We have a 2.5 year old choc lab named Hugo. We have had our issues over the last couple of years, but he has grown up so much and we love him to bits. Overall he is great, however, recently he has started barking at night. It’s like he has discovered his voice! Up until the last couple of months, he was sleeping through the night without a peep. I was beginning to wonder if he knew how to bark! It now seems to go like this every night: We go for our usual nightly walk, he has dinner, we sit and relax and watch TV and then we put him in his patio area (he can access the outside from this area) and sleeps on his bed which shares a sliding door with our room to the outside patio enclosure. At least twice or three times a night he is waking and barking loudly for all to hear, usually, 11pm, 4am approx.. My partner has been looking out the door to see what he has been barking at and he seems to have heard something, as he keeps looking at our door and then running outside and back again. I know this seems like he might be alerting us of something to be worried about as it even seems to startle Hugo, but there is nothing there. I am just wondering if anyone has had this issue arise and if there is any advice out there. TIA
Julie T, who isn't around much anymore, had a really interesting post about how she trained her younger dog to stop alert barking: https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/garden-barking.18734/#post-285053 I don't have a barker so I can't offer any other advice, but that might give you a starting point.
