How To Stop Your Dog Barking | Dog Behaviour Tips

hi I'm Dr Houston the many pets vet and I'm Adam femi at dog trainer and behaviorists it's important to remember that barking is a natural behavior and is a way that dogs communicate barking is only a problem when it's excessive may be causing us stress or our dog stress for example it may trouble neighbors and it's also important to remember that some breeds of dog are more likely to bark than others so putting in the time to do your research before bringing a dog home is really helpful so there are many different types of barking and they may all need to be addressed differently but here are a few tips that you could follow to help with this Behavior make sure that your dog gets adequate exercise reward calm and positive behavior and lastly be aware of and be thinking about your dog's trigger so that you can try and avoid those the first question we need to be asking is why is our dog barking let's take a look at a few of the different types so firstly we have territorial barking this is a bark that we may see in a window or a doorway when guests come to the house for example dogs May bark if people leave they may think they're seeing them off this is basically your dog's way of saying back off this is my space so then how would you go about approaching this if you were working on this with a client so we'll be looking at firstly making sure it definitely is territorial behavior is the dog directing this energy towards the door guests coming in and out or a window for example and then we've got to make sure we keep control make it safe initially and then can be positively reward good reactions in these situations so when we're talking about territorial barking or behavior you can see here we're in the garden we may find a dog being territorial at a fence line or towards a gate it's really really important that we bring the dog back out to this environment under control we've also got here a food dispensing toy we just have treats I'm going to give the dog that to do while I've got hold of the lead we want to be out here with my dog exposing it to those sounds and sights with something to do as it all gets better at this and is ignoring what's going on I might start dropping the lead take your time with this and this can take a long time be careful not to rush this process it's all about getting those little baby steps right we want that progression as the dog gets better we might even take the lead off and maybe even just give it treat rather than the food dispensing toy but it's important that we're out here with our dogs and we fade us away as the dog improves so next up we have fearful barking this is a bot that may be directed towards something your dog sees as a threat this might be another dog a person or even a cyclist for example so this would fall into the category of what we call reactivity or a reactive dog and this can be really tricky to deal with I know owners get discouraged really easily but it's important to remember to stay positive and stay consistent if you want more information we do have a video about reactive dogs that you can check out the most important thing here is to seek the advice of a professional behaviorist next up is anxious barking dogs May bark anxiously when they're separated from us humans for example or even another pet so we see this a lot in new puppies it's a very common behavior and it can continue and get worse into adulthood so how would you recommend that we approach anxious barking early on so remember dogs are social mammals it's important to be with us we're making the unnatural sometimes natural so we want to make sure we exercise in our dogs well positively rewarding them when they are away from us be patient and build this up we also have a video on separation anxiety if you need to tackle attention barking this is what it says on the tin this is our dogs trying to get our attention I think all of us pet owners have been there I definitely have well how would you address this so I like to give my dogs lots of enrichment throughout the day think about your toy box think about the way you use your toys think about food the way you use food could we scatter it in the garden for example food enrichment toys games if we instigate these things our dogs are less likely to so what I'm hearing from you is it's really key to make sure that your dogs don't feel the need to do that in the first place so we're covering things like exercise mental stimulation so they're not feeling the need to seek that by barking 100 [Music]