Ask a Trainer - Barking

Top trainers answer your questions

Q: My dog used to be quiet and good as gold. But increasingly, she's barking at people in the street and now she's barking even when we're home and she hears noises, like people in the hallway of our apartment building. I say "no" firmly but it doesn't seem to do any good. How can I nip this burgeoning barking problem in the bud?-Lindsay, Toronto, ON

A: In the next couple of decades, it could be the answer will be a genetic alteration: this sounds like a slam-dunk developmental onset, bred-in, watchdog thing. For now, we'll have to rely on training and increased stimulation.

First the training. You need beefier consequences than "no" said firmly. Try three minutes incarceration in the bathroom. But warn first. After a few barks, say, "Thanks for the alert. Enough now, please." Then, at the very next bark, say "Oooh, too bad for you" and whisk the little demon up and unceremoniously into jail. At the end of three minutes, check whether she's quiet in there, because letting her out is a whopping big reward and we want to lay that juicy reward on quietness.

After doing this many times, there's a very good chance she's going to start heeding the "enough now" warning. When she does this, give her a spectacular food reward, such as smelly cheese or roast chicken, along with some gooey gratitude. She'll be hit and miss for a while so you'll need to be snappy with both kinds of consequence until she's slick.

It would also help to tire her out more on a daily basis. Hard exercise, such as a fifteen minute game of fetch or tug, and training, to tire her out mentally, are the gold standard. If she's already obedient, teach her tricks. Get yourself a clicker, a bag of treats, and a how-to opus and give her some calculus-for-dogs every day. ■

Jean Donaldson is the founder of the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers and author of several books on dog training and behaviour, including Dogs are from Neptune and The Culture Clash.