Re: Barking Wow - so my neighbour who emptied a bucket of water over Bones after he barked back at her dogs that terrorize the neighbourhood through their garden fence, clearly hasnt read your article yet...
Re: Barking The problem is, many people don't care how anti-social their dogs are. I don't have an answer to that one I'm afraid.
Re: Barking Not only that, some people are actually PROUD of the anti-social nature of their dogs! In my experience, it is seldom the dogs that are the root of the problem - it's usually the owners...
Re: Barking Livid??? As the phrase goes, I was incandenscent with anger... Luckily for all concerned I wasnt the one on the other end of the lead - it was my partner, who just calmly informed the perpetrator that he would be informing the police. I can laugh about it now (a bit), but it really has been a problem over several months. It started because this neighbour's house is at the corner of the street and the footpath leading into the woods, so you have to walk along quite a long stretch of her fence in order to get to the woods. This gives her dogs (a Weimaraner and a GSP) ample time to get to full speed and level of ferocious barking... These dogs would then fling themselves against the fence, in a truly quite frightening manner. At the time, I had Bones and my really ancient old lab/spaniel mixture. They both started barking back, so I made them sit until they were quiet, when we continued. Her dogs continued to rant and rave on the other side of the fence. Now, both my dogs were/are very calm and well-behaved old gentlemen. But my efforts to make sure they continued that way backfired slightly, with the owner coming to my house and DEMANDING that I walk on the other side of the street and not, as she put it, deliberately provoke her dogs. This is also the what she expected from all the other dog owners in the street. Her dogs have attacked several other dogs already, and are quite scary. The situation escalated with threats on her behalf that she would set her dogs on mine... and in the end it truly did take complaints to the local police (not just from me, from many other neighbours too), to get the situation under control. Fingers crossed, things seem quieter now...
Re: Barking Karen that really is outrageous , to demand that you walk on the other side of the street because she has a problem controlling her own dogs , I`m not surprised you were so angry . Barking can be cured, as I know with master Flynn, my rescue terrier , we were told in advance that he barked at passing cars and even lunged at them , indicating fear anxiety with cars . As we dont know much about his background, we had to hazard a guess that something involving a car had caused a deep rooted anxiety ,it was a case of desensitisation and slowly over the past few weeks, he has got over it and now ignores them completely . How dare this woman come to your home to complain , it beggars belief, hope it is better now ?
Re: Barking Thank you Kate, is seems a bit better now, at least her dogs arent in the garden all the time, only when she is with them. Although she does not make an effort to keep them from barking; she seems to think it is ok and their right. It is a bit scary walking along the footpath next to her garden when her dogs are raving and flinging themselves against the fence, and poor Poppy shakes and pulls on the lead, but we are teaching her to ignore the nonsense going on and to trust in us as her leaders to be in charge and to protect her. Unfortunately you have to walk along the footpath to get into the woods. Luckily Bones is nearly deaf now, so it doesnt seem to bother him so much!! What made me really furious was when the woman emptied a bucket of water over Bones, for daring to bark back at her dogs. Can you imagine???? Well done you for helping your little chap to get over his fear of cars. Interesting, because my mother has a border collie puppy, who shows an absolutely irrational fear of cars, being both terrified of them and yet also lunging at them in collie fashion, presumably to try and round them up! This means that my poor mother is rightly terrified to let her off the lead, in case she sees a car anywhere near and gets into a frenzy. How did you manage to desensitise Flynn? Any tips would be gratefully received! She has had the puppy since 8 weeks old, and there is no explicable reason for her behaviour. She is six months old.
Re: Barking What I did Karen was two fold . Firstly I tought Flynn very quickly, the command Look at Me . This was easy because I prefixed it with his name, then said Look at Me, he would do, made him sit, still looking at me, and so I gave him a treat . So , walking up the lane, I see or hear a car coming , I give the command, always followed by a SIT and he had a treat by which time the offending vehicle had gone so no point him barking at it or lunging . The other thing I did was to sit on a bench at the end of our lane where it joins a slightly busier lane and just get him used to the sound of cars and tractors , to see that there was nothing to fear, but this came after the first method when he had got more comfortable with traffic . The Look at Me method only took about a month, and Flynn was pretty bad , and now he completely ignores traffic, so worth a go, good luck to your Mum x
Re: Barking Thanks for that Kate, sounds like a good way to go. I'll talk to Mum about it - she says the pup is getting better with traffic, but not really reliable yet. It's interesting how very different other breeds are from Labradors!
