Nuisance Barking

Moree loved to bark. Loved it. It made him happy. You see, he assigned himself the job of protecting our house, and was certain that it needed protecting from everything he could see, including birds so far away we had trouble making them out.

In our first house, when we left them in the house with access to the back yard while we were gone, someone filed a complaint about his barking. That resulted in us getting a mailing from the local humane society with information about problem barking. It was one of the most amusing (and useless) brochures I have ever read.

First, it told us, there were two types of nuisance barking- fear and aggression. We could tell the difference, it said, by paying attention to our dog’s ears and tail. Were the ears laid back (aggression) or drooping (fear)? Was his tail straight and up (aggression) or tucked between his legs (fear)?

The most obvious problem with this is that not all dog have ears that can lay back or droop, and not all dogs have tails. Moree had neither. He had soft floppy ears and a docked tail. If we had been trying to use the information in the brochure to determine the cause of his barking, we would have been out of luck.

And even if Moree had had straight up ears and a tail, the brochure would have done us no good. When Moree barked, his ears were perked and his tail was wagging. Just like when we would hold a ball before playing fetch. Because he liked to bark. And really, there’s not a whole lot you can do about a dog who LIKES to bark.

We tried.

There was the shock collar. However, the shock caused him to bark. And he figured out quickly that if he just kept barking, the emergency shut off kicked in and the collar stopped doing anything.

There was the ultrasonic noise thing that was supposed to send an annoying tone every time he barked. As far as we could tell, it never worked. We weren’t supposed to be able to hear it, but the dogs apparently didn’t either.

And finally, there was the citronella collar. It might have worked if we had been able to use it in limited duration, but at the time, we were out of the house 12 or more hours a day. By the time we got home, the citronella reserve was empty, Moree was happily barking, and my house smelled vaguely of lemon.

Eventually, we stopped giving the dogs access to the house and the back yard. They got closed in the garage. With nothing to see, this apparently calmed Moree’s barking. But it made him afraid of the garage…