How To Stop Dog Barking

Barking is the way a dog communicates. Now a barking dog is all well and good when you are playing with your dog or even if there is some sort of danger, but if your dog seems to be doing it all the time, then you might have a problem. Not only will the peace and quiet be disturbed, you and your dog might be very unpopular in your neighbourhood.

But before you get all worked up, try to find out why your dog is barking. It could be to gain your attention, to warn or to alert you of strangers or danger, to play with you or as a result of excitement, to indicate boredom or in response to other dogs. Once you have determined the cause of your dog barking, then you could go about coming up with a solution.

If your dog is barking simply to gain your attention then I would suggest that you simply ignore him. Every time you respond to his barking by either letting him in the house or playing with him or comforting him, you reinforce the thought that barking gets him anywhere, which is not what you want. He will eventually learn that too much barking gets him nowhere.

Your dog usually tends to be territorial and protective of his human family and thus he will bark whenever there is a stranger approaching. Now this is one reason for barking you do not want to stop. However make sure that after his first few barks, he quiets down when you tell him to. Praise him first for being a good dog then a firm “ENOUGH” or “STOP” should stop him. This might take time and practice but be patient with your dog.

If your dog is bored or has excess energy, it would also be a reason for him to bark incessantly. To prevent this from happening, you could take him out for long walks and play with him so that he could burn off all the energy. By the end of it all, barking would be the last thing his on his mind. You could also give him a chew toy or something to play with that would distract him from barking.

There are some trainers who recommend dog barking collars to help stop dogs from barking. I personally would not recommend it as I feel it is cruel to the dogs. Dog collars aimed to prevent dogs from barking like sound collars, electric collars and citronella collars are used for punishment training which I believe is not as effective as positive reinforcement such as a treat or a pat or verbal praise. Furthermore, as barking is a dog’s way of communicating, the dog keeps getting ‘punished’ even when he is justified to bark. The collar cannot discriminate between normal barking and problem barking.

Remember that your aim is not to completely stop your dog from barking but to prevent your dog from barking excessively and disturbing your household and your neighbourhood.