Barking - training too good?

I have an 8 month old Labrador puppy and when she was little she used to bark at us while we ate, especially when eating toast as she had been given bits of toast by the lady we got her from (naughty). She also barked at the grandchildren when she got excited and to get us to play with her. We followed the training advice in Pippas book and online and it worked brilliantly. No more barking.
Now that she is 8 months old she doesn't bark at all. I would really like her to bark if someone comes to the door and the vet's nurse suggested putting a command eg. "speak" when she did bark followed by a reward so that she started to link the two. However, the only time she makes any sound is sometimes when she sees her reflection in the window, though now she has got used to it she rarely does, and sometimes if she wants to come in at the back door (but then only after waiting patiently for ages). Any ideas? Lola is almost too good to be true so I don't like to moan about something which a lot of people would do anything for i.e. a very quiet Labrador.

 

Re: Barking - training too good?

I have a nice yellow boy, about 20 months, fully house trained, obedience trained, walks well on lead - plus he'll bark any time you want. Barks on cue and also whenever the heck he feels like it. Most certainly will bark when someone comes to the door and often when someone doesn't. Let's negotiate

To teach a dog to bark on cue you need to do something to get them to bark. That is, you need to get the behaviour so you can reward it. You need to make her bark somehow. If you want her to bark at the door, would it work if you had a family member outside really hammering on the door and making a big kerfuffle? Someone else in the inside with your dog could be ready with the treats to reward barking in response to knocking. Eventually you want knocking on the door or the doorbell ringing to be the cue for barking so you don't need a verbal cue in this situation. Just knocking, barking and rewards.

I taught my dog Obi to bark at our obedience class where he will bark if he feels that he has been kept waiting too long for the next cue (no, I don't reward it, I reward silence....but he is a champion barker :). Anyway, I wanted to put it on cue. So I had him sitting in front of me and then stood there staring at him. He stared back. When I could see that he was getting a bit peeved at the lack of action I said 'speak' and make a star shape with my hand in front of his face. Then I waited till he barked. Click and treat. Repeated the word and hand signal and waited. Bark. Click and Treat. Eventually (actually fairly quickly) he worked out that the word plus the hand signal followed by bark = treat. When they work that out you have put the behaviour on cue.

Or you could just count your blessings ;D

 

Re: Barking - training too good?

Hi, count your blessings, I have 2 barkers and I am rewarding SILENCE!!!