Episode #140 A Conversation on Barking with B&B Trainers

Join Amy and team for a conversation on barking! Learn tips and tricks to change your dog's barking behavior and keep the peace in and out of the house. 

BAXTER & Bella Trainers on today's show: 
Courtney Goblirsch
Laura Sarvinski
Emily Jolliff
Barbara Cannon
Bailey Atwood
Amanda Crosland

Bailey's video of dogs barking out a window: 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF041CM48yC3ED5Ka871dwLcCn4DNDt_n

Transcript

Amy: 0:00

This is the puppy training podcast episode 140 a discussion on barking with our team of trainers. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcast. And I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Today, I have something fun for you. My team of trainers we meet every month to discuss business and clients and topics, training discussions. And I recorded this month discussion on barking. So I'm going to let you listen in here we go. What questions have come up lately about barking?

Courtney: 0:49

I'd say I've been getting a lot of attention barking or what we would call demand barking. So that's when your dog is barking at you for something that they

Amy: 0:58

want. Yeah, so that's important. What age does that start happening that attention barking, the demand barking

Laura: 1:04

is when they first come home and it works for them. I mean, we know that it works it, I'm going to do it again. So it only takes one time of responding with giving a treat or putting their food bowl down. And I think you've created a little monster there already.

Courtney: 1:23

Unintentional rewards too. So even making eye contact with them or shushing them things that are so minut can definitely keep that progressing.

Laura: 1:34

I also get a lot of, you know, just families not being on the same page, I had a call yesterday where you know, wife was I'm really good at ignoring and it works for me, and then my husband can't stand it. And in five minutes, he's like, be quiet. And then the dog is continuing to bark at him. So you know, everyone trying to be on the same page with how we're going to respond, I think is super important as well.

Emily: 1:56

I think just being able to like recognize what is driving the barking is a big thing too, because each kind of cause of barking has a different kinds of behavioral solution, right, we've got the attention barking that we need to ignore versus barking at something that's scary, or something that they see that we don't want them to get in the habit of doing that. So we can't necessarily just ignore that. And we should actually try to prevent that. Like, there's a lot of different things that we can do because of barking. So we have to figure out what the cause of it is to start with. And then we can go forward with kind of trying to figure out a solution.

Barbara Cannon: 2:33

I was going to mention that I've been dog setting a four month old puppy. And And in two weeks that puppy went from not barking and being local at all to be demand marking and also alert parking. So it just happened that four months, I think. And I treated it in very different ways. As Emily mentioned, he should he started demand marking for food. So I just ignored him completely. And I didn't and I walked away from his food. But when he was alert barking outside, I redirected him away from whatever was triggering him. And then later on when we were downstairs and he could see golf carts going by, and he was being calm, which he was barking at before I was rewarding him a lot for calm behavior. So I think it's important to redirect and as those cases but also to really reinforce the good behavior as well.

Amy: 3:24

Dogs love patterns, right? So if they start to get in this pattern of you see your dog head out, like to stare out a window, and they're starting to get really intense, I can start to anticipate they're most likely going to start barking then we can redirect them even before the barking start so that the barking is not part of the pattern anymore. Versus I think sometimes people just wait until the bark happens and then they do something about it. Much like jumping or counter surfing the dog does the action we respond that's now the pattern right dog puts his paws on the counter gets off we asked him to sit we say yes, we give him a treat. But the jumping is still part of the pattern dogs stares out the window they park we say leave it or whatever you know, to redirect them away the barking is still part of the pattern. But finding that pattern and being able to anticipate my dog is going to bark if they sit and stare out the window, we can redirect them before the park happens and really change that pattern.

Courtney: 4:17

And also realizing too that if you are going to get access to that window that you need to be training because if you're not ready to train and your dog just has access to that window to bark at you're not going to actually see the progression you want to see in the training because sometimes they're still allowed to bark which is always going to make you kind of take those couple steps back with the training. I think

Emily: 4:39

to like talking about habits like some people maybe they have an older dog that always barks when someone comes to the door and now they're getting a puppy and so now they want to fix the dog barking out the door because they don't want the puppy to learn that and so they want this sort of like quick fix of oh I want to you know do this in a week and color good and you know my puppy is going to come home then and and I like to remind people like however long Your dog has been doing a behavior, they've built up that habit, right. And so you kind of have to practice the right behavior for maybe even as long as they've been doing that bad behavior plus more to make it so that we can rewrite what they've already learned works for them, and teach them this new behavior a new way. So it definitely is like however long the behavior has been going on, it's, it may take that that same amount of time to kind of teach them a new behavior, it might not, it might go quicker, but be prepared to you know, not have a quick fix for a behavior that's been going on for a really long time. Bailey also has a really great video on Window Washing with her dogs on you know, if your dog barks at something that's outside of the outside of your house or outside of your area, then, you know, she's got a great sort of step by step one on showing you how that process works on what Barbara was talking about, about rewarding for that calm behavior as they watch out the window, you can see that in action.

Bailey: 6:00

Yeah, feeding feeding off of that, thank you, Emily, is that with my body language in that video, it's really kind of calm and carefree. The way I like to say it. If we are really worked up in that moment, it's going to end excite our dogs even more and cause more of that barking if there's any anxious feelings that we have. So I'm trying to be pretty, like natural and carefree, but also letting my dogs know that hey, you know, it's okay to just, you know, be calm, and we can watch out this one all together. I think overall, we need to figure out why our dog is barking, what do they want from that situation? And figure out what we can do going forward to prevent that situation from happening. But what can we teach our dog to do instead, to prevent it from becoming this unwanted habit?

Amanda: 6:46

I was just thinking real quick, Amy. One thing that Laura said about that husband, who has like five minutes to cut it out, I'm so sick of this. It might be helpful to add in there. Like how long do we let them bark to Barbara's saying we ignore them too. For some of that attention barking just ignore them and let them go. What would be what you what would you guys say on how long? Because I know like for some of the clients I've worked with, it depends a lot on the situation apartment townhome house, and where are you at? And it to the I'll have some clients who I'm like, yeah, maybe like 30 minutes to an hour and my house clients and like, if they are still barking at two hours, take them out to go potty and maybe try to put them back in. They're gonna fall asleep eventually. And obviously, we try to set him up for success before putting him in there. Rarely do we have dogs that bark over two hours. I've had people that are like they've been going for like an hour and like, on and off for an hour straight for an hour? Or what are your guys's thoughts about like, what do you say when people are like, how long do I let them work?

Bailey: 7:47

I tend to like tell them that, you know, the dogs are going to have to stop to breathe to they're going to stop to listen. So like I really just try and tell people you know, wait, wait on the outside of that doorway, count to five or 10 You know, just trying to wait for a pause. I think that's the most important thing. Ideally, we want to wait longer than that. But if it's really quote like that non stop, you know, I even might have them say send me a video of the audio of the dog barking and I can help pinpoint when to go in. Because chances are there's some moment in there where we can go in and let them out.

Amy: 8:20

Yeah, and I like that point of that each dog is different. And each case is unique. So I love that at Baxter & Bella, we have those one on one video sessions and phone sessions where you can meet with a trainer and really dig deep into why is my dog barking and what kind of training plan can we lay out so that this dog can be successful.

Courtney: 8:40

I also feel like I have like a goofy method for people that have like apartment situations or situations they can't have their dogs barking, or even morning times where people will cave and go and get their dog. I always tell them to take them out and put them on a leash and walk them around a spot like your sofa, like 10 times, walk them around your sofa, put them right back in the crate, doing something that's almost obnoxious and boring. And then putting them back in makes them almost realize like Oh, coming out wasn't fun, right? She like she just did something she didn't play with me. She didn't talk to me. And usually a few times of doing that the dog stops I've done it personally and how to have had a lot of success, success with people and clients doing it. So apartment goers and stuff like that. That's something I always recommend.

Amanda: 9:28

That's good advice. It's a lot like the business routine two that we talked about, right when you just take them out for that business potty break. There's no treats, praise, rewards, talks, cuddling, cuddling, is just straight to the potty, straight back to the crate or straight back to the plate. Like that. I think that is a really effective method to for that.

Amy: 9:47

Okay, I think we'll stop the discussion there. But hopefully that was helpful. It's fun to just get together as a group of trainers, brainstorm, share ideas, and help you guys be the best you can be in training your dogs So, we appreciate your support. Have a wonderful week and happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other Puppy Training question, visit my site Baxter & bella.com to contact me