Penny is barking so much. Nothing i do seems to stop her. Its not in the house but the second her paws are on the ground in the back garden it starts. At night when she goes out for her last toilet she barks. I think my neighbours must be annoyed it drives me nuts so what must they be thinking. Is there anyone experiencing the same..she is just over 10 months old and its got much worse. Help !!!
That does sound like a challenge! Any idea what it is she's actually barking at while she's in the garden? Is she playful/happy or fearful? Are you out there with her while she's doing it?
My puppy discovered her bark at around that age - she’s now 16 months. With her it’s an alert bark - any sounds or movement outside or unexpected noise in the house. If I am quick and happen to see something outside or hear something a second before she does, I can stop the bark by saying ‘listen to that - that’s a .......(whatever it is)’. As she has been trained to look at me when I say ‘look at that’, she also looks at me when I say ‘listen to that’. If she has already barked, I still say ‘listen to that’ and it does stop her. My older Lab very very rarely barks so it came as a shock to hear a frequent bark. I do feel though it’s manageable. Hope this helps - depends on why she’s barking.
I agree with @Atemas, try LAT. it works with Tatze, if she hears a new sound she’ll still bark sometimes but we go back to LAT and she soon stops. She’s never alone in the garden. Here is the link - https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/look-at-that.22184/ Do short sessions at first and slowly build it up.
Betsy is like this in the garden she has many triggers - a fox, the smell of a fox, ditto cats, pigeons, the dog next door, a sound from next door that might be the dog next door....pretty much endless. I know barking is a thing that dogs do, but I pretty much hate it and it drives me nuts. If there is a very specific trigger, then you can train that to mean do something else other than bark - so the dog next door barking at the fence can be turned into a cue for 'turn away and get something good'. So that can be used for a fair bit of the predictable stuff. In terms of dealing with unpredictable triggers, or triggers that I can't see or hear, rewarding stopping barking minimises it. This has been the most successful strategy with Betsy. As soon as barking stops, I mark and treat. This has reduced the barking down to just a couple of woofs and then she stops and looks for her reward. It could be argued I'm rewarding a chain of bark, stop but since she was barking endlessly, and not stopping on her own, I'll take the much shorter duration of barking and bank it. At least it's no longer constant. She doesn't bark if she is doing something, thankfully, so we can train in the garden, it's only when I'm waiting for her to have a wee etc. and she is wandering round and so on.
I would use scatter feeding in the garden to see if that helps. Give her all her meals scatter fed on the lawn. The very act of sniffing out food is normally calming for dogs and should break the habit part of the behaviour if there is one. It really depends what is causing the barking, though. If she’s barking because she’s afraid, she may not take the food, so you’ll have to see what happens. Scatter feeding Shadow when he alert barks really massively reduced the amount of barking and is easy to do. It also builds calm, positive associations with the thing he is alerting at. It’s easy to think you’re rewarding the barking, but if you think of it as an almost reflexive thing (startled by trigger, or becomes over-aroused, immediately barks) then you can see that using food as a positive interrupter to change the emotional state to a calmer one can actually reduce the behaviour long-term. Barking isn’t actually a reflex, in all likelihood, but I think of it along the lines of when I slip on ice and immediately a swear word pops out. It’s a learned behaviour that seems reflexive but I can stop it if I put my mind to it - in skiing I trained myself to say “woohoo!” when I lose my balance instead of the bad words. And by doing so, my emotional response to slipping changed to something far more positive, too Sorry, got a bit off track there. Scatter feeding. Try it
