짖는 개 해결! 모든 개의 성가신 짖음을 멈추는 완벽한 가이드

example, when I was a teenager in high school, I looked after a kennel of Shobazengies. They yodeled. Every morning, the whole kennel would yodel. It was kind of entertaining actually. And so, breed may be the reason, and really, I hope you did your research. There are just some breeds that like to talk. There are some people that like to talk. You may know somebody like that. Okay. I digress. Reason number two, and this is a big, big reason for many dogs. They are expressing emotion. Imagine if you were laughing and you got punished for that. You aren't allowed to laugh. What would happen to your relationship with the person that's punishing you for laughing? Or if you were so overwhelmed with excitement because your long lost BFF walked through the door and you squealed and you got punished for squealing. So, if you think of your dog barking as vocalization, you might have a little bit more compassion for what's going on. I'd like you to get out that journal I keep asking you to keep and write down your own dog's bark. You will notice that the dogs bark at different tones, different pitches and different frequencies. So, sometimes it might be a woof, woof. Other times it might be a woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. So, just mark that down and see what's happening at that time. Because when a dog's excited, say you're coming through the door after work, they're probably going to bark with one or two big loud woofs like, yay it's a good thing. I'm so excited you're here. As opposed if somebody strange coming through the door, especially if they were, you know, looked different like, you know, Sasquatch came through your door, you would probably get a woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. Because the dog would be alerting that this is potentially dangerous. So, dogs will bark because they are alerting to you and because you're the family to anybody else that's in the family that needs to know that. So, dogs that are happy are going to bark. Dogs that are alerting because they're afraid, they may also be alerting because they're curious. That might be a slightly different bark. I'm not afraid, but who's that over there? They might be a little curious. A lot of dogs will bark when they're initiating play. They play bow, they get their low in their front end, their back end high, and they might do one or two barks as part of the initiation to play. Your dog might bark, and this could be alerting as well when they're fearful. If your dog is anxious about being left alone, they may bark and that anxiety could be described

as loneliness. But the dog definitely is anxious. And so, they will give a continuous, it doesn't stop, a continuous bark calling for their people because yes, they're anxious about being left alone. And I think one of the biggest reasons that dogs bark is they're frustrated. Maybe they're behind a barrier. Maybe somebody's passing the window and they're feeling pretty full of themselves and they'd like to tell that person, get off my property, or it's another dog, or it's a cat, or it's a squirrel. I got to let them know I live here. So, frustration. In podcast episode number 88, I talked about barrier frustration. So, dogs who look out a window, dogs who are behind a fence, dogs who are in a kennel. It could even be a dog that's tied up somewhere, or you're walking a dog on a leash. That is barrier frustration. They could bark for that reason. But frustration doesn't happen only because of barriers. A lot of dogs will bark in frustration when you as their owner have not given them clarity with your expectations in training. So, whether it be an agility handler who is cueing their dog so ineffectively, the dog turns the wrong way, realizes they're wrong, and then gives you a woof because you know what? What did you mean turn right? It was a left! A dog may also bark in frustration because I just want to pull out my hair. I don't know what you want. How can I earn that cookie? I don't get it! So, you might get a dog that barks in frustration that way. So, emotion is a big, big reason why a dog will vocalize, my friend. So, keep that journal. Consider what's going on. And let's go on to reason number three, which is related to emotions. And that is a dog may bark if the pack is barking. If you ever walked into a boarding kennel and the dogs all go off at certain times, it's a pack. Oh, you're doing it. You're doing it. Okay. I'm joining in the choir. So, if you have a large number of dogs in your home, they all may bark at the same time. And it may be at nothing at all, but one dog barked. And if you're barking, I'm barking. Reason number four, why dogs may bark. Older dogs may bark because of dementia. So, be a little more empathetic with your older dogs. Talk to your veterinarian and see if there's something that you can do in changing your dog's diet or potentially a prescription for your dog who is suffering from the effects of old age. Reason number five, and again, I would think with frustration, this would be the number one reason why dogs feel the need to vocalize. And that is it's been reinforced somewhere. Why do dogs do anything? It's got to have some

reinforcement value other than the emotional reasons, obviously. So, somewhere in your life with your dog, there could have been some reinforcement. And it could even be you turned and yelled at them. They got your attention. Woo-hoo-hoo. I think I'm going to try that again. Do they want to get yelled at? No. It may be your dog's barking, maybe a pattern of reinforcement because they anticipate something happens at the same time every day. And so, they start to bark too, because they're excited. Remember emotion? Excited about that pattern about to be repeated today. Let me give you a little example, story from friends of mine who they had a young puppy that they were going through our program with. And they got up to game day 11, I think in Recallers. So, they had done crate games and their dog was super at it. It was just a young puppy. I believe it was four months old when they had to go away and they left the puppy with one of their parents. When they came back two weeks later, rather than following the directions on, here's where the puppy sleeps at night and here's what she has to do before you open the crate. The puppy had never gone in her crate and she slept on the bed the whole time. From that point on, my friends couldn't get her to go in a crate. Now, she would happily go in a crate on her own, but if they dare try to close the door, she used her voice. And guess what her voice got? It got the door open. Oh, sorry. Did I close the door and you didn't want the door closed? And so, very early on, that puppy learned the power of the vocalization. And so, then they would take this puppy on the road with them. They traveled quite a lot. The first time they went in a hotel and they knew they couldn't put the dog in a crate, they decided they were going to go down to the restaurant for supper. So, they would put the dog in a bathroom. Now, how many of you have ever put your dogs in the bathroom in a hotel? I have a question for you. At home, is that a place that you'd conditioned as a really good place so the dog would be super relaxed? If you're like most people, the answer is, yeah, no, Susan, I didn't think of that. Yeah. That's why a lot of dogs trash bathrooms, pull down shower curtains. And I digress. My friend's dog, they put the dog in the bathroom. Oh, Susan, we gave him her bed and gave her some water and we gave her a bone. And then they stood outside the hotel room and the dog whimpered a little bit as she would, I'm in a bathroom. What, like what do I want to do in this bathroom? You're always in the bathroom. If I'm ever in the bathroom,

but you're not in the bathroom, why aren't you in the bathroom? So, the whimpering turned to, where are you? I'm in the bathroom by myself. This is weird. Are you watching TV? I should be out there. And they stood outside in the hallway, heard the whimpering, heard the barking. And when the barking got more insistent, louder, and with more frequency, they went through the door, released the dog from the bathroom and ordered room service. And that is an example of how vocalizing in a dog can be reinforced. There are several examples right there. There's a spectrum of needs for a family pet. At one end of the spectrum, let's say we have a pet rock. And what are the needs of a pet rock? And as you go up, you know, I think the needs are fairly small for that pet rock. Like you can go on vacation for months and not need to leave that pet rock with any food or water. Now going up the scale of needs, you might pass like, I don't know, guppies, various birds, and you're going to get somewhere on the high end of needs. Both physical and emotional needs is a dog. So, a dog is not a pet rock. I know, you know that. And I hope nobody thinks I'm talking down to them, but I need to preface that because today might be about reevaluating your expectations of your dog. We ran a little poll on our Facebook page that said, do you have a dog that barks and to a point that it's annoying and let us know why it is. Why do you believe it is that the dog is barking? And of those over 500 people who left a comment as to why their dog barks, the breakdown is like this. 19% said the dog barked when they wanted to initiate play. 17% were barking when you were preparing their food. 15% barked for attention. 12% because they were frustrated. 7% was because they were behind a barrier. And 5% were either they were inside and wanted out or they were outside and they wanted in. Now, I don't know how good you are with bath, but let me just tell you that is 75% of the total number of people that answered that poll were in that breakdown. And today I'm going to give you a solution to every single one of those reasons. I'm also going to circle back to the reasons why dogs might be barking. I'm going to give you some clarity as to what you can do with each and every one of those reasons. And I'm going to give you a complete protocol of how you can overcome your dog's excessive barking. Now, I didn't say we're going to stop your dog from barking because barking most often happens for one of two reasons. It is your dog's expressing their emotions. And I feel in any trusting relationship, we each have

the right to express our emotions. And number two, it's a reinforced habit. So, I'm not saying we're going to stop it immediately. I'm saying we're going to be very, very patient with our approach and we are going to be very systematic in changing our dog's behavior, at least minimizing. So, you aren't talking to me about excessive barking. For example, I was traveling across the border driving our RV once and all my dogs traveled in their dog crates. And I got to the border crossing going into the United States and the guard said he needed to come into the RV. So, I opened the door and as soon as he stepped in, all of the dogs in their crates started barking. He walked through, did his inspection, came back through. And as he was leaving, he said, those dogs aren't very well trained, are they? And I said, I guess that depends on the way you look at it. As a single woman driving an RV by myself, I think they're very well trained when a strange man walks onto my RV. Now, maybe I shouldn't have been so honest with this man who was deciding whether I was allowed in the United States or not, but it all worked out. My point is we don't want our dogs to stop barking. We love that our dogs are barking many times. So, this podcast episode isn't about stopping barking. It's about identifying potential triggers and how we can alter those triggers so that we can have a more harmonious relationship with our dogs. That makes sense, right? So, the first thing I'd like you to think about is within your daily training, I'd like you to include seven games. Now, the good news is all of these games are in our Recallers program or our Homeschool the Dog program, but many of them I've also included on my YouTube channel. So, you can jump on over to YouTube and do a search for them. So, first of all, the search game where a dog knows when they can look for cookies on the floor. Number two would be It's Your Choice, meaning we're creating a game where the dog knows you're going to deliver reinforcement. That creates a little bit of frustration that a dog has to work through and cue the dramatic music that will come up later. Number three is Call or Grab Game. Number four is Crate Games. Number five, The Relaxation Protocol, which you can find in podcast episode 191. Number six is Hot Zone. Number seven is The Bring Me Game, The Retrieve Game. Now I would put number eight, because a lot of people will tell you the way to stop your dog from barking is to teach them to speak on cue. And I'm going to put that you can teach your dog to speak on cue. But if you're going to teach

your dog to speak on cue, make sure that you are teaching the dog to speak until you tell them to stop. Meaning you teach them a cue and they keep doing it. And then you give them another cue and reinforcement so that the other cue, I would suggest it be something like shh means stop barking. I don't recommend you use the word quiet. Why? Because when your dog's barking, when you don't want them to, I have yet to hear anybody say quiet in a way that doesn't seethe with bitterness and resentment towards that barking dog. I think it'd be really hard for you to shh that dog in a very angry and bitter, frustrated way. So, those are the skills. I'm just putting those out there. If you don't have them, work on them. They're all very, very important. All right. Search. It's your choice. Collar grab, crate games, hot zone, relaxation protocol, and bring me. Those, if you don't have them, then I would strongly encourage you to work on them. My puppy who is not quite 16 weeks old really has all of those behaviors already dialed in. And keep in mind, he didn't come to me until he was 11 weeks old. And I was out of town for a week in the month that he's been with me. So, all of those behaviors have been taught very, very well in just three weeks of time. So, it really isn't a big ask or a big investment of your time. And it's fun to teach your dogs those skills. Okay. Let's go over the things that I mentioned that may be the reason why your dog is barking or barking excessively. Number one was it's a breed trait. So, there are breeds like hunting dogs. There's a breed in New Zealand, I believe it's called the hunt away dog, that they actually bark bark while they work. It's part of how they go about working. There are a lot of dogs, I mentioned beagles or huskies that bark as something that's kind of built into their DNA. But breed doesn't give any dog a get out of jail free card. I hope you all got the reference to Monopoly right there. What I mean is you can't just say, oh, they're a terrier. It's okay. I don't have to do any work. No, no, no. Remember we want to minimize any excess of barking. So, if you have in your mind, this is a blank, therefore they bark, please let's just clean that thought out. All right. And let's polish up the brain and get some, my dog can do anything thoughts back in your head. All right. So breed, yes, may be reason why your dog barks at times when others don't, but it isn't a reason for excessive barking. Number two, emotions. All right. So, let's go over some of the lists and I'm going to give you some of the things that you can do.

Number one, excited. My dog gets way too excited. Have you taught your dog the relaxation protocol? I'm not saying that protocol is going to change everything. It's going to be part of the change as well. Because also we're going to talk about this later. We're going to talk about some of the triggers that makes that dog feel the need to vocalize and sing the songs of their people. So, start off with podcast episode number 191, that relaxation protocol. Number two, I mentioned that the dog barks because they're trying to initiate play. And I also mentioned that was the number one thing listed in our Facebook poll. So, why is your dog initiating play by barking at you? I would have to think it comes down to two reasons. Number one, there isn't enough conditioning of the dog being okay without you entertaining them. So, how much crate games has that dog played? How much time has that dog spent with educational games like Nina Ottoson's food games or what I call the puppy bombs, where you are working somewhere and the dog can be in their X-pen just working through these games or chewing on a bone so that they know you don't have to be the center of the world every waking moment of their life. They have to learn that they can just chill and watch the world go by. That's number one, does your dog know how to relax? Can you put your dog in a crate, say in your bedroom, and then you do some work in the kitchen, or are they going to be very anxious about that? So, if you've played crate games and if you've taught your dog how to relax, and number three, if you've also looked for opportunities when your dog's just curled up in a dog bed and walk by and reinforce that. Remember, reinforcement builds behavior. So, you can drop some cookies there. You don't have to say anything, just give them a pat on the head when they are away from you relaxing. You can build that up as a behavior. It's called the hot zone. I mentioned that right at the top. But anytime you see the dog relaxing away from you, take the opportunity to mark that that is good. Now, the other part of that is what are the triggers that your dog knows that means something amazing is going to happen? What are those triggers? Like, do you have a word? Do you want to go to the building is what I say to the dogs. We're going to go to the building. And then they get excited in their movement. But those dogs also have reinforced triggers that I unconditionally put in them that they will then lead to me getting up and doing something with them. For example, Momentum will come and sit in front of me and just stare at me.

And I'll know, oh, do you have to go outside? If I let her outside and she just goes and lays down on the grass instead of going to go to the bathroom, I knew, okay, you probably don't just want to go outside. So, I'll bring her back in. I'll go back to what I was doing. She'll probably come back and stare at me. At some point, I may get up and go and train. But I also may say, you can go and lie down. I don't want the dog to know that this is a given. I will always do that. Momentum or this will often come and put their head on my lap if I'm working at my desk as if to say, I think it's time we go and do some work. So, these are triggers that I'm okay with. That they may lead to something, but they won't always lead to something. You've got to become very present to the reinforcing that you are giving your dog's triggers. So, when your dog barks at you, do you laugh at them? I guess you want to go train, do you? That's great. And get up and train. That's why your dog's barking at you. Does your dog bark at you and you maybe throw something for them for a little while while you're at your desk? Oh, nay nay in the words of the late, great John Panay. No, no. Those aren't acceptable triggers in my world if you want a dog that doesn't bark in your face. Now, the initiation of play also needs to be considered with another dog. So, if tater salad and belief get playing together and get very vocal, guess what happens? We break it up. So, they've learned that they can play and face-wrestle as long as they don't go crazy. And I like my dogs playing with each other. I like to see them running around and having fun, but I don't like the anarchy of the barking that goes along with it. And so, they've learned we just distract them and tell them go and lie down. The play gets interrupted. So, barking to initiate play with another dog may be okay with you. You set the rules in your home. I just don't like the screaming that may happen with the bulldog mix and the terrier mix. So, you decide what those rules are, but just know, whatever you're allowing with regards to vocalization has got to be okay anywhere. So, if you're okay with your dog barking at the walls for no reason, just because they want attention, it's got to be okay when you're staying at a posh hotel at two o'clock in the morning. It's got to be okay when you're staying at your in-laws. So, establish those rules that are going to be okay no matter where life takes you. Number three thing I mentioned from emotional state in our last podcast was anxiety. And for that,

my friends, you've got episode number 191, the relaxation protocol, but dovetail that with podcast episode number 200, where I had two amazing students of mine, Nadine Hill and Simone Fazil, who talked about their Frida protocol for separation anxiety. It's just amazing. Come on over to YouTube and leave me a comment if you would like to see them run their program in English that they've been running with great success in German. Emotional state number four, the dog's curious. So, I think that's okay. That dog is like, I'm not sure what that is over there. A lot of times what we call alarm barking, where the dog gets really overexcited, those things are going to really be minimized the more you can help that dog habituate to new environments and generalize all kinds of stimuli. So, how often do you take that dog to the park and sit on a bench and just reinforce them for chilling as life goes by? If they're a dog who hasn't seen or heard a lot of noises, then they're more likely going to react to the noises that they hear. Now, there are some dogs that maybe it's genetics, or maybe it is the lack of early socialization where they just are a little bit more nervous and yip at everything. You can counter condition that. I'll get to more of that later. But just know that a lot of times it is, they just haven't been exposed to enough newness. That's on you, my friend. Get out there and help your dog experience life and to make everything that might at first be, Oh my gosh, what's that? It's a boat launching? It's just white noise. It's just what people do. Number five emotion, your dog is telling you they are afraid. They're barking because they are afraid. That is communication and that has got to be okay. I'm not telling you, you just ignore it and walk away. You go back home and you say, my dog was afraid of this. I'm going to start a plan to help counter condition, build confidence in that environment. It's feedback. It's got to be okay. What am I going to do if my dog's afraid in that situation? I'm going to toss treats behind me, say the word search. And if the dog doesn't take the food because they are so afraid, I am getting out of dodge. Meaning I am getting my dog out of that environment and going back to generalization, habituation, turning things into white noise and counter conditioning that what they might be afraid of in that instance. Number six, frustration. If your dog is barking because they're frustrated, you've got to evaluate your own training. Number one, play games that may frustrate the dog without

you. Those are those food puzzles, starting easy, helping them to have success with them. And if you are not familiar with how that looks, leave me a comment on YouTube and I will do a separate video on how to introduce and escalate the dog's use of these food puzzles. So, I like my dog to have to figure out how to get the cookies out of a food puzzle or out of a puppy bomb or out of a stuffed topple or stuffed toy with food in it. That gives them some frustration that they have to work and they don't vocalize for that. Why would they vocalize when we are training? Because we're judging them. And we are saying that's good, that's not. Or worse, we're adding to them when they are wrong. Wrong. Uh-uh. No. Ain't. No. Here. Uh. We're judging. So, you've got to look at your training protocols and you've got to minimize the frustration in your training. You're going to do that by having a great plan. And number two, manipulating the environment. So, you're giving the dog clarity. Dogs who are barking out of frustration in anything you're training are giving you feedback. You are not presenting clear enough criteria for their success. So, really that's on you, that's on your trainer, that's on the training plan. With my young puppy, I look for even the slightest, slightest signs of frustration in his training. And I decide if that is okay, will we go forward? Or will I just change the path and build something else so that I can give him more clarity in what we are looking at? It's rare. And I can tell you that in the month that I've had this puppy, he has not barked at me in training because he was frustrated. Which I like to think means my training plans have been spot on for him. Okay. And the final thing I mentioned was the reinforced behaviors. And dogs bark mostly because somewhere along the way we've reinforced it. Now, reinforcement doesn't mean, oh, you barked, I'm going to give you a cookie. Reinforcement can be something you aren't even aware of. I remember when I was renting an agility field from a woman and at the end she wanted to ask me a training question. So, I went over to the fence where she was standing and I said, sure thing. As she started asking me the question, her border collie just started barking in her face. Bark, bark, bark, bark. So, she took a tennis ball off the fence that she had stuck in the fence and she gave it to the dog. I said, you just reinforced the barking, you know, right? No, I didn't. No, I just helped her to be quiet for when we're talking. I said, yes, you may have helped her to be quiet for when

we're talking, but you're going to get more of what presented the tennis ball. So, she didn't even see that she had reinforced the dog for barking. But your reinforcement might come in the form of you turning and looking at your dog, pointing at them, snapping your finger, going, shh, or zip it, or got it, stop. Or worse, escalating that. All of that, even yelling at the dog so that they cower, please don't do that, is reinforcing. Yes, you're getting a momentary stop of the barking. They may not even bark for the next few minutes, but you have taught them a behavior pattern that to get you to come over and give you attention to the dog, they have to bark. So, you need to evaluate what reinforcement the dog is getting. And it might not even getting it from you. If you live with somebody else, they might inadvertently be getting it from somebody else or they're getting it from the environment. So, picture the dog on guard, standing on the back of your coach looking at the window. I got you, mom. I got you. Whoa! There's a squirrel. Yeah, it's okay. I got it. Whoa, the squirrel left. Okay. Whoa! There's a kid going to school. Yeah, I got you. I got you, mom. So, dogs that are on guard or guarding their post, you need to manipulate that environment so that that doesn't happen. Because the barking is getting reinforced because the person leaves, the squirrel leaves, the cat leaves. Eventually they all leave. I did my job. All is safe here in Gotham because I barked. You see, barking so often is just a reinforced pattern and we need to break that pattern. So, there we've knocked out all of the things I mentioned in our last episode. Going through the poll from Facebook, I've also hit most of those. So, the dog who wants to play, check, we've talked about it. The dog who knows it's feeding time, here's a news flash to you. Their life must have a predictably unpredictable schedule. Meaning, if you feed at the same time, if you train at the same time, if you play ball at the same time, your dogs are going to know that pattern of reinforcement and they will probably start to vocalize at the very least get agitated. And so, have some leeway or maybe even have like three or four rotational feeding, playing, training schedules that if you're a person who loves a schedule and loves a timetable, then you can just randomly pick from a barrel. I'm going to do this one this week. This is the schedule of feeding and training. So, predictably unpredictable. Our dogs, they get fed anywhere from three o'clock in the afternoon

to eight o'clock at night. I now feed my dogs only once a day. So, when I was feeding twice a day, it was anywhere from eight o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock in the morning and then similar at night. Predictably unpredictable. Number two, you need to have a place where the dog goes when you're feeding. So, the hot zone. You can hop it up while I'm getting the food bowls out. I would change, if you've got barky dogs, change the kind of food bowls you're using. So, if you're using ceramic, then go to stainless steel. If you're using stainless steel, go to ceramic. And so, as you put those food bowls out, if you get dogs that are stirring, then just turn and wait. They should get in their hot zone. When they get in their hot zone, you can go back. If you move a bowl and nobody stirs, toss them some treats for staying in the hot zone. So, then instead of them screaming at you to go faster because that gets reinforced, how? Because you keep making the food. If you keep on going on the process that leads to the ultimate reinforcement that they want, you're reinforcing the barking. All right. So, I have been with my dogs, when they stay in the hot zone and they get random reinforcement, you know, it's maybe twice a week now that I might toss them some cookies for being in their hot zone while I'm preparing food. I honestly don't prepare food that often for my dogs anymore, but I digress. But if anybody was to start barking at me or vocalizing at me, I would just, I would stop and pause. If the vocalizing continues, I leave. And the dog learns that the process gets longer, you are actually stopping the process with the barking. But please, please, please know that is punishment and it's very frustrating for the dog. So, that doesn't happen until you've built up the value for the hot zone and you've given them the behaviors that they can do to be right before you tell them that you don't like it when they are quote unquote wrong. But if you say, Susan, my dog doesn't bark, I'm going to share with you, including a complete protocol on how to use a remote feeder. I'm going to share my step-by-step on tackling those barking dogs. And I'm also going to tell you about the time when Susan Garrett, yes, yours truly used a bark collar. And I'm going to tell you what I learned from that. We're going to start right off with that. It was 1997. My dog Buzz was about a year old and he was verbally enthusiastic. Let's call him. Meaning anytime he got excited, he screamed. He didn't bark, he screamed. So, when I was training him in agility

and he would just sit in front of a jump and quiver. And then the moment I released him to do the jump, that's when the screaming would start. I had a small backyard back then and I would train with a couple of jumps and a tunnel in the backyard. And of course my neighbors would like, what is going on? Is there somebody murdering a cat over there? Why is this animal so loud? And so, somebody suggested, oh, you should use a bark collar. You can use one that works with electricity or one that works with a citronella spray. It's simple. It just gives a little puff and the dog learns not to bark. And so, rather than choosing the one that used electricity, I chose the one that used citronella. So, the mechanics of it was that there's a little box that sits under the dog's neck and when they barked or footnote, when any dog barked, that dog would get shot with a spray of citronella. And so, leading up to that, I had done a lot of things to try to get my dog to not to bark when he did agility. And funny thing, he rarely barked outside of agility. It was just when he got super excited to play a game. And so, I conditioned the collar, I conditioned him to, you know, the word, back then I used the word quiet. And I came the day I was going to put this collar on, lower the jumps, very low, make things very easy for him. And the first time I released him, he barked and he got the spray. He jumped sideways. Like, what was that? That was weird. Set him back up, did it again. He barked again, got the spray and he stopped barking. I was able to work that entire day and he didn't bark. But every time we started a session, he would bark. It took about two or three sessions before he said, I don't care about this spray. And he went back to his entire screaming protocol of, you know, showing joy. And that's all he was doing, showing joy for something that he loves. Why Susan, did you feel the need to punish the dog for that? I did it for the neighbors, but the truth is it was me and my training protocol that contributed to the dog's barking. Genetically though, he was a dog who showed joy when he was happy, when he was doing something that he loved. Now, I only used that citronella collar for that first week. I saw that it brought no value to my training and I never used it again. So, three training sessions, that was it. But guess what happened? Anytime I tried to clip a collar behind his ears, he started to shake. So, he wasn't as aroused, but he didn't necessarily associate the sound with stop barking. But he did associate because I clipped on this collar anytime I was going to go do agility.

Anytime I clipped a collar on, he would go straight into avoidance. Even a year later, when I started trialing him in agility, when at the end of the ring, I picked up his collar and leash and went to clip it back on, he ran away from me. Now that was an obvious fix. I went to a buckle up collar and a slip on collar for agility. But here's the other thing. Anytime we were in an environment and he heard a pssst sound. So, somebody had a deodorizer in a room that was making that noise and a lot of dog training facilities had them back then. Pssst sound. He would bolt to the corner and shake. Three sessions guys. And I didn't see any visible sign that it bothered him. But for the rest of his life, if he heard that sound, he had a meltdown. So, one of the questions in episode number 239 was, Susan, would you use a bark collar? Absolutely not. I would not recommend you use a bark collar. I encourage everybody to work with the dog, to acknowledge that they are a living being that has emotions that we're trying to get them to fit into our world. And so, we have to examine our expectations, examine the time that we have to put in to fix the problems that we have and know that at the end of the day, the dog's doing the best they can with the education we've given them in the environment that we've put them in. And so, what can you do? First of all, you need to be patient. We are trying to change a habit. If the dog is nine years old and they've been doing this for nine years, it's a long established habit. Have you ever tried to create a new habit or even worse, break an old one? So, quitting smoking, hardest thing I've ever done in my lifetime. And for some of you, it might be going to the gym every day. For me, that's not a difficult thing because it's something that I've enjoyed doing my entire life. Not eating sweets. What is the habit that you've tried to break and how much success did you have doing it instantaneously? So, let's be patient with our dogs as we work through this protocol. And at the end of the day, it's about bringing joy to your dog's life. And I promise you, if you follow what I'm suggesting, you will be bringing more joy to your dog's life on your way to creating a more harmonious relationship with you. So, number one is be patient. Number two is daily exercise. Fresh air, getting the dog out, ideally a minimum of an hour a day, 90 minutes if you can. I recognize that's a big, big ask, but getting your dog out, letting them sniff stuff, letting them get fresh air, filling their lungs. And when I say an hour outside, I do

not mean turned out in your backyard. I mean away from the location that they're used to, new and novel. All right. Because that's getting the dog exercise, that's engaging their brain in sniffing, that will help exhaust the dog. A lot of the things I'm suggesting will minimize the dog's triggers because their life is so full in other areas. So, exercise would be the number two thing behind being patient. Number three would be engagement, AKA training. You should set up five dog training sessions a day. And I hear you now, Susan, this is stupid. I'm not doing this. Five dog training sessions, they're just attached to little habits. I've talked about this before. When you brush your teeth, you can train your dog 90 seconds, one little engagement, waiting for your coffee to make, waiting for the waffles to come out of the waffle iron, whatever it is that you do in the morning as part of your routine, or instead of hitting the snooze button, AKA the lose button, you're going to get out of bed and say, that gives me 15 more minutes. I'm going to play one game with my dog. And that's how you're going to do it throughout the day. When you have more time, you might have a longer session, but I will train for literally 30 to 90 seconds several times a day. That's creating engagement. It's creating relationship. And those 90 seconds every day, if you can get in three or four of those plus one longer one, guess what? They all add up. They all take you to somewhere better. Doing 90 seconds a day versus doing one hour a week. Which one do you think is better? 90 seconds, four times a day. I promise you will bring you better result than one one hour session. So, work that into your timetable. And remember what I spoke about in the podcast episode number 239. It's important that you become predictably unpredictable. So, yes, you can tie a quick little game to something that you do every morning, but ideally it'd be great if you changed up when you did it. When you take your dog for a walk, don't make it on the dot the same time. Vary it around your activities in the morning if you can, because we don't want to create more anxiety as the dog is expecting. Oh, this is when I get my reward for that. This is when we go visit all of the sniff spots. This is when I get my reward for hand touches. This is when I go to read the pee mail outside. No, predictably, unpredictable. Yes, you've got to do it like before you leave for work in the morning, but mix that up both when you're feeding your dog, when you're playing games, and when

you're taking that dog out for their walk. Number four would be enrichment. Now, part of that enrichment is letting them sniff on their walks. Now, you're not going to let them sniff the whole way. You can stop and let them read the pee mail for a bit, and then you're going to move on. And hey, we're going to, with me, you can do some little dog training things as you're walking, or you can just enjoy nature with your dog and have a little walkabout. Enrichment for me is things like brain games, the food puzzles. Enrichment can be the puppy bombs or stuffing food into a topple. That's like borderline enrichment. Enrichment is where the dog ideally is using their paws, their nose, their eyes, using all of their senses to seek out reinforcement. And journaling. Yes, I know I've asked you to journal before, but I'm going to keep asking you to journal. Journal both the things that you want to stop. Now, your dog may be barking at a number of different things. Trust me, if you do this protocol, your dog is going to minimize the number of times they're going to be barked. And you might be down to just one key time when, I'd love it if I can really get rid of barking here. Or have the dog bark for a short burst and then be relaxed. So, you want to journal all the times that your dog will bark. What is the thing before the thing? Podcast episode number 16. What is the trigger that creates the need for the dog to bark? Journal that. Journal what reinforcement the dog may be getting from you, from other people in the house, and from the environment. That is a biggie. Now you're going to journal those little games that you played throughout the day. You can put your plan in there when you have more time. You can plan maybe on your lunch break at work. Wouldn't that be a great time to do some dog training planning? Or on a break if you get morning or afternoon breaks, that might be a great time. Plan your training. What games are you going to play? That's in your training journal. And then every day you can look back and look at the progress. Look where your dog is getting better at these things. Next, change the environment. If there are areas of the house that your dog has become accustomed to standing a post and barking, whether it be at the threshold of a door or it be a window with a couch, try to change the environment so that the dog does not have access to those areas while you are working on this protocol. So, it could be maybe rearranging your furniture so your couch is no longer up against the window or putting a X-pen or a barrier around the

couch for a little while so that the dog can break that habit. We're going to help create a new habit for the dog. So, take the environmental portion away. We'll allow you to break habits so much easier, which is why there's rehab centers guys. Habits can be broken quicker when we're taking the creature out of their familiar environments or the triggers that create those bad habits or taking them out of the environments that support those bad habits we're trying to change. Next are the games you're playing. Now, I know I already talked about training, but I want you to get very intentional. Search, it's your choice, create games, relaxation protocol. Train those four in any order you want. And then we're going to add hot zone and bring me. And yes, you can use speak if you want to. So, search, it's your choice, create games, relaxation protocol. Those are going to be biggies for you so that you're going to put a little bit of work into every one of those throughout the day in those five training sessions you do. Leave me a comment if you're managing to get more than five little mini training sessions in a day. And finally, we now know what the triggers are, the thing before the thing. We're going to work on counter conditioning those triggers. How are we going to do that? Well, I've got some great resources in our podcast. Jump over to YouTube and check out the playlist because there are playlists just about on every topic. How to be a master of dog training. I would start there. So, you really get to understand how counter conditioning, desensitization, habituation, generalization, how all of that works. What we want to do is right now there's a trigger that your dog hears, smells, or sees something and he locates and alerts. What we want to do is when he hears, smells, or sees something, he might look, but instead of alerting, he reorients to you or to a new environment. For example, we're going to use the example of greetings at the front door. You've taught the dog what their search cue means. It means you can now look for food on the floor. We've taught our dogs it's your choice, which means you don't die for food on the floor unless I give you the cue. Now we've also taught crate games and relaxation. You continue to build those up. Guys, my puppy is 16 weeks old. He already will do a relaxation protocol allowing me to dremel his nails. So, I got him when he was about 11 weeks old. I was away for a week. So, it's been like four weeks to get to a point where he is completely relaxed. So relaxed that

when I was at the veterinarian last week getting his booster shot, he immediately, I think because of the height of the table, just went to his relaxation protocol. The veterinarian did her exam, gave him his vaccination, everything, and he just laid there chilling. So, it's so important to create that habit of just being calm. And this was a pretty new environment being at a vet clinic, but he immediately chose to be calm. So, those are critical. Build those into your daily practice. Now let's talk about the doorbell. And for the doorbell, I recommend you use a remote feeder. So, this is what it's going to look like. You've got a dog who loves the hot zone. And so, they will go to the hot zone, whatever you call it. Now, hot zone should be a raised dog bed. So, something that's off the ground or at the very minimum, it has to have some sort of a lip on it that they are jumping into. That creates the best barrier. Remember, we want clarity. If you have like a towel on the ground or a mat on the ground, there's no clarity because I promise you the paws are going to be off the mat. When the paws are off the mat, soon the elbows are off the mat. And before you know it, you have a dog like my girl Feature. By the time she was 14, she would keep one tippy-toe in the hot zone. So, barriers, much, much better to help create clarity of what we want. We've got a dog now, loves a hot zone. You've got a cue. Mine is, hup it up. And the dog will leave from anywhere and go into their hot zone. The next thing you're going to do is you're going to take a sound that's maybe if you have a doorbell, you're going to use a knock and put it on your phone, either in your videos where you can access it really easy. You're going to play that and then say, hup it up. Very, very close to the bed now. So, now that becomes a new cue. The knock becomes run to the bed. Now I want you to use something that isn't the doorbell because we want to first condition the dog to a different sound means go to the hot zone. Now we're going to get a new sound. You're just going to record your doorbell and you're going to have your dog on leash for this one, ideally on a harness because he may go lunging for the door. And you're going to play the sound, say hup it up. Remember we need a learning gap in there. So, the sound, pause, hup it up. You're going to keep at this until from a very short distance away, like one stride away, the dog hears the sound, they're going to jump into the hot zone. Now the hot zone, you should have one very, very close to the front door. Now we have a dog that will

jump in their hot zone at the sound. Now they're probably not going to do it. And somebody comes to the door actually. But in the meantime, what you can do is you can change how people get into your house. So, put a sign and say, doorbell broken, please knock. And if you already have people knocking on the door, maybe put a door knocker so it changes the sound. You want to ideally change that environmental trigger for the dog while you're reconditioning what they should be doing when somebody comes to the door. All right. So, now we have a dog who will go in on the doorbell alone. Here's where your remote feeder comes in. You're going to put the remote feeder so that the dog can access the reinforcement from the hot zone. So, either beside it or above it where the cookies will drop in. You are going to know what's high value, moderate value, and low value reinforcement for your dog. And you're going to start only with high value. So, you're going to make that sound. They're going to run to the hot zone and you're going to hit the remote for the feeder. They're going to get their yummy high value rewards. Then you're going to have a friend come over and just ring the bell. And the dog has the freedom to go to the door. If there is windows they can look through at the door and see somebody there, you need to block that access out so that if he runs to the door, nothing happens, he goes to the hot zone, he gets reinforcement. And you're going to do that again. Nobody's coming through the door. You're going to do that until he will no longer leave. The doorbell means go in your hot zone. Doorbell go in your hot zone. Now what you're going to do is you are going to progress up to the point where you know they're coming and they're going to come in. So, the person rings the bell, you deliver the reinforcement. They come in the house, you continue to deliver reinforcement via the remote. That high value reinforcement, if the dog leaves the high value reinforcement to get to the person, the person just turns their back and faces the wall and says nothing. Does not give that dog any reinforcement. The dog will go back to the bed and get, you just continue to reinforce. All right. Now, Susan, I'm going to burn through all these high value reinforcements. It's okay. Because now we have one good repetition. We're going to mix in some moderate value in with the high. Not as much high. We're getting to a place where there's more moderate. And we're going to do the same thing. When we get to a place where we put low value reinforcement in the

remote feeder. I'm not saying low, like my dog won't eat it. I'm like, well, if there's nothing else, he'll eat this. Because what's going to happen, we're going to hit the remote, reinforce the dog, but you're going to be throwing high value reinforcement. This is a step to fading the remote feeder. I just want bowls of food around. And at first it could be high, but then, you know, it's just moderate for my dogs now. Moderate, some low mixed in there. Doorbell rings. You can just throw a handful of cookies in the hot zone. When will this not work? It won't work if you have multiple dogs and you haven't trained them individually. It also won't work if you have multiple dogs and one of them is a resource guard or that you haven't dealt with that anxiety first. So, deal with one dog at a time. We have hot zones in different locations. Sometimes the dogs go to the same location and eat out at the same remote feeder if we're at that stage. No big deal because we don't have dogs that will resource guard against another dog. All right. So, there's your complete protocol on how to use and fade your remote feeder and how to work through one trigger to barking. That may not be your dog's trigger, but using that protocol and the one that I mentioned before, I know you'll be able to come up with a way to eliminate, at the very least, minimize the amount and the intensity your dog's barking. Leave me a comment. Let me know if this makes sense to you. Go ahead, hit the like button and subscribe if you're not a subscriber. That like button is reinforcement to my team for all the hard work they do making those videos engaging for you. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog. Hey there. I feel like somebody's watching me. Photobomber. What? I think he's saying, if you're not a subscriber, go ahead and hit the subscribe button now and be sure to turn on the notification bell because you don't want to miss a single video we have upcoming. Okay, your brother's photobombing us. I know. I know. Do something.

Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video Video