestions. She’s not good with “lie down” but she’s great with “sit.” If she starts barking and we tell her to sit, she does shut up. I have a feeling that’s just because we’re paying attention to her, but if it works, I don’t care.
I’ll continue working with this before spending money on collars.
Incidentally, she’s quite a water dog. I don’t think getting sprayed in the face will bother a critter that loves running in the rain and swimming in the beaver pond. Heck, getting sprayed in the face by a skunk–at point-blank range, no less–didn’t stop her.
A few years ago I dated a professional dog trainer who trained dogs rescued from the pound to act as assistance animals to handicapped people. One of the dogs she worked with had been sent to the pound because of almost incessant whining while in his crate, and I will admit it was maddening listening to it and it never stopped until the dog slept or was out of the crate. She didn’t like to shock him but the whining was a no go if he was going to be an assistance animal, and the alternative was death if he went back to the pound as untrainable.
She used a shock collar and the dog would shut up for awhile after being zapped, but kept trying to see how much whining he could get away with before she decided he had to be reinforced with another shock. I think the dog "got " the connection but whining was so integral to whatever neuroses he had he kept it up even after multiple shocks. We quit dating before his training was completed so I never did find out his fate.
Shock collars actually work very well. I felt bad using one but it really was the answer for a stubborn (and kind of stupid) neurotic hound of my sister’s. She used to bark, whimper, or howl CONSTANTLY if left outside, and if she could see us inside. It was a real problem, and it started to get worse (she started to do the same thing in her crate if she could hear us moving around, which caused a lot of issues when one person got up several hours before another).
We got one of those collars that detects noise. It gives one low warning shock, then won’t shock again for a set amount of time, then reshocks at a higher level, etc. I don’t think she ever got further than the warning shock. The first time, the dog went and hid when she got shocked, but after the second or third time, she sort of got the program. She eventually learned to make a low “woof” that the collar didn’t detect, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to bark incessantly, so she’d just use that to get our attention (to go to the bathroom, intruder alert, etc.)
We tried a lot of things before that point. We never responded to the barking with attention, we wouldn’t let her in, etc. but between the hound intelligence and the separation anxiety, it just didn’t do anything. It’s much better now, though she does have to break out the collar for some reminders from time to time.
My problem with the collar approach is that it trains, “barking is always bad.”
I want her to bark when she has to go out, or when there’s someone at the door.
I just want to teach her a “shut up” command – preferably one that can be used preemptively (e.g., “I’m just standing up to go to the kitchen. Don’t bark!”)
The shock collar never worked with my dog. She’s able to ignore it when she gets worked up over what she sees out the window. I should have tried the spray collar, but I was too annoyed at how much I had spent on the shock collar. Maybe my particular collar was a dud.