Harv hasn't been much of a barker (didn't bark at all until around 12 months old). He will bark if there is somebody making a noise around our property or somebody knocks as the door. This is find and we can generally get him to stop after the initial couple of barks. This weekend we went to the hairdressers (2 hour job for OH and 2 minutes for me!) and took Harv along. For some reason he took great exception to one customer who came in and barked both loudly and continuously, despite OH's best efforts (it was my 2 minutes in the chair!). It must have been quite disconcerting for the poor chap that was barked at as the bark was a proper 'I'm not at all keen on you' type of bark (we did apologise). What suddenly makes a normally quiet and friendly dog start barking at people? I do wonder whether perhaps I've been negligent on the continuing socialisation process and have taken my eye of the ball somewhat thinking that everything was OK. Will have to start having more trips out to the pub - for Harv's benefit, of course
I was walking once with Charlie and his best mate, Peanut, and Peanut's owner. Peanut is a Beagle. Peanut is an exceptionally well socialised Beagle, she belongs to a dog walker in London, and she doesn't bark excessively as Beagles go. Only at squirrels. And foxes. Oh, and rabbits and birds rustling about in hedges. That kind of thing. But Beagles know how to bark when they put their minds to it. Oh yes. Anyway, Peanut started barking at this perfectly normal looking chap on Wimbledon Common. He froze, Peanut barked. Charlie went 'duh...what ya' doin' Peanut?'. She barked and barked and barked. Wouldn't recall, wouldn't let her owner get her collar - nothing. None of us knew what it was all about (apart from Peanut). It was very strange. Chap just kept saying 'I'm terrified of dogs, I'm terrified of dogs, please get your dog....'. Arghhh! How to make it all more stressful and worse. Perhaps Peanut knew he didn't like dogs. Dunno. She had never done anything like it before, or since. I'd worry about it if he does it again. He might not.
Simba never barks at people when we are out and about, except if they scare him somehow. So at night when we were walking and he spotted a fellow with a hood up coming out of the dark cut-through right at the edge of town, he got barked at (which was fine with me, to be honest). And just this morning, it was still dark on our morning walk and he got startled by a fellow on a bike who had just crossed the road (which Simba hadn't seen, he was engaged in an intensive sniff around a pole) and suddenly the guy's bike tires crunched on the snow as he came onto the sidewalk behind us and Simba growled and barked at him too. But it's only a couple warning barks, he never goes crazy with it.
(First post so be gentle lol ) Bella my 16 month old never barks around the house or in our garden , however as soon as we take her to our holiday home she barks at the slightest thing ! In fact she is noisier there than she ever is at home , growling , barking etc . I just put it down to her being protective in a different locale .
My labs are quiet my new neighbours didn't realise i had dogs for ages. when my old boy barked at anyone i would be suspicious hr was a good judge if character. Moo barks now because she us a demanding bossy deaf old girl. Rory barks because he us worried e found the old dogs death worrying. He found it stressful and he was already a dog which lacked confidence . He's a very vocal Labrador who needs his confidence nuturing.
I'm intrigued by this. There is clearly something about that person that your dog picked up on. I guess it could be how he smelled. I don't mean that the chap was unpleasant, probably nothing our rubbish noses could pick up. When we consider their sensitivity and how the dogs must be bombarded with smells all the time, picking up the tiniest oddity, it's a wonder they don't bark more. Possibly some smells are actually threatening. Fascinating, I'd love to read any research into this.
If you think about medical detection dogs. And all the other dogs trained to use their noses.....explosives.....cadaver dogs....drugs..... Smell is quite possibly the thing. Could have been he was anxious before, amplified more because Harvey was there......? Or maybe he was hiding a secret..........
It happened with Tatze once. She's always been quiet on walks. We went to the park one day last year, there was a bloke doing tai chi in bare feet - it was a freezing cold day. She barked and barked at him! But I agreed with her - he was weird! She's not done it since. She's an 'alert' barker at home, but as soon as I 'check' no one is there she stops ...
They can also hear heartbeats I wonder if a fast heart beat indicates prey? I also had an incident of Doug barking at some thick bushes. He really gave it some on the next day I was with a friend so we went to have a look. There were things in there which we found nasty also drinks cans. We think some One had been watching from the bushes the day before we told the neighbour beat officer.
Quinn is not really a barker at all and one day in the summer we were at a dog park with a water fountain in the middle (for dogs) and a homeless man walked in to fill a bucket...well, every dog in there eye him suspiciously and one by one they all started barking at him until there were about 6-7 dogs around him barking and none of the owners could get them to stop. Several people mentioned they had never even heard their dogs bark before and never at a person...a couple people had to leave with their dogs! It was like all the dogs said "hey - that's OUR fountain buddy!". It was pretty eerie!
Poor old Doug mistook a large up right tree stump for a lurker when his eyesight started to go. He gave it the full jumping at it barking furiously thing. He was going to kill it. then he realised what it was he looked embarrassed and disgusted . He snorted and we tried to stop laughing
Thanks everyone. Guess I'll just keep an eye/ear on it ... and perhaps still increase the pub visits, just to be sure.
Can they? I've always thought that dogs react to people that are scared due to body language ,I didn't realise they could hear that well .....
Apparently the speeded up heart rate in dog fearful people can trigger the predatory response in some dogs.
Just as a bit of strangness when I had sepsis and had not been admitted to hospital my heart rate was crazily high. i could hear it was different. Rory would come over and rest his soppy head on my chest and neck in that area. He could smell the infection in my face/jaw but kept lodging his head near my heart.
Serial killer. Definitely. Good boy, Harv. Without joking, my first boy never barked at people he didn't like (and he liked 99.9% of the population TOO much) but he would quietly put his large body between me and the "serial killer" and just stare at them. And considering he was a 120 lb Rottweiler, this was quite effective at freaking the other person out. It only happened a few times in his whole life, but when it did, I paid attention because he had good people judgement. I've had lots of people tell me their dog was "racist" and didn't like certain people by their skin tone, smells, clothing or something else physical. Brogan and I lived in Spain through several Semana Santa weeks and he developed a positive terror of dudes in white cloaks with big pointy hats - he'd do this low grumbly growl, which was so NOT him. So maybe Harv was just going off of some physical thing that freaked him out?
A friend's dog really dislikes Portuguese people. I don't know how she tells, but she does. My sister used to say that her last dog would pee on Americans!
My devil poodle would pee on Americans, too. Of course as we lived in the US, that just meant he peed on everyone. Reverse racism: Brogan LOVED Italians as they always seemed to have treats for him. He knew them because when they see a dog, they ALL say precisely the same thing:" Che bello, che bello cane!". That immediately started the drool and "I'm a poor starving dog" stare until he got his treat. And not just when we were in Italy, but when we ran across Italians anywhere - Ireland, Germany, Spain, Netherlands. Why tourists would have treats on their person, I've no idea, but 90% of the time they did.
Just to say your title for this thread made me snortle. I find that I am now calling Pongo "Doggy McDogface", "Stinky McStinkface" and "Pongey McPongface" on a regular basis. This is YOUR fault.
