We Have a Barking Problem

The Past: This is not new. We have always had barking problems at our house. With Moree, though, it was only Moree that barked. Smokey wasn’t interested. And between a baby gate and a plastic bin across the hall, we could barricade the dogs in the back half of the house (where we mostly were) but still be able to make it to the kitchen without much issue.

Our trainer did give us some good advice on working with Moree’s barking problem when he was “free range”- go to the window and look at what he is barking at. Acknowledge that he is trying to tell us something, and then either praise if it’s something we want to be warned about (guy across the street with a chain saw), or be disappointed if it was something like birds. (Moree loved to bark at birds.)

Moree loved to bark. His body language while barking was much the same as it was while playing fetch. So training him out of barking was difficult, but we were starting to have some success with this method.

The Present: Now, we have Larry and June. There is no way to barricade them in the back of the house without making it impossible for us to come and go, as well. Plus, with our roommate living there, we like to spend time in the living room and dining room as a family. We don’t want the dogs to have to be gated away from us when that happens.

Larry barks at everything- even more than Moree did. We have a motorcycle and a couple cars with really loud engines in our neighborhood, and that has made Larry decide that he not only needs to bark at other dogs, people, and birds, but also at every single car that drives by our house.

Add to that June. If it’s a dog or people walking by, she likes to bark at them too, but mostly she likes to bark at a barking Larry. It creates an endless feedback loop.

When it is just Larry, the look and respond to what he’s barking at method seems to work fairly well. He is very responsive to disappointment from us. But when June is there, barking with/at him, it is her feedback that he’s focused on.

Sunday evening, during one of their many barking fits while we were in the front of the house, I went over to the couch to see what they were barking out. Larry jumped off the couch and raced to the back of the house still barking (presumably to “follow” whatever he had seen).

I pulled June off the back of the couch and was attempting to hold her on the seat of the couch to calm her down and stop the barking, and she bit me. Not enough to break the skin, but my hand is still kind of bruised.

I can’t blame her too much- her general purpose in joining in the barking is to get Larry to play with her. She barks at him, and then they get in a nice little scrap on the floor. Me trying to hold her on the couch probably felt a lot like Larry trying to pin her, and she responded to me the way she would have him.

But even without the bite, this five minute barking chorus that happens every time a car drives by has got to stop.

The Future: What we did Sunday was to put June on a leash and keep her over with us away from the window. That allowed one of us to go check when Larry started barking and respond appropriately.

We are fine with that being a temporary solution- something we do while we work on training Larry out of his barking (he does not love to bark the way Moree did, so hopefully it won’t take too long), but we don’t want it to have to be something permanent.

And that’s where I have some concerns. Will our training of Larry go right out the window the second June is loose again to feed back in to the barking loop?

If we have to have June on a leash away from the stimuli, are we actually teaching her not to bark, or just avoiding the situation?

Once we get Larry trained, do we start leashing him and work on training June? Do we alternate- this time when we’re out front, June is leashed, next time Larry is?

Do we go back to a citronella collar? (We bought one for Moree. It mostly meant that my house always smelled like citronella.) Or try one of those high-frequency sound activated anti-barking things? (I think we also tried one of those with Moree. And since it didn’t leave my house smelling like citronella, I have no idea if it even worked.)

My goal is that we all get to enjoy using our living room and dining room, and also that we cut down on the barking.

We are looking at adopting a child sometime in the next year or so, and especially if we get a baby, I’d like the child not to be constantly woken up by barking dogs if we need to be in the kitchen and dining room.

(And for those of you wondering- no, I have no concerns that June would ever bite a child. She came from a house with very young children, and we babysit a toddler on occasion. She very much gets that children are different than adults, and lets them do whatever they want.)

Suggestions?: So do any of you have experience with aggression barking (versus fearful barking)? I’d really like to get this issue under control.