Dogs bark. It’s one of the ways in which they communicate to us. A single bark is fine, barking during play is okay to a point. But when your dog’s barking escalates to the point that it’s ruining your relationship with your neighbours, your family, and even stopping you from having friends over it's time to do something.
So, how do you stop a dog from barking?
Here are three things you can do today to stop your dog barking.
1. Stop your dog barking by creating a ‘Dimmer Switch’
One weakness a lot of 'barky' dogs have is that they go from 0 to 100 miles an hour in an instant!
They struggle to cope with the smallest of stimulations without shouting about it.
Your dog may be particularly sensitive to movement, or noise, or both, and improving their ability to appropriately respond to the environment and then quickly settle back down again will work wonders!
Let's say there’s a bark at the door and they were sound asleep. I bet they don’t calmly look up, maybe wander over to the door to see what’s going on before heading back to snuggle in bed.
Quite the opposite, right?!
Your dog jumps up, races to the door, barks crazily (maybe even spins) and then probably takes a good while to calm down again.
What this means is that your dog doesn’t have a middle ground when it comes to what is called their ‘arousal levels’, which we described at going from 0 to 100 earlier. They are either in a state of calm (for some dogs it might just be sleep! = 0) or they are on high alert (=100). They don’t seem to have that ‘in the middle’ thinking ground. Or if they do, you don’t see it very often. This is particularly common in working breeds in a city environment, nervous dogs and puppies.
We want your dog to find those mid-levels where the arousal might ramp up a bit, but it comes back down again slowly. Meaning they don’t reaching boiling point – or in this case, the barking point!
A simple way to get started is to bring your dog off of their bed, ask them for a trick like nose touch or spin, and then ask them to go back to their bed. You wait calmly until they are calm too, and then either do it again, or finish the session there. This provides very small amounts of excitement followed by enough time to relax back to 0 again, or at least close to 0. The more you practice, the quicker your dog will be able to settle back own afterwards - the first stages of developing a dimmer switch!
Creating a dimmer switch is just one way of reducing your dogs barking and once you’ve got that dimmer switch sorted the magic REALLY starts to happen!
2. Stop your Dog Barking by Creating a Calm Space
Teaching your dog to have a place they can go is useful for so many things – barking being just one. Why? When we teach a dog to hang out on a bed we are promoting calmness and bringing those arousal levels down, this is also called Boundary or Bed Games and they are a crucial part of every dog's training.
Having a quiet space to go also encourages more calmness even outside of that space. What a dog rehearses, or practices, they will do more of.
We all become masters of the things we do everyday. So if your dog has the opportunity to bark incessantly every day they are going to become pretty good at it! Whereas, if they practice chilling out every day, they will become good at that!
The first step is to build value in your dog's bed (either in or not in a crate/playpen) so that they want to stay on it. Once you and your dog become good at practicing this at home, on a bed, you can use any thing that can act as a boundary. A tree stump on a walk, or a chair, in fact, they can be anywhere you want your dog wants to hang out until you release them.
At home – let’s start with a bed.
Set-Up: Position yourself so that the bed is in-front of you, I recommend sitting down with a treat pouch or bowl full of treats - maybe a food tub if your dog is likely to make a grab for the treats. Do this in a quiet space, once your dog has been fed and had a toilet break.
Mark and reward any movement towards or near your dog’s boundary - this is called 'shaping' - this can take some time so patient. At least 10 repetitions at this level, where your dog only has to move toward the bed to get a treat. Toss the treat onto the bed if your dog is confident and progressing quickly, or toss the treat away from the bed to allow your dog a short break if they are getting frustrated or worried.
Now start to reward your dog for any foot or feet on the boundary. They might do this quite quickly or they might take a while. At this stage, always feed the food on the BOUNDARY, not to the dogs mouth. Feeding to the boundary helps them to see where the value is. You will need to get your dog into the idea that you are then one that releases them off the boundary – so once they are on it and you’ve rewarded them, release them off the boundary by throwing food away and watch them turn and run back and hop back on for more!
Keep rewarding food heavily onto the boundary especially when your dog gets all 4 paws on there!
Continue to charge up that release by throwing food away before your dog hops off the bed.
When they are jumping up onto the boundary consistently you can start to add a cue. I tend to use 'bed' but some other options are 'hop it up', 'rest', 'on' etc. Any word as long as you are consistent and don't use it for anything else. E.G I don't use 'up' because I use that for the Paws Up trick.
3. Stop Your Dog Barking by Rewarding Them For Not Reacting
Another foundation game of any dog's training is Distract, Mark and Treat or DMT.
Especially when it comes to combatting dog barking and any other types of 'reactivity'.
Now there are MANY levels to this game but the very basics are:
You/your dog sees a distraction.
You mark the distraction with a very calm ‘niiiiiiiice’.
You then calmly deliver the reward.
The trick to start playing this is to do it with all distractions. Even the ones that you think your dog doesn’t notice. Like a leaf falling, the noise of a cup going down on the side. Practicing DMT for things that your dog wouldn't normally react to anyway, gets the number of successful repetitions up and kicks off the learning. Keep playing DMT for non-triggers a few times a week even as your dog gets good at this to keep the value in not-reacting topped up.
These are small steps to start to build up that ‘no-reaction response’ to things going on.
Make sure you REALLY notice those times your dog doesn’t react or bark. Say you see someone walk past, but you dog doesn’t bark? REWARD THEM!
This may mean having a pot of food around so you can be quick to reward that no reaction behaviour. You can use their breakfast/dinner, give them 1/2 of their usual food in their bowl and keep the rest in your treat pouch to use for DMT.
These are only 3 ways to help your dog to stop barking. For a short online course, I recommend the Stop Barking Mini Course by Absolute Dogs. A super affordable online course that you can buy and keep forever at just £27! Work through the online videos at your own pace for more games and skills.
If you think you need help on a 1-2-1 basis, check out my training page and get in touch.
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